title: PHP - First Time Installation of Laravel 4 on VPS
body: <p>Hey so I am completely new to Laravel 4 and have some basic questions regarding my first time installation that I was unable to find answers to anywhere else on-line.  I am planning of hosting a standard website with a fully dynamic web back end and a RESTful API using the framework.  I have been following <a href="http://laravel.com/docs/installation" rel="nofollow">this installation guide</a> and am essentially at the part where I type <code>laravel new projectDir</code> and it creates a new instance of Laravel in the provided directory.  </p>
  
  <p>Now my main public directory is <code>public_html</code>, is it recommended to install Laravel 4 directly into that directory.  So is something like <code>laravel new public_html</code> recommended? I have found many other questions here that seem to suggest that this is not the safest solution.  Should I make a separate directory inside public_html, is it necessary for what I am planning on doing with laravel?  </p>
  
  <p>Also, I would like to keep my URL's as neat as possible and would like them primarily to be <code>www.domain-name.com/pagename</code> for the website.  Will creating a directory inside of <code>public_html</code> disable me from doing so?  </p>
  
  <p>Lastly I had some issues with routing my URL's when I tried to install a different framework on this server.  Are there any server/Apache settings that would impact how URL's are routed with laravel that I should disable/enable before I install Laravel into a directory? </p>