Laravel Site Showing Blank White Screen after Apache Upgrade

My Laravel website functioned properly before upgrading to Apache 2.4 and PHP 5.5.7. However, I now encounter a blank white screen upon visiting laravel.mydomain.example. No errors are recorded in the Apache error logs. The routes and configuration should be correct as they were functioning previously.

Apache Configuration

Ensure that the .htaccess file is parsing correctly. Inserting an invalid line into /var/sites/laravel/public/.htaccess should result in a 500 error, indicating that .htaccess is loading. Verify the following settings in your .htaccess file:

    Options -MultiViews


RewriteEngine On

# Redirect Trailing Slashes...
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

# Handle Front Controller...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

DocumentRoot "/var/sites/laravel/public"
ServerName laravel.mydomain.example

AllowOverride All
allow from all
Options  Indexes
Require all granted

Laravel Configuration

Log File Permissions:

Upgrade Laravel 4.1 and later versions may encounter white screen errors if the log files cannot be written to the specified location. Ensure that the app/storage directory is writable by the Apache user (either group writable or world-writable).

Web Server User:

Determine the user running PHP on your server. It may be "www-data" on Ubuntu/Debian or "apache" on CentOS/RedHat/Fedora.

File Ownership:

Assign the appropriate ownership to the PHP user:

# Debian/Ubuntu
$ sudo chown -R www-data /path/to/laravel/files

# CentOS/RedHat/Fedora
$ sudo chown -R apache /path/to/laravel/files

Group Writable (Group, User Writable)

$ sudo chmod -R gu w app/storage

World-writable (Group, User, Other Writable)

$ sudo chmod -R guo w app/storage

For Laravel 5 and 6 , apply these permissions to the storage and bootstrap/cache directories:

# Group Writable (Group, User Writable)
$ sudo chmod -R gu w storage
$ sudo chmod -R gu w bootstrap/cache

# World-writable (Group, User, Other Writable)
$ sudo chmod -R guo w storage
$ sudo chmod -R guo w bootstrap/cache