From Zero to Staging: A Real-World Laravel + Node.js Docker Deployment (With Every Bug We Hit)

From Zero to Staging: A Real-World Laravel + Node.js Docker Deployment (With Every Bug We Hit)

A step-by-step walkthrough of setting up a clean staging server from scratch — SSH hardening, Docker orchestration, Let's Encrypt SSL, database seeding, and debugging a login that refused to work for six different reasons.

The Setup

We had a production server (api.dineshstack.ae) running a Laravel 12 + Node.js microservices stack inside Docker. We needed a staging environment that was an exact mirror of production for mobile testing. The staging server existed but had been used by five different developers over time — it was a graveyard of stale projects, orphaned Docker volumes, and broken nginx configs.

Goal: One clean server. One Docker network. Three domains. Zero stale state.