How I setup my basic Laravel 5.8 project

Make authentication

php artisan make:auth

Create the database (UTF8), modify .ENV file accordingly

CREATE SCHEMA `readxlsx4` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

In the config/database.php edit the mysql section (charset, collation, credentials)

'mysql' => [
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
            'charset' => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_general_ci',
]

Create default database tables to make authentication work

php artisan migrate

Disable user registration by adding in routes/web.php

Auth::routes(['verify' => true, 'register' => false]);

Create a new controller with model from the console

php artisan make:controller UploadXlsxController --model=UploadXlsx

Make certain routes available for logged in users and for guests

//routes/web.php
Route::group(['middleware' => ['auth']], function () {
    //only authorized users can access these routes
});

Route::group(['middleware' => ['guest']], function () {
    //only guests can access these routes
});