Laravel: how to cache config files properly

Question

I'm using Laravel 8.0 in my application and I added a new .env variable:

APP_URL_FRONT=https://tmsv00008:6204

And how I use it:

To access the project use the following link: <a href="{{ env('APP_URL_FRONT') }}/projects/{{ $project->id }}">LINK</a> 

When I deploy the application I cache the config files:

php artisan config:cache

But the env files is not visible and the strange thing is that if I execute:

php artisan config:clear

The variable is visible. What I'm doing wrong? Because it doesn't make sense to me.

Also, in this article they suggest to execute the commands in this order:

php artisan config:cache
php artisan config:clear

But this doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't be the other way around? And I think the cache commands also clears the cache first.