My Laravel Homestead doesn't work - laravel

Question

I'm having problem to understand how to run my website using vagrant and Laravel Homestead environment.
I added laravel/homestead box without any problems. Then I ran vagrant init laravel/homestead and it worked too.
I managed to create Homestead.yaml and here's what it contains:
---
ip: "192.168.10.10"
memory: 2048
cpus: 1
provider: virtualbox
authorize: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
keys:
- ~/.ssh/id_rsa
folders:
- map: ~/www
to: /home/vagrant/code
sites:
- map: project.dev
to: /home/vagrant/code/project
databases:
- homestead
variables:
- key: APP_ENV
value: local
vagrant up runs correctly, but I don't know how to access my website. I added 192.168.10.10 project.dev to my /etc/hosts.
I want to keep my project at ~/www/project. First thing that I didn't understand from the docs is, what is the folder at sites / map / to setting supposed to be? My local folder or a folder in the virtual environment?
The next thing I don't understand is why when I do vagrant ssh and then ls, I don't see any files, even though there's index.php at my ~/www/project. I thought they are going to be synchronized automatically.
When I go to project.dev in the browser, it timeouts. I tried project.dev:8000 as well and 192.168.10.10, but nothing works.
Please help me.

Answer 1

You are forgetting the folders parameter, also your indentation should be with spaces and not with tabs, thats the way yaml works, everything else seems to be fine but try to make it with something similar to this one
---
ip: "192.168.10.10"
memory: 2048
cpus: 1
provider: virtualbox
authorize: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
keys:
- ~/.ssh/id_rsa
folders:
- map: ~/www/project
to: /home/vagrant/code
sites:
- map: project.dev
to: /home/vagrant/code/project/public
databases:
- homestead
variables:
- key: APP_ENV
value: local

Answer 2

you're missing the folder share settings in you're homestead.yaml file.
Try adding
folders:
- map: ~/www/project
to: /home/vagrant/code
Look at the docs here
http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/homestead#configuring-homestead under Configuring Shared Folders

Answer 3

I think this is the common issue that someone new to Laravel Homestead is facing.
Laravel Homestead basically provides an image that gets a VM ready for Laravel development. The yaml config on "sites" is basically use to configure Nginx - it does not install a Laravel project on the path specified.
So for a new homestead VM, you just have to ssh into your Homestead VM, and type and run this:
composer global require "laravel/installer=~1.1"
Once done, on you /home/vagrant/code folder (in the VM, not your host), type and run this:
laravel new project
Where the "project" is the name given to your new project. Since your yaml is already configured to "project", the above command will work fine. Obviously, this is clearly not the only way to get Laravel as you can use composer create-project to install Laravel directly.
Once done, you should be able to visit http://project.dev on your host's browser, if your host file is configured with this added entry:
192.168.10.10<tab>project.dev
Alternatively, you can configure your host file to be
127.0.0.1<tab>project.dev
Which you can then view on your host's browser via http://project.dev:8000
Hope the above explains clear enough. Enjoy!