Laravel 8 on sub-domain

Question

I have been searching, searching and searching with no success. I'm very new to Laravel and the learning curve is pretty steep to build a simple 4 page web site !! :)

I have set-up a sub-domain using cpanel and the proper document root for the sub-domain. I have copied the complete Laravel 8 project to the sub-domain document root. When I access the sub-domain, I'm getting the Laravel 404 page. I have changed the index.php to Hello and it get's served. So the sub-domain is properly set-up.

sub-domain: xyz.website.com
Document root: /xyz/public where public is the public folder inside of a Laravel project.

First Question
How do I turn on logging to get more details as to what is happening !! I have ensured that the .env file has the following:

APP_DEBUG=true and APP_LOG_LEVEL=debug

I cannot see any logging happening. I've looked in the storage/logs folder and it is empty.

Second Question
I have seen many posts stating that the .htaccess needs to be changed. Not sure that this is applicable for sub-domains with the proper document root configured.

As you can see, I'm in dire need of some help and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.