Laravel, production and development project in same machine

I'm new to Laravel.

Until now I have done a project in development mode... but now I want to pass it to production but keep development mode for changes.

In our case public files are really few since we have virtualized all (images, css and js are virtualized though an url encrypted method and not directly accessible.

What I have been thinking is to create 2 different folder one on development and one in production mode, use the production in main domain and the debug in a subdomain, a different port or just through the vpn IP.

On updates I just copy the files changed (controllers, views, classes, etc) and just share databases, images, etc between both sites.

Is this the right way to do this with Laravel or do laravel support a different and better way to do this?

via Chebli Mohamed