title: Removing column from database in Laravel 5+
body: <p>I've a blog for which the <code>articles</code> table <code>Schema</code> is defined like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public function up()
  {
      Schema::create('articles', function (Blueprint $table) {
          $table-&gt;increments('id');
          $table-&gt;integer('user_id')-&gt;unsigned();
          $table-&gt;string('title');
          $table-&gt;string('thumb')-&gt;nullable();
          $table-&gt;text('excerpt');
          $table-&gt;text('body');
          $table-&gt;string('slug')-&gt;unique();
          $table-&gt;integer('comment_count')-&gt;unsigned()-&gt;default(0);
          $table-&gt;integer('view_count')-&gt;unsigned()-&gt;default(0);
          $table-&gt;timestamps();
          $table-&gt;softDeletes();
  }
  
  public function down()
  {
      Schema::drop('articles');
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to drop the columns <code>comment_count</code> and <code>view_count</code> without losing existing data in the table</p>
  
  <p>I defined a new migration like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>class RemoveCommentViewCount extends Migration
  {
      public function up()
      {
          //nothing here
      }
  
      public function down()
      {
          Schema::table('articles', function($table) {
             $table-&gt;dropColumn('comment_count');
             $table-&gt;dropColumn('view_count');
         });
     }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and I did <code>php artisan migrate</code> . It did migrate successfully, but the two columns are not dropped.</p>
  
  <p>What am I doing wrong? How can I drop those columns without losing the existing data in the table?</p>