This has been answered multiple times in this forum, here are a couple:
http://laravel.io/forum/12-02-2014-newbie-questions-regarding-xampp-and-deployment

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16683046/how-to-install-laravel-4-to-a-web-host-subfolder-without-publicly-exposing-app

http://laravel.io/forum/03-11-2014-removing-public-from-url

I didn't get all, but there are more

Hi,

yes I've read a lot of them, but they don't answer my question. It is no problem for me to remove the public folder from URL if my application run in the server root. The problem are the path variables if I move the application to a subdirectory. So my paths in the /public/index.php looks like:

require __DIR__ . '/../app1/bootstrap/autoload.php';
...
$app = require_once __DIR__ . '/../app1/bootstrap/start.php';

and the paths in the /bootstrap/paths.php looks like:

	'app' => __DIR__.'/../app1/app',

	'public' => __DIR__.'/../app1/public',

	'base' => __DIR__.'/../app1',
        
	'storage' => __DIR__.'/../app1/app/storage',

but it doesn't work! What is wrong with my paths?

If you are setting them up like this:

public_html
- app1
- app2
- app3
- appX

Why do you want to remove the public folder, can't you just leave it like:

thehostname/app1/public/whatever