Bookstack is an open-source platform designed for creating and managing documentation and knowledge bases. It provides a platform for teams and individuals to collaboratively create and organize content such as articles, notes, and documentation into a hierarchical structure. DigitalOcean serves as a reliable hosting choice for Bookstack, offering scalable infrastructure and straightforward deployment options. ServerAvatar facilitates a user-friendly experience for deploying the Bookstack application on the DigitalOcean platform.
Create Server in Digitalocean
Digitalocean is one of the most popular cloud platform right now. It offers on-demand cloud computing for various use cases as well as some managed solutions. We can deploy any PHP-based applications on Digitalocean Droplets. Droplets are the servers or cloud computing instances in Digitalocean. If you want to learn about droplet management in-depth in Digitalocean, We recommend you to read our Digitalocean guide.
To deploy any application on Digitalocean, We first need a Droplet. So, we will first create a droplet and perform the initial setup.
Step 1: Go to the Create Droplets page.
Log in to your Digitalocean account and click on the Create button given on the top-right corner of the page. From the drop-down menu, click on the Droplets option to see a droplet creation form.
Step 2: Choose Region
On the Droplet creation page, you will find several sections for selecting different options. We will proceed step by step.
The first thing you have to do is select the region for your droplet. Digitalocean provides several options when it comes to selecting the location. The general rule is to select the region that is closest to your audience. It means that for the majority of your audience, Your sites will load faster due to low latency.
Step 3: Choose an Image or an OS
In this step, you have to select the operating system for your droplet. Generally, the BookStack application required Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or a later version for compatibility and support.
However, We recommend you to use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x64 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS x64. These operating systems are a requirement if you are using ServerAvatar to manage your droplets.
Step 4: Choose the size of the Droplet
Here you have to choose the size of your Droplet. As we mentioned above, Digitalocean provides many different types of droplets. Select the one that fits best for your project.
If your site is brand new and does not have much traffic, start with a small plan. Once the project starts getting traction, you can upgrade the plan to handle more visitors on the site.
Step 5: Choose Authentication Method
Now you have to select the authentication method. There are two types of authentication methods. They are as follows:
- Authentication via SSH Keys
- Authentication via Password
Using SSH keys for authentication is the best option. If you are not familiar with SSH keys, you can choose the password method. Make sure to set a strong password for your root user, which is the most powerful user with all the privileges on Linux OS.
Step 6: Selecting Additional Options
There are three additional options you can choose from. They are optional but important in different use cases. The additional options are:
- Monitoring: It is a free feature by Digitalocean. It allows you to see additional monitoring data for your server.
- Backups: We recommend you to enable full server backups if you are going to deploy in the production environment. The cost of the backups depends on the size of the droplet.
- Managed Database: You do not need a Managed database if you are using ServerAvatar to manage sites on a droplet. A managed database is a pre-configured MySQL Droplet.
Step 7: Finalise Details
In the last step of this process, We have to enter the name of the droplet, and the number of droplets you want to create, Define any tags, and select the project. Enter all the details and click on the Create Droplet button to create a droplet.
In a few minutes, You will have the Droplet up and running. Now, We have to perform the initial configuration on the Droplet to host PHP-based frameworks and software.
Initial Server Configuration
The Initial server configuration includes the installation and configuration of various packages required to host your website. Usually, You have to write commands and modify configuration files. Luckily, With ServerAvatar, Your full server configuration and optimization can be automated.
Here are the three ways to automatically configure your server with ServerAvatar.
Connect a server using a direct method
- Login/Register to ServerAvatar account, click the Create button from the right side of the screen, and select Server from the dropdown.
- Select Direct Method in the serve connecting method section.
- Type the Server Name as per your choice.
- Select a Tech Stack as per your need. You can either select Apache, Nginx, OpenLiteSpeed or Node Stack.
- Select a Database: MySQL, MariaDB or MongoDB.
- Enable the toggle if you want to install the latest LTS version of node.js on your server.
- Select a Management plan and click the Connect Now button.
- You’ll see the command on your screen. Login to your server using an ssh connection and execute that command as a root user.
- The server connection process will be started on your ServerAvatar account after executing the command.
Connect a server using integration
- Login/Register to your ServerAvatar account, navigate to the Integration tab from the sidebar of the panel, and access Cloud Platform from the dropdown.
- Now Select a cloud platform you want to link with ServerAvatar.
- The popup form will appear on your screen. Enter details to link your cloud provider account. The integration method is different based on the cloud provider you select.
- You can integrate five different cloud provider platforms with ServerAvatar, which is-
Check the above link of cloud platforms to know more about integrating cloud platforms with ServeAvatar.
Connect a server using commands
Step 1. Login to your server using root user
Once you create a server as per your requirements, connect to your server using an ssh connection and execute the below three commands as a root user in your server console area.
wget https://srvr.so/install
chmod +x install
./install
Step 2. Select a web server
It will ask you which web server you would like to install on your server: Apache, Nginx, OpenLiteSpeed or Node Stack. Type anyone that you would like to install on your server and hit the enter button.
Step 3. Claim your server
Completing the process will give you a link to claim your server.
Open the link on your browser to access the ServerAvatar server panel.
Install and setup BookStack wiki software with ServerAvatar
Step 1: Create a PHP application
On the ServerAvatar server panel, navigate to the Applications tab and click the Create button like the following image.
1. Fill up basic details
In the first step of the application creation, fill in the basic details, including, Application Name, select the application type, and type Primary Domain/Test Domain Name.
note that:
If you want to host BookStack on your domain, then make sure to point your domain to the current IP address of your server, and for that:
- Log in to your domain provider site, where you buy your domain. Click here for more info about your domain name.
- Access DNS Manager to edit your DNS records(contact the support team if you don’t find them)
- Change the IP address of A Record of your website to the current server’s IP address. To host BookStack on your subdomain, for example, bookstack.yourdomain.com, create a new application with the subdomain as your primary domain and follow the same procedure. For accessing BookStack on the subdomain, you need to add your subdomain on A Record that points to the current IP address of your server. To point to an IPV6 address, you would need to use an AAAA record.
Click the Next Step to continue.
2. Select an application creation method
BookStack is an open-source project. It can be available on GitHub, so you can directly clone the repository with Serveravatar. In this step-
- Select the Git method and GitHub as a service provider.
- Mark on Public repository.
- Type BookStack project URL from the GitHub BookStack project. You‘ll find it in the following image.
- Enter the release branch name in the branch field.
- Type the below commands in the deployment script.
cp .env.example .env
composer install --no-dev
php artisan key:generate --force
3. Allocate system user
Allocate a system user for your BookStack application. You can create a new system user or select an existing system user.
Click the Next Step button to continue.
4. Other options
Select a PHP version for your application, and set Custom Webroot as Public in the respective field.
Click the Next Step button.
5. Review your application details
Review your application details and click the Create Application button.
Upon creating an application, the repository can be successfully cloned to your application Public_html folder.
Step 2: Create BookStack Database
To create a database for the BookStack application, go to the server panel, navigate to the Database tab, and click the Create button like the following image.
On the next screen, fill up the database details, including -
- Database Name
- Database Username
- Database Password
Click the Create Database to continue.
Step 3: Delete the .env.example file and Update the Database Information and App URL
To delete the .env.example file, go to Application Panel>>File Manager And access the public_html folder. Now click the Show Hidden Files box. The .env.example file can be shown at the top of the files, like the following image.
Now open the .env file and update the details with the database we created in the above step. It includes- DB_DATABASE: Database Name DB_USERNAME: Database Username DB_PASSWORD: Database Password
After that, update the app URL just above the file's database information. Note that if you install SSL on your application, type https:// before your domain name; otherwise, type http:// in the code.
Step 4: Update the Database Schema
It is necessary to keep your database up to date. And for that, log in to your application using an SSH connection. You can see the credentials in the application dashboard as shown in the following image.
Note: Make sure the SSH connection toggle is enabled on your application.
Execute the following command in your terminal to log in to your application-
ssh Username@Host
Now go to your application path using “cd Application_Name/public_html” and execute the following command.
php artisan migrate - -force
After the successful migration of the database, access the URL of your application in the web browser.
Step 5: Log in to BookStack
Upon accessing the URL, the login page will appear. You can now log in using the default admin details admin@admin.com and password of password. You can change these details immediately after logging in for the first time.
You’ll see the admin screen like the following image upon logging in.
You can now perform administrative tasks to manage your documentation and knowledge base website.