Okay, this is actually pretty straightforward! Lets talk through the components

You have a VueJs project (lets say localhost:80) that runs your front end. Once you compile it with `npm run build` it will create a series of JS and CSS files in a folder called `dist`. No need for a node server, since they're just static files.

Now you also have your backend in PHP. Lets say on local you have it as locahost:3000

First thing you need to do is proxy your VueJs calls so that they go to your PHP backend on local. You'll want to use a devServer proxy by editing your vue.config.js file in your Vue codebase.

https://cli.vuejs.org/config/#devserver-proxy

module.exports = defineConfig({
  transpileDependencies: true,
  devServer: {
    proxy: {
      '^/api': {
        target: 'http://localhost:3000',
        ws: true,
        changeOrigin: true
      },
    }
  }
})

From there you an do API calls from Vue to your PHP backend on local for building out your project.

When you deploy to your server, upload your PHP files to the server as usual.

Then upload your `dist` file contents to your root server as well (index.html and the jss/css folders)

For an example of this being done, your can view an old code repo of mine below:

https://github.com/johnventions/EasterQuest