DigitalOcean single server setup

DigitalOcean is a popular web hosting alternative to AWS and Azure. It is a cost-effective solution for hosting docassemble apps.

For deployment, DigitalOcean virtual machines (called 'Droplets') with docker pre-installed can be spun up quickly and docassemble installed there.

DigitalOcean Spaces are available to store the backups and configuration files. These are S3 compatible and therefore the setup is very similar to the AWS S3 instructions.

This setup uses both a new Droplet and Spaces.

The app is secured using LetsEncrypt SSL certificates.

Getting started

1. This assumes you have already set up:

   • a new DigitalOcean Droplet with docker running - can be done with one click. A USD 10 per month droplet will usually be sufficient to get started with docassemble.

   • a new DigitalOcean Space (i.e. 'S3 bucket') to store the data and an access token - step-by-step instructions

2. Log into your Droplet and copy across the .env and docker-compose.yml file into a new project directory.

3. Edit the .env file to add the settings for for your setup. As a minimum, make sure you set

   • DAHOSTNAME to the domain name
   • LETSENCRYPTEMAIL to your valid email for LetsEncrypt to use.

4. Edit the .env file to add the configuration for the S3 compatible DigitalOcean Space:

   • S3ENABLE=true
   • S3ENDPOINTURL=https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com - or similar for other regions than fra1
   • S3BUCKET=spaces_name - putting in the name of your Space
   • S3ACCESSKEY=yourkey - from the access token
   • S3SECRETACCESSKEY=yoursecret - from the access token

5. Before starting up docassemble ensure you have a DNS record for the domain name pointing correctly to the IP address of the server. Without this, LetsEncrypt may fail to create a valid certificate for you.

6. Run using:

   docker-compose up -d
   

Notes

• In docker-compose.yml the restart option is set to always so that it will attempt to restart if the container goes down.

• For other settings, see the official documentation on configuration options.