setting up laravel in windows

Please make sure you have php5 and composer installed.  It's best you install it under C:\php directory because most settings assume that we follow this.

Next run the following command,

composer global require "laravel/installer"

If you encounter error saying that you are using an insecure connection, then issue the following command from command prompt.

composer config -g secure-http false

Next you need to create a laravel application by using the following statement. Here we just created an app called 'blog'

laravel new blog

Please change directory into blog and issue the following command

composer install

Many text will say that you will be able to run from the local development server....well that's not the case. Issue the following command first, You need to make sure you have enabled extension :- openssl and mbstrings. Open up your php.ini file and look under the section 'extensions' and begin to modify it. Otherwise this won't work.  

copy .env.sample to .env

Next, issue 

php artisan key:generate

Please note : At this point you need to ensure your .env file doesn't have a double entry of base64 ciphertext. If you run it twice, you have 2 password - don't be greedy ok? :p

Next you need (MUST) to run :- 

php artisan config:clear

Finally, run the following command 

php artisan serve

Fire up your browser and goto http://localhost:8000

If you still face error, just remember to look at logs in storage/logs folder.

Good luck! :)