Controller method not found in Laravel 5.1

Question

I'm new to Laravel. I have the following route:

<?php

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register all of the routes for an application.
| It's a breeze. Simply tell Laravel the URIs it should respond to
| and give it the controller to call when that URI is requested.
|
*/

Route::get('about', 'PagesController@about');

And here is my controller:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class PagesController extends Controller
{
    public function about()
    {
        return 'about';
    }   
}

When I navigate to: http://localhost/laravelnew/public/about/ I get a 404 Not found. I can't understand Why.

My .htaccess-file in public-folder:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
        Options -MultiViews
    </IfModule>

    RewriteEngine On

    # Redirect Trailing Slashes If Not A Folder...
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

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

Answer 1

I see you're working locally, so you should enable mod_rewrite for it to work.

Cheers!

EDIT:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
        Options -MultiViews
    </IfModule>

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /

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

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