How to deploy a PHP app to Heroku

1. Download and install Heroku Toolbelt:

https://toolbelt.heroku.com/

2. Install Heroku Push (because port 22 is blocked by University’s firewall)

heroku plugins:install https://github.com/ddollar/heroku-push

1. Create an empty project and Git Repository

mkdir heroku-php
cd heroku-php
git init

2. Commit to Git

Place the PHP files in the created directory

Now add to git:

git add -A

Now commit:

git commit -m "Initial commit"

3. Create your Heroku app

This is the important step. When creating a PHP app on heroku you have to make sure you choose the ‘Cedar’ Stack.

heroku create --stack cedar

The response should look something like:

Creating damp-wildwood-1022... done, stack is cedar
http://damp-wildwood-1022.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:damp-wildwood-1022.git
Git remote heroku added

Now push to the repository:

heroku push

The response should now look a little like:

Checking for app files to sync... done, 1 files needed
Uploading: 100.0%
Launching build process... done
Preparing app for compilation... done
Fetching buildpack... done
Detecting buildpack... done, Buildkit+PHP
Fetching cache... done
Compiling app...
  Compiling for PHP
  Bundling Apache version 2.2.22
  Bundling PHP version 5.3.10
Putting cache... done
Creating slug... done
Uploading slug... done
Success, slug is https://api.anvilworks.org/slugs/603d9820-290d-49c5-8064-49dfef4dc618.tgz
Releasing to damp-wildwood-1022... ....done, v11

Test! You’re done

Notice Heroku gives you an auto generated app name. If you look in the first response in step 3, Heroku tells you the URL of your app. Mine is http://damp-wildwood-1022.herokuapp.com.

Now you would definitely want your app name to look tidy. Do this:

heroku apps:rename newname

Once you are done editing all the project files,

heroku open

should take you to your app on a web browser.