Okay so I’ve been using Lara 19 for a few weeks now, and honestly, it felt kinda sluggish sometimes? Like, things took longer than they should, especially when loading those big admin dashboards. Annoying, right? I decided I wasn’t just gonna complain, I needed to actually try and make it smoother. Here’s exactly what I did, step by step.
Started Simple: Clearing the Crap
First things first, I figured maybe there was just too much temporary junk lying around. So I jumped into my terminal – feeling all developer-like – and ran the usual cleanup crew:
php artisan view:clear(Yeah, bye-bye compiled views!)php artisan route:clear(Cleared out the route cache)php artisan config:clear(Wiped the config cache too)php artisan cache:clear(Emptied the whole application cache)
Did it magically fix everything? Nah, not really. But it felt cleaner, you know? Like a good restart for the app. Worth doing before trying anything fancier.
Dug Deeper: Peeking at Config Settings
Since basic cleanup wasn’t enough, I opened up that .env file and the config/* file. I started playing around. Honestly, I was kinda poking in the dark at first.
One thing I changed: I switched the caching driver in .env from CACHE_DRIVER=file to CACHE_DRIVER=array. Sounds silly, but for my local dev setup, it seemed lighter? File writes can slow things down sometimes, I guess. Then, maybe brave or dumb, I set APP_DEBUG=false in production mode. Debug mode eats resources for breakfast, turns out.
I also looked in config/*. Saw 'log' => 'single'. Thought, why not reduce log writes? So I changed it to 'log' => 'daily'. Less churn writing log files constantly.
Optimization: Trying that Artisan Optimize Thing
Heard about php artisan optimize. Sounds important! Ran it. It compiled some stuff – classes, routes, config – all into one place? Supposedly makes autoloading faster. Hard to measure instantly, but Lara definitely felt a bit snappier afterward. Feels like something you should run after big changes or deployments.
Also gave composer dump-autoload --optimize a shot. More classmap optimizing. Can’t hurt, right?
Gotcha Moment: Fixing My Own Mess
Okay, so not all Lara’s fault! I loaded all my models and relationships on one page using eager loading… poorly. Realized I was fetching WAY more data than needed. Doh! Went back, used lazy loading where it made sense, specifically added ->select('id','name') to only grab the crucial fields for some lists. Boom. HUGE difference on that one page. Lesson learned: I was the bottleneck!
Memory Tweaks: Giving Lara More Room
Noticed some out-of-memory errors in logs during big operations. My VPS was being stingy. Opened (scary, I know). Found the memory_limit setting. It was like 128M? Upped it cautiously to 256M. Saved, restarted PHP. Seemed to handle bigger jobs without crashing. Important: Don’t go crazy here, just give it what it realistically needs.
So, Did it Work?
Honestly? It’s much better now. It’s not magic, but the combination did the trick:
- Regular cache/config/view clearing became a habit.
- Sensible .env tweaks (debug off, lighter cache driver for dev) helped.
- Running artisan optimize after updates feels necessary.
- Fixing my dumb query was the single biggest win. Be smarter than me!
- A little extra memory stopped the crashes.
Lara 19 feels responsive now, not laggy. Took some trial and error, messing things up slightly and fixing them, but it worked out. Focus on the simple stuff first – you might be surprised!
