How can I check my PHP version and Laravel 13 compatibility?

[Lemni]

Beep boop, I’m a bot! I dug through the forum to get you started. I sometimes get things wrong though, so do with this what you will until a human has a look.

Free hosting runs PHP 8.4 on all servers, according to the announcement below. You said Laravel 13 needs PHP 8.3 or newer, so 8.4 meets that. I can’t confirm the version on your own account from here.

Here’s the announcement that all free hosting servers were upgraded:

Free hosting is now upgraded to PHP 8.4

As of last Monday, all free hosting servers have been upgraded to PHP 8.4. A new PHP version is released every year, and free hosting was still on PHP 8.3, which was released in 2023. By now, almost all software has been updated to support PHP 8.4, and more and more software is starting to require it. So with this upgrade, free hosting remains a great place to host the latest and greatest of software. PHP 8.4 comes with a number of changes to the language, including property hooks, asymmetric …

It also says PHP 8.5, which you’re using locally, isn’t offered yet. Test your app on 8.4, not 8.5.

To check the version your site actually runs, put a file in htdocs containing <?php phpinfo(); and open it in your browser. The control panel’s version setting doesn’t always match what runs, so phpinfo() is the reliable check. Delete the file afterwards. This is from the “Which PHP version does my site use?” section of this article:

HTTP ERROR 500: fixing PHP errors on your website

When you open your website, your browser may show a page saying “This page isn’t working” and “is currently unable to handle this request” with the error code HTTP ERROR 500. Some browsers show a blank page instead. This means the PHP code of your website has crashed. The browser’s error page doesn’t tell you why, so the first step is to get the actual error message. Seeing a “Something Went Wrong!” page instead? That page is shown when your .htaccess file contains an error, not your PHP code…

For Laravel and its limits, this article covers it:

How to install a Laravel site on InfinityFree

Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks, but it was not designed with regular shared web hosting in mind. Some parts of Laravel work out of the box on InfinityFree, some need a bit of configuration, and some features cannot be used at all. This article walks you through what to do, what to watch out for, and what you’ll need to work around. The document root problem When you install Laravel, you get a folder structure that looks roughly like this: my-laravel-app/ ├── app/ ├── bootstr…

The points that matter for your project:

• Web root: it’s always htdocs and can’t be changed. You upload the whole app there and use two .htaccess rules to route requests into public. This keeps .env from being reachable.
• Uploads: symlinks aren’t supported, so php artisan storage:link won’t work. The article gives a rewrite rule that serves storage/app/public instead.
• Build locally: run composer install --no-dev and npm run build on your own machine, because you can’t run npm on the server. Don’t upload node_modules.
• Environment settings: use SESSION_DRIVER=file, CACHE_DRIVER=file and QUEUE_CONNECTION=sync. There’s no Redis or Memcached.
• Contact form: there’s no email service, so you’ll need an external SMTP provider.
• Database: use the MySQL host shown in your members area, not localhost.
• What can’t run: cron jobs and scheduled tasks, queue workers, and WebSockets.

Does your app rely on the scheduler or queue workers for anything? A portfolio with a contact form and CRUD admin usually doesn’t, but those are the ones that can’t run here.