Pausing Sites

Pausing a site frees up resources without removing it from lerd. It is useful when you're switching focus between projects and want to stop workers and silence a site without fully unlinking it.

Commands

Command	Description
lerd pause [name]	Pause a site: stop its workers and replace the vhost with a landing page
lerd unpause [name]	Resume a paused site: restore its vhost and restart previously running workers

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Pausing and resuming

lerd pause              # pause the site in the current directory
lerd pause my-project   # pause a named site

When a site is paused:

• All running workers for that site are stopped (queue, schedule, reverb, stripe, and any custom workers)
• The nginx vhost is replaced with a minimal landing page that shows a Resume button
• Services no longer needed by any other active site are auto-stopped
• The paused state is persisted, so the site stays paused across lerd start / lerd stop cycles

The landing page's Resume button calls the lerd dashboard API directly, so you can unpause from the browser without opening a terminal.

lerd unpause              # resume the site in the current directory
lerd unpause my-project   # resume a named site

When a site is unpaused:

• The original nginx vhost is restored (including HTTPS if the site is secured)
• Any services referenced in the site's .env are started
• Workers that were running before the pause are restarted

Paused sites still appear in lerd sites output and the web UI. Their status is shown as paused.

Running CLI commands on a paused site

You can run php artisan, composer, lerd db:export, and other exec-based commands on a paused site without unpausing it first. If any services the site needs (MySQL, Redis, etc.) were auto-stopped when the site was paused, lerd starts them automatically before running the command:

$ php artisan migrate
[lerd] site "my-project" is paused, starting required services...
  Starting mysql...

   INFO  Nothing to migrate.

On subsequent commands the services are already running, so no notice is printed. The site stays paused; the nginx vhost remains as the landing page and workers are not restarted.

Commands that benefit from this auto-start:

Command	Notes
php artisan <args> / lerd artisan <args>	Any artisan command
php <args> / lerd php <args>	Any PHP script
composer <args>	Composer via the lerd shim
lerd shell	Opens an interactive shell in the PHP-FPM container
lerd db:import	Imports a SQL dump
lerd db:export	Exports a database
lerd db:shell	Opens an interactive DB shell