Composer handles all dependencies for laravel. Laravel itself consists of different modules which you could download one by one. But with composer you just say: i want laravel (you can even switch versions in the composer.json file) and trigger a "composer update" command and everything is set.

And by the way: if it is too complicated for you to install laravel with the, in my eyes, simple tutorial, you might wanna stick to codeigniter ;)

Typing "curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php" and "composer create-project laravel/laravel --prefer-dist" shouldn't be too hard...

If you want a php package, you need composer. Pretty much everyone in the php community uses composer. It's how you hook up 3rd party packages such as amazon sdk, oauth, etc.

Using composer is the easiest way. If you don't want to download again and again, make backup your project directory after installing once.

It's part of the learning curve to learn modern php standards. Composer is indeed terrifying at first. Even installing composer itself was confusing in my case. But that's okay. If you think you can't handle it yet, it means that you should use some programmer-friendly frameworks first before trying laravel and other projects using composer.

I have only problem when putting composer.phar as Globally in /usr/local/bin then I start alias as composer, but it still doesn't work.

OK I understand the composer, the "modern" php standards but at least give me a way of unzipping a file on a web server and make it work, give me a chance to try it. Coz as a beginner in Laravel what I want to know is the framework not the php standards!

ezekel, I used to be completely on your side with this, but having used Composer in combination with Github to maintain the same code in two locations I couldn't possibly go back to a non-composer Laravel. Composer means the maintainers of Laravel only need to provide you with the Laravel specific code and the third party code can be downloaded and install automatically. This then gives you the ability to check for updates and apply updates on those third party libraries without hassle.

You can also then use Github to only push your particular project files, making sure to include your composer.json. This avoids cluttering your repo with unrelated code and allows you to push and pull only relevant files. When you want to clone that repo elsewhere a simple "composer install" will bring in all the dependencies for you, as well as the dependencies of those dependencies etc.

mohammedpascal said:

OK I understand the composer, the "modern" php standards but at least give me a way of unzipping a file on a web server and make it work, give me a chance to try it. Coz as a beginner in Laravel what I want to know is the framework not the php standards!

I'd bet most servers with sites running on Laravel don't even have FTP --- mine does not. These days I believe most people just push their git commits to a remote repository on their server. This process isn't complicated once you learn the basics. Literally all you have to do is type 'composer update' in your terminal, it's not any harder than opening up your zip program and extracting the contents.

Change is harder than learning something new.

I have learned to live the laravel way :)

Composer is a package manager that makes your development life easier. Other languages have package managers too. This one is what laravel uses, and you'd be best served to use it as much of the php community has embraced this package manager.

No good answer so far. Rerouting question to core team ...

Why you have made such a complex thing that need composer, Can't you make things simple?

I've heard that Laravel is very difficult to setup. All this week, I've tried to set it up on both a DigitalOcean droplet server, as well as Homestead / VirtualBox on my Windows 10 machine.

I have to say that reputation is warranted. For those wanting to try Laravel, the installation difficulties is a big buzz-kill.

So far this week, I haven't found a single written tutorial on Laravel setup for a server that works for Laravel 5.4 and Ubuntu 16.04. Even on DigitalOcean's site, there's missing steps and errors, and there's no way to give feedback on their broken tutorials.

Homestead installation tutorials are even worse. They skip steps and assume way too much, and have errors.

If anyone can point me to a good step-by-step, no steps left out installation tutorial, I would be very grateful.

Bob

Bob,

Seriously man. There is nothing easier than installing laravel. If you're having problems with laravel install, it's probably because you have problems with composer and don't understand how it works.

I suggest you look into composer first, so you understand what it is, what it does.

The tutorial is very easy:

1/ make sure composer is installed on your system. That's the one thing you have to do - go to https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md and read about composer and how to install so it works on your environment. This shouldn't be too hard, and if you're having issues with that, you should post them on a composer help medium such as a forum they run, or post your questions on stackexchange.

2/ once composer is available, you have to install the laravel command on your system. It's basically as simple as running composer global require "laravel/installer"; this command instructs composer to get the laravel installer and make it available globally on your system. Once that is done, you should be able to run the laravelcommand on your system.
Having issues with that? Google for them, or ask your question here or on SE; there is a huge community out there that is willing to help, but not based on "it doesn't work"; you need to be more detailed in your concrete issues so you allow us to help you.

3/ once laravel is available, you just cd to your folder where you want to start a new project and type the command laravel new project-name and all the magic is done for you.

As to what server specs - laravel is nothing more than a bunch of PHP code. so you need PHP, including any libraries you might be using, but that's it. If you need a MySQL Database, obviously MySQL needs to be installed.

And finally - if you're looking at running your app on digitalocean, I highly recommend you look into Laravel Forge that can basically auto-do everything you need on your digitalocean (or AWS for that matter) instance (or droplets :-) )

So I really think you can do it. I'm convinced you can. You just need to try, and if you run into an issue, just find the solution by googling or by posting your questions on SE or here if it's a laravel issue.

Good luck with your project.

If you just want to quickly get Laravel going on your Windows 10 machine, try Laragon.

If you want to use Laravel on a Digital Ocean droplet, I would really recommend that you look into Laravel Forge as @denjaland suggested. However, even if you are running your site on Digital Ocean, you will want to have a local dev environment set up.