Zero-Downtime Deployment Basics for Laravel

A professional deployment avoids downtime and surprises. Key ideas: - deploy code first - run compatible migrations - warm caches - restart workers gracefully ## Safe deployment flow ```mermaid flowchart TD A[Deploy New Code] --> B[Cache config/routes] B --> C[Run Safe Migrations] C --> D[Restart Queue Workers] D --> E[Health Check] ``` A crucial rule: migrations should be backward-compatible when you have multiple running instances. In the next tutorial, we will implement feature flags for controlled rollouts.