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The PHP preset provides a full PHP development environment with nginx, PHP-FPM, and Composer pre-installed.

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Available Versions

VersionStatus
PHP 8.2Supported
PHP 8.3Default
PHP 8.4Latest
Select a version when creating your pod. If not specified, PHP 8.3 is used. 
instapods pods create my-app -p php --version 8.4

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What’s Included

ComponentVersionDetails
nginxLatest (Ubuntu 24.04)Web server, proxies to PHP-FPM
PHP-FPM8.2, 8.3, or 8.4 (your choice)FastCGI process manager
ComposerLatestPHP dependency manager (global)
gitLatestVersion control
SSHOpenSSHAccess via dedicated port
Pre-installed PHP extensions: mbstring, xml, curl, mysql, pgsql, redis, zip, and more. Pre-installed utilities: curl, wget, vim, htop, unzip.

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Directory Structure

/home/instapod/app/
├── public/
│   └── index.php       # Web-accessible entry point
├── composer.json        # (your project)
└── vendor/              # (after composer install)
  • App Root: /home/instapod/app
  • Public Root: /home/instapod/app/public
  • Port: 80 (nginx)
  • PHP-FPM socket: /run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock
nginx is configured to serve from /home/instapod/app/public. Place your entry point (index.php) there. Application code, configs, and vendor directory go in the parent /home/instapod/app.

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Deploying Your App

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Upload Files

instapods files sync my-php-app --local ./my-laravel-project

# Or use the deploy command
instapods deploy my-php-app --local ./my-laravel-project

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Install Dependencies

instapods exec my-php-app -- composer install --no-dev

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Reload Services

After deploying or updating your code: 
instapods pods reload my-php-app
This restarts both PHP-FPM and nginx.

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Routing

The nginx config includes try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string, which means all requests that don’t match a file are forwarded to index.php. This works out of the box for:
  • Laravel — all routes handled by public/index.php
  • Custom routers — write your own front controller in public/index.php

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File Permissions

PHP-FPM runs as the www-data user. Files uploaded via the CLI or IDE are owned by root. If your PHP app needs to write to data directories (file uploads, JSON storage, cache), you must fix permissions: 
instapods exec my-php-app -- chown -R www-data:www-data /home/instapod/app/data
For Laravel, also set writable permissions on storage and bootstrap/cache: 
instapods exec my-php-app -- chown -R www-data:www-data /home/instapod/app/storage /home/instapod/app/bootstrap/cache

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Adding a Database

PHP apps commonly need a database. Install one with: 
# MySQL
instapods services add my-php-app -s mysql -w
instapods services creds my-php-app -s mysql

# PostgreSQL
instapods services add my-php-app -s postgresql -w
Database services require the Build plan or higher.

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Use Cases

  • Laravel applications
  • Custom PHP APIs and REST services
  • Content management systems
  • PHP microservices