title: Laravel public/index.php displays as plain text
body: <p>I just installed an existing Laravel project onto a web server by git cloning. I have done as much proper setup as possible as per Laravel guidelines, including setting up Apache Virtual Hosts like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;VirtualHost *:80&gt;
      ServerAdmin email@gmail.com
  
      DocumentRoot /var/www/html/project/public
  
      &lt;Directory "/var/www/html/project/public"&gt;
         AllowOverride all
         RewriteEngine On
         RewriteBase /var/www/project/public
      &lt;/Directory&gt;
  
      ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
      CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
  &lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have also set up directory ownership / file permissions to the best of my ability. However, when visiting the website, the contents of public/index.php are displayed instead of the website being loaded. I know this has certainly been addressed somewhere before, and I apologize if that's the case, but I haven't been able to find clear answers. Much appreciated.</p>
  
  <p>Other things I have done:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>installed php (it came loaded with the server and is version 5.5.9)</li>
  <li>a2enmod rewrite</li>
  <li>service apache2 reload</li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28290673/laravel-url-public-login-not-working-but-public-index-php-login-works-with">modification of .htaccess</a> </li>
  <li>ensured the loaded page is not a cached one</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Resources used:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://tecadmin.net/install-laravel-framework-on-ubuntu/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">How To Install Laravel 5 Framework on Ubuntu 15.10, 14.04, 12.04 &amp; LinuxMint</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-14-04-lts" rel="nofollow noreferrer">How To Set Up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS</a></li>
  </ul>