Vyberaktivitu.online was an aggregator of czech online course providers running online in years 2021 and 2022. It is a CRUD application with a searchable catalog consisting of one-day or long-term online activities. Website includes a simple invitation app for registered users.

Used technologies:

• Languages - Python 3.9, JS, HTML, CSS
• Backend - Django 3.2 with various 3rd party apps (allauth, crispy-forms, etc.)
• Frontend - Django templates with Boostrap 5, Javascript 3rd party libraries, sprinkled with some simple JS
• Database - Postgres 13.3
• Development - Pycharm, Docker
• Production - VPS, Dokku

• create a new ssh key pair cd ~/ssh/ && ssh-keygen -t rsa and call it for example vyberaktivitu
• copy public ssh key from cat ~/.ssh/vyberaktivitu.pub and paste to the initial set-up page
• create an ssh shortcut nano ~/.ssh/config so you can ssh root@vyberaktivitu

Host vyberaktivitu
   ForwardAgent yes
   Hostname <ip-address>
   Port 22
   ServerAliveInterval 60
   ServerAliveCountMax 60
   IdentityFile vyberaktivitu

• change the permissions of the config file chmod 644 ~/.ssh/config to fix Bad owner or permissions error
• ssh in ssh root@vyberaktivitu and create another user adduser <name> and add it to the sudo group usermod -aG sudo <name>
• install dokku using (as root user) using the first script from https://dokku.com/
• from the local machine allow ssh access (no pass needed) to the new sudo user as well ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/vyberaktivitu <name>@vyberaktivitu

• point A record to the IP of the server (vyberaktivitu.online and *.vyberaktivitu.online)

• open ip or domain address of the server in a web browser
• set Hostname to the same as your domain name you bought, so vyberaktivitu.online
• check Use virtualhost naming for apps
• create app dokku apps:create vyberaktivitu
• download plugin for the db sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres.git
• create database and pass DATABASE_URL to the app

dokku postgres:create vyberaktivitu_db --image-version 13.3
sudo dokku postgres:create vyberaktivitu_db
dokku postgres:link vyberaktivitu_db vyberaktivitu

• add other env. variables

dokku config:set --no-restart vyberaktivitu DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS=<ip-address>,vyberaktivitu.online,www.vyberaktivitu.online
dokku config:set --no-restart vyberaktivitu DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=config.settings.production
dokku config:set --no-restart vyberaktivitu EMAIL_HOST=smtp.seznam.cz
dokku config:set --no-restart vyberaktivitu [email protected]
dokku config:set --no-restart vyberaktivitu EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=<password>
dokku config:show vyberaktivitu

• add domains to the app dokku domains:add vyberaktivitu vyberaktivitu.online wwww.vyberaktivitu.online
• enable SSL (https) with letsencrypt plugin for these domains

dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
# email address for renewal warnings for your certificate
dokku config:set --no-restart --global [email protected]
# enable command can also be used to renew
dokku letsencrypt:enable vyberaktivitu
dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

• enable Django security settings by setting ENVIRONMENT env. variable dokku config:set vyberaktivitu ENVIRONMENT=production
• do a deployment check dokku --rm run vyberaktivitu python manage.py check --deploy and open the website to check whether there are no infinite redirects
• add and link persistent storage for media files

sudo mkdir -p  /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/vyberaktivitu
dokku storage:mount vyberaktivitu /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/vyberaktivitu:/app/media
sudo chown -R dokku:dokku /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/vyberaktivitu/
dokku storage:report vyberaktivitu

• create alias in nginx config to media files sudo nano /home/dokku/vyberaktivitu/nginx.conf.d/media.conf and add the following (the config file gets included to the main config file automatically):

location /media {
    alias /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/vyberaktivitu;
}

• restart the container dokku ps:restart vyberaktivitu

• add the public ssh key to dokku (for dokku user) cat ~/.ssh/vyberaktivitu.pub | ssh root@vyberaktivitu dokku ssh-keys:add key1
• add a remote repository for dokku user git remote add dokku dokku@vyberaktivitu:vyberaktivitu
• make sure that there are the latest migration files
• make sure that .buildpacks consists of https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python.git so it gets used instead of Dockerfile
• make sure that DOKKU_SCALE consists of web=1
• make sure that Procfile consists of the following:

web: gunicorn config.wsgi:application

release: python manage.py migrate --noinput 

• make sure that runtime.txt consists of python-3.9.5
• zero downtime deploy - make sure that CHECKS consists of //vyberaktivitu.online Vyber online aktivitu

• create a super user(s) dokku --rm run vyberaktivitu python manage.py createsuperuser
• populate a week schedule table dokku --rm run vyberaktivitu python manage.py fill_weekschedule
• add age categories in django admin manually
• rename example.com to vyberaktivitu.online in django admin
• fix 413 Request Entity Too Large error dokku nginx:set vyberaktivitu client-max-body-size 50m
• update system sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
• having created another non-root account, disable password access to root - open sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config and change PermitRootLogin from yes to prohibit-password
• remove authorized SSH key from /root/.ssh/authorized_keys (if you want to switch to root user, run sudo su - from the sudo user)
• configure firewall - allow inbound only at TCP ports 22, 80 and 443
• check cron jobs dokku cron:list vyberaktivitu or sudo crontab -u dokku -l (taken from app.json)
• redirect www to non-www domain name with dokku-redirect:

sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-redirect.git
dokku redirect:set vyberaktivitu www.vyberaktivitu.online vyberaktivitu.online
# it's still a good idea to keep both names in dokku domains and letsencrypt

• (optional) upgrading postgres database:

docker sudo pull postgres:<version-to-upgrade-to>
dokku ps:stop vyberaktivitu
dokku postgres:export vyberaktivitu_db > /tmp/vyberaktivitu-db-export
dokku postgres:unlink vyberaktivitu_db vyberaktivitu
dokku postgres:destroy vyberaktivitu_db
dokku postgres:create vyberaktivitu_db --image-version <version-to-upgrade-to>
dokku postgres:import vyberaktivitu_db < /tmp/vyberaktivitu-db-export
dokku postgres:link vyberaktivitu_db vyberaktivitu
dokku ps:start vyberaktivitu

• (optional) updating system and dokku with dokku-update:

git clone https://github.com/dokku/dokku-update.git
cd dokku-update/
sudo ./dokku-update run -s
dokku ps:start vyberaktivitu

Dependencies:

# both
crispy-bootstrap5
Django
django-allauth
django-autoslug
django-cookie-law
django-crispy-forms
django-environ
django-filter
django-taggit
django-tinymce
Pillow
psycopg2-binary
whitenoise

# only production
gunicorn

# only local
django-debug-toolbar