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Sites

Herd uses the concept of parked paths and linked directories for serving sites. You can access every site in a parked path via <directory-name>.test. By default, Herd parks the ~/Herd directory for you. Any PHP application in this directory is available via its .test domain automatically. If you have other locations for your projects, you can add them as parked paths in the general settings or link individual projects as a linked directory.

Aside from Laravel, Herd supports many frameworks and applications out-of-the-box. If your framework is not in the list, you can create a custom driver to run it with Herd.

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Creating your first site

The fastest way to manage your sites and to create new applications is the command line.

cd ~/Herd
laravel new my-new-site
cd my-new-site
herd open
herd edit

These commands go into your Herd directory, create a brand new Laravel application and open it in your browser. The herd edit command even opens your favorite IDE.

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Linking an existing site

You can link an existing site with a specific domain via the link command from any directory on your machine. The link command uses the directory name as domain name if you don’t set additional parameters.

cd ~/Sites/your-project
herd link
herd link custom-domain

These commands create Herd configurations, and you can now access the application via your-project.test and custom-domain.test. This is useful if you want to use an application from multiple domains, for example in multi-tenancy environments or if you don’t store all your projects in a single code directory.

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Via the GUI

If you prefer creating and linking sites via a graphical user interface, you can use Herd’s site wizard to create new Laravel applications or link existing projects.

You can start the site wizard by opening the Site Manager from the Herd menu bar icon and selecting the plus icon at the top left.

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Unlinking an existing site

You may remove a previously created link, by using the unlink command from any directory on your machine. The unlink command uses the directory name as domain name if you don’t set additional parameters.

cd ~/Sites/your-project
herd unlink
herd unlink custom-domain

These commands remove any previous created links to your site.

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Application Information

The “Information” tab gives you a brief overview of the application. Laravel apps display the content of the php artisan about command, but you can customize the overview by using a custom driver for your site.

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Integrations

Herd allows linking your local site with first-party Laravel cloud services and makes triggering common tasks like deployments super easy. At the moment, Herd supports connecting to sites on Laravel Forge with the Forge integration.