How to host BookStack on UpCloud Cloud Server - ServerAvatar

Bookstack is an open-source platform designed for organizations seeking to simplify the creation of status pages. It provides essential features for managing and sharing service statuses, ensuring ease of access for both administrators and users. UpCloud 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 UpCloud platform.

Create a Server in UpCloud

Getting Started with UpCloud:

UpCloud is a high-performance VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting platform designed for developers, businesses, and IT professionals. Renowned for its speed and reliability, UpCloud features the unique MaxIOPS storage technology, delivering performance significantly faster than traditional SSDs. This makes it an excellent choice for applications with high I/O demands, such as databases and web hosting. With its user-friendly control panel, UpCloud simplifies server management, making it an attractive option for anyone needing superior VPS hosting solutions.

To deploy any application on UpCloud, we must first set up a server. Therefore, our initial step will be to deploy a server and complete its initial setup.

Step 1: Server Deployment

• Log in to your Upcloud account. If you don’t have an account, create an account on UpCloud.
• Then, Navigate to Server → Server List and click on the Deploy Server button, as shown in the image below.

Step 2: Select Location

• The first thing you have to do is select the location for your server. UpCloud provides different options for 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 lower latency.

Step 3: Select the plan for your Server

• Here you have to select the plan of your Droplet. UpCloud offers a variety of plans. Select the one that best meets your requirements.
• If your site is new and has low traffic, begin with a smaller plan. As your project gains and attracts more visitors, you can upgrade to a plan to handle the increased traffic.

Step 4: Add New Storage Device

• In the Storage section, you can attach new storage devices as needed. Your initial storage is based on the selected server plan. You can attach up to 16 storage devices, each with a maximum size of 4 TB.
• To add more disks, click the "Add new device" button and adjust the storage size with the slider. You can modify the storage configuration later by adding, removing, or resizing disk devices.

Step 5: Automated Backups

• You can also enable Automated Backups by clicking the toggle button on the right side. You can choose from Day, Week, Month, or Year plans.
• After selecting the appropriate plan, you can set a backup schedule using the drop-down menu below.

Step 6: Choose an Operating System

• In this step, you need to select your server operating system. Generally, the BookStack application required Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or a later version for compatibility and support.
• We recommend selecting Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x64 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS x64. If you are using ServerAvatar to manage your servers, these operating systems are required.

Step 7: Select Network Configuration

• In this step, by default network configurations are set that include IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and a private Utility Network connection is set. You can customize these settings and attach your private network by clicking on the “Attach Private Network” option.

Step 8: Additional Options

• In this step, you can enable or disable IPv6 support and metadata service. Also, you can set the desired TimeZone and select between network and display adapters.
• If it suits you, we suggest keeping these options at their default settings.

Step 9: Select Login Method

• Now you have to select the Login method. There are two types of login methods. They are:
  1. Authentication via SSH Keys
  2. Authentication via One-Time Password
• If you are using SSH keys for authentication, It is the best option. You can also click on the “Add New” button to import your keys.
• If you do not know what is SSH key, You can go with the One-Time password method. You have to set a new password after the first time you log into this server.
• Make sure to set a strong password for your root user, which is the most powerful user with all the privileges on Linux OS. You can select the convenient way to have the password.

Step 10: Enter Initialization Script

• The Initialization scripts are user-defined automation scripts supported by all Linux public templates. When you select one of your stored scripts, it will appear in the edit field.
• You can make changes to the scripts or write a new one. The server will execute the script during the first bootup.

Step 11: Finalise Details

• In the last step of this process, We have to enter the Host Name, Server Name, and number of servers you want to deploy. Click on the Deploy button to create a server.

• In a few minutes, You will have the Server up and running.
• Now, We have to perform the initial step to allow the Serveravatar port from the firewall configuration.
• To allow the Serveravatar port from firewall configuration, Click on the Server → Server List Option and then click on the icon next to your server as shown in the below image.

• Now, navigate to the Firewall Section and Click on “Add Rule”.

• Create a rule to allow ServerAvatar Communication Port - 43210 as shown in the below image. Click on the Ok to add the firewall rule.

• Now, click on the “Save Changes” button to save the changes to Firewall Rules as shown in the below image.

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.

wget https://srvr.so/install
chmod +x install
./install

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:

1. Log in to your domain provider site, where you buy your domain. Click here for more info about your domain name.
2. Access DNS Manager to edit your DNS records(contact the support team if you don’t find them)
3. 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-

1. Select the Git method and GitHub as a service provider.
2. Mark on Public repository.
3. Type BookStack project URL from the GitHub BookStack project. You‘ll find it like in the following image.

4. Enter the release branch name in the branch field.
5. 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 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: Login 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.**