You can use .htaccess same

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On 
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Or you can use another solution follow step by step

• Step:1: move all files from public directory to [path_root]/laravel/
• Step 2: now, no need of public directory, so optionally you can remove it now
• Step 3: now open index.php and make following replacements

require DIR.'/../bootstrap/autoload.php';

to

require DIR.'/bootstrap/autoload.php';

and

$app = require_once DIR.'/../bootstrap/start.php';

to

$app = require_once DIR.'/bootstrap/start.php';

• Step 4: now open bootstrap/paths.php and change public directory path:

'public' => DIR.'/../public',

to

'public' => DIR.'/..',

The public folder is intended to be the DocumentRoot ("htdocs") of your web server (i.e. Apache) and all the rest of the content outside that folder should not be publicly accessible for security reasons.

It is common, if working on multiple projects, to set up a VirtualHost in Apache to point at your Laravel/public folder (which can then live anywhere on your PC, not necessarily inside "htdocs").

Thank you both for the answer. @AndrewBNZ that makes sense.@tuyenlaptrinh i'd like to use the .htaccess solution you offered but it's not working. My file is now configured like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
        Options -MultiViews
    </IfModule>

    RewriteEngine On

    # Redirect Trailing Slashes...
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]    (previously this was the line: RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301])

    # Handle Front Controller...
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>

I made the changes you suggested to the Rewrite rule line but it gave me a 404 error.

Any suggestions? My Modrewrite is on and Override is All...

You can use .htaccess as a solution.

Or you can solution second to don't use public folder

Sorry, I'm not very sure if your problem has been solved.

This was the fix for my Apache server. RewriteBase did the trick!

Create this .htaccess in the public folder:

    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
            Options -MultiViews
        </IfModule>
    
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteBase /
    
        # Redirect Trailing Slashes...
        RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]
    
        # Handle Front Controller...
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
    </IfModule>

@tuyenlaptrinh thank you again for both of your answers. I think they were elegant. Its just that i'm new to Laravel and if those changes put some out of wack for me, i'd be thrown for a loop. I usually prefer hands off solutions when possible. Also I made a bunch of changes to my public folder address before so it would've been difficult.

@abhiyanp thanks for providing a solution someone as dumb as me could use. This is was very quick and easy as well. Cheers.

@heroselohim glad it worked for you and hope it helps the next person.

@lilliamsjr glad that the php serve helped you, but I'm pretty sure this problem is not in the .htaccess

I agree with @AndrewBNZ, this should be a VirtualHost bad setup (if there is one).

Here you have a very good tutorial for it: http://laravel-recipes.com/recipes/25/creating-an-apache-virtualhost

You should add this lines at the end of httpd.conf

It should look like this:

    NameVirtualHost * 

    <VirtualHost *>
        ServerName localhost
        DocumentRoot "c:/webserver/site/laravel/public"
        <Directory "c:/webserver/site/laravel/public">
                AllowOverride all
        </Directory>
    </VirtualHost>

Without a virtual host I think you won't achieve that kind of short URLs over XAMPP

Remember to edit the .htaccess as mentioned before.

@heroselohim just to be clear.. I still need to create a virtual host, edit my .htaccess file, and add this line to the end of my httpd.conf file even if Php artisan serve gave me the short url I wanted? It was on port 8000 so thats the problem?