Executive Summary

A client's production Laravel 11 e-commerce application (xyz.domain.co.tz), hosted on a Plesk Obsidian 18.0.76 managed server (IP: xx.xxx.xxx.xxx), experienced three simultaneous critical failures after an initial deployment:

1. Complete site inaccessibility — all pages returned HTTP 404 or infinite URL path duplication.
2. SMS notification failures — FellaSMS API returned 403 Not Authorized on every dispatch.
3. Database connectivity loss — the application could not establish a MySQL connection.

All three issues were traced to environment configuration errors within the .env file and conflicting Apache rewrite rules. The resolution required zero code changes to the application itself only infrastructure-level corrections.

Environment Details

Issue 1 — URL Routing Failure & 404 Errors

Symptoms

Navigating to https://xyz.domain.com produced one of two outcomes:

• HTTP 404 Not Found on all routes.
• Infinite URL path duplication — the browser URL mutated into the server's filesystem path:

https://xyz.domain.co.tz/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/xyz.domain.com/public/var/www/vhosts/...

Root Cause Analysis

Three configuration elements were simultaneously fighting each other:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]

APP_URL=https://xyz.domain.com/public
ASSET_URL=https://xyz.domain.com/public

Resolution

APP_URL=https://xyz.domain.com
#ASSET_URL=  (commented out — auto-detected)

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]    <-- DISABLED
</IfModule>

Issue 2 — Database Connection Failure

Symptoms

After resolving the routing issue, the application threw a SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] connection refused error on every page load.

Root Cause

The DB_CONNECTION variable in .env was set to the port number ("3306") instead of the driver name (mysql):

DB_CONNECTION="3306"
DB_HOST="127.0.0.1"
DB_PORT="3306"

Resolution

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST="127.0.0.1"
DB_PORT="3306"

Issue 3 — SMS Notification Failures (NextSMS)

Symptoms

All outbound SMS notifications (order confirmations, subscriber alerts) failed with a 403 Not Authorized response from the NextSMS API.

Root Cause

The NEXTSMS_PASSWORD in .env contained a # character. In Laravel's .env parser, the # character denotes the start of an inline comment. Since the value was not enclosed in double quotes, the password was silently truncated:

NEXTSMS_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                  ↑
     Everything after # was silently discarded.
     Actual value sent to API: "@"

Resolution

NEXTSMS_USERNAME="xxxxxxxxxxxx"
NEXTSMS_PASSWORD="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
NEXTSMS_SENDER_ID="ABCDEFGH"

After wrapping all NextSMS credentials in double quotes, SMS dispatch was immediately restored and confirmed operational via a live test on the client's mobile device.

Verification & Results

Lessons Learned & Recommendations

1. Environment Variable Hygiene

Always wrap .env values in double quotes if they contain any of: # @ ! $ & ( ) spaces. The DotEnv parser treats # as a comment delimiter in unquoted strings.

2. Plesk + Laravel Document Root

When deploying Laravel on Plesk, the domain's Document Root must point to the /public directory. If a root-level .htaccess is used for the same purpose, it will conflict once Plesk is corrected — resulting in recursive path duplication.

3. Validate DB_CONNECTION vs DB_PORT

A common copy-paste error: DB_CONNECTION must be the driver name (e.g. mysql, pgsql, sqlite), not a port number. The port belongs in DB_PORT.

4. Post-Deployment Checklist

Classification