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.co.tz 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.co.tz/xyz.domain.co.tz/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.co.tz/public
ASSET_URL=https://xyz.domain.co.tz/public

Resolution

APP_URL=https://xyz.domain.co.tz
#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