First, get composer if you don’t already have it (Windows): https://getcomposer.org/Composer-Setup.exe
I like to use the composer installer (as opposed to the Laravel Installer). Open command prompt and move into www directory (or wherever you want your project to live).
composer create-project laravel/laravel name-of-project
This will create the directory “name-of-project” and place all the laravel files inside at the same time.
Create a database. Use utf8_unicode_ci for the collation.
Next, open up the .env file located at the project root and edit the settings for your project. If using Git, go ahead and edit the .gitignore to add your IDE specific files and any other files you want to ignore. (Tip for Phpstorm users: the .idea folder is not visible within the directory tree inside the IDE. You only see it if you view the files from outside Phpstorm.)
Run
php artisan migrate
to migrate the included migrations.