errors while laravel 5.6.12 deployment on whm cpanel

Question

I am deploying a laravel 5.5.12 app on WHM cpanel. As per laravel documentation ( https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/installation#server-requirements ) all the server requirements are okay: phpinfo(); results in following:

PHP >= 7.1.3
OpenSSL support enabled
PDO support enabled
Multibyte Support   enabled (mbstring)
Tokenizer Support   enabled
XML Support active
Ctype PHP Extension enabled
JSON PHP Extension  enabled

i have done following steps ( https://crescentke.com/uploading-laravel-5-to-cpanel-server/ )

1. uploaded laravel folder to /home/mylaravel (except public and node_modules)
2. uploaded public folder contents to /home/public_html
3. changed permission of storage, vendor and bootstrap/cache to 777.

4. changed following lines in /home/public_html/index.php

   require DIR .'/../mylaravel/bootstrap/autoload.php';

   $app = require_once DIR .'/../mylaravel/bootstrap/app.php';

5. changed following line in /home/mylaravel/server.php

   require_once DIR .'/public_html/index.php';

6. create a database and added a user to it will full rights, this database, user name are updated in /home/mylaravel/.env file

7. updated the .env file with live server URL

8. for storage folder link inside the public_html, created a php file inside pulic_html will following content and accessed it via URL to create the symlink

   symlink('/home/gfree/go4ree/storage/app/public','/home/gfree/public_html/storage');

NOW at last when i visit the webpage it gives http 500 error. in log file following log is created:

[11-Jun-2018 11:37:57 UTC] PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '?', expecting variable (T_VARIABLE) in /home/gfree/go4ree/vendor/symfony/finder/Comparator/NumberComparator.php on line 42
[11-Jun-2018 11:37:57 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line 0

whats (on earth) left to do?

Answer 1

The errors appeared because of misunderstanding of laravel version, i have updated the question for any future reference or for some novice like me.

The following artisan command gives you the laravel framework version:

php artisan --version

visit this page to check the server requirements : https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/installation#server-requirements (please note the version)

just make sure the live server met all the prerequisites... rest of the steps of configuration are already stated in question...