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Deploying to a Physical Server or Virtual Private Server

In some situations, you may decide against - or lack access to - cloud services like AWS and Vercel. In such cases, you will have to deploy your application to a physical server, or a virtual private server (VPS).

Prerequisites​

  • A physical server, or a VPS
  • A database server
  • Environment variables needed to run the application, as well as to connect Prisma to the database and email.

Deploying​

Preparation of server​

  • Log into the server that will host the application.
  • Ensure that Node.js and npm are installed on the server.
    • You may wish to use nvm or volta to do so.

Preparation of codebase​

  • Find a way to copy the codebase onto the server.

Using git​

You may wish to use git clone as a convenient way to copy the codebase onto the server.

The full command to do so would vary, depending on where your Git repository is and how you connect to it.

Example​

As an example, if you were to copy the original Starter Kit codebase, you would type:

git clone git@github.com:opengovsg/starter-kit
  • Install the codebase's package dependencies by running:
npm ci

  • Create an .env file in the same directory as package.json, and populate it with environment variables as listed in Prerequisites

  • Build the codebase by running:

npm run build

This will also perform any database migrations

  • Run the built codebase by running:
npm start

This will start the application and make it accessible on port 3000 by default, or the port number defined by the PORT environment variable.