Follow these steps to remove public from the url

1. Copy .htaccess file from /public directory to Laravel/project root folder.
2. Rename the server.php in the Laravel/project root folder to index.php.

Cheers you will be good now.

Please Note: It is tested on Laravel 4.2, Laravel 5.1, Laravel 5.2, Laravel 5.3.

I think this is the easiest way to remove public from the url.

1. Renaming the server.php to index.php
2. Copy the .htaccess from public folder to root folder
3. Changing .htaccess a bit as follows for statics:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.css|\.js|\.png|\.jpg|\.gif|robots\.txt)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/public/
RewriteRule ^(css|js|images)/(.*)$ public/$1/$2 [L,NC]

Sometimes I've use this method for removing public form url.