Introducing Laravel and Symfony PHP Frameworks

PHP is thoroughly well-established programming language, and readily available on a vast number of web hosting services (often found together with for example, easy WordPress installation tools). Why introduce PHP on Divio, if it's already so easily available elsewhere?

We wanted to find a way to provide the Divio features and tools to another type of user, namely the developers or agencies who build bespoke PHP applications. The communities that have grown up around PHP and the various frameworks mean that it enjoys a vast amount of excellent code-level support through StackOverflow, tutorials and other channels. When it comes to hosting, usually the LAMP stack is the default answer.

As applications grow, additional requirements can start to emerge - the need for a consistent deployment toolchain, cloud scalability, backups, high-availability features, and so on. Application developers usually have enough to do without also worrying about setting up a comprehensive and robust backup strategy or deployment pipeline!

This is where the Divio platform comes in, providing an opinionated no-fuss workflow that is designed to take PHP code to deployment with everything in-between included.

Laravel and Symfony web frameworks

Laravel and Symfony are included as project types that get you directly to a working application complete with a pre-configured database. You can merge your existing application, use ours as templates to build your application or simply use them as reference projects.

You can also work with your preferred PHP framework, by starting with a blank PHP project type that can be tailored to your specific needs.

Cloud hosting

The Divio platform provides a consistent deployment process where, rather than decide upon a cloud vendor up front, your application is deployed on the best-fit for your application requirements. Important application-specific requirements, such as which country your data should reside, can be chosen accordingly.

Simple scaling

The Divio Control Panel makes scaling your application easy - visually add resources depending on your application needs. Soft-burstable limits and fixed pricing means you have predictable costs with everything centralised in one place.

Git-based version control

GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab are supported by default; your project can be set up with a new repository at creation time or used with an existing Git repository. Integration via webhooks helps make the development-deployment cycle as seamless as possible.

Developer tools

The Divio Desktop tools come in two flavours, a Divio Desktop application which resides in your taskbar and allows you to easily and visually commit and push your changes, or the Divio CLI, a powerful command line tool that can integrated into an existing build process.

Backup and restore

Scheduled and manual on-demand backups mean you can undo a change quickly and stress-free. While source code is securely versioned in Git, database and media are covered by backups which you can also locally download for offline storage.

Deploying your PHP application

The Divio platform includes three environments - your local development environment, a testing environment and a live environment. You have likely encountered countless hours lost debugging a subtle change in an environment meaning your application behaves differently in the local and cloud environments, for example. In order to address this, the Divio platform automatically builds a Docker-based container for your application. The same container (and therefore code) is used across multiple environments, between which only environment variables change. Docker containerisation also means that resources allocated to your application are not time-sliced or shared with multiple copies of an operating system. Finally, containerisation helps guarantee portability - with no vendor-specific settings you are free to move your application.

Go forth and deploy

We have given PHP a beta label to indicate its newly-released status. We will continue to develop our PHP support with new frameworks and addons.

The best way to get started is with our Laravel and Symfony guides respectively that will get you to working PHP app in a few minutes.

If you dont already have a Divio account, you can sign-up for free - no credit card required.