How to Deploy Your Self-Hosted Strapi CMS

Description

Deploy a Strapi CMS instance on your server with this step-by-step guide.

Prerequisites

Before diving in, review Strapi's documentation for hardware requirements. Stormkit suggests at least 4GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, and 20GB storage for optimal performance.

• A GitHub account
• A self-hosted Stormkit instance for deployment
• Basic knowledge of Git and terminal commands

1. Create a Strapi Project

Start by creating a new Strapi project locally using the following command:

npx create-strapi@latest strapi

This command initializes a new Strapi project in a folder named strapi.

Follow the prompts to configure your project. For small-scale projects, using SQLite is fine, whereas for distributed systems PostgreSQL might be more appropriate. In this tutorial, we're going use an SQLite database.

Once complete, navigate to the project folder (cd strapi) and run npm run develop to verify the setup. Access the admin panel at http://localhost:1337/admin.

2. Modify the Code

By default, Strapi automatically sets up an SQLite database at .tmp/data.db. If the database is missing during a project build, Strapi will regenerate it which will cause the data to be wiped out when using SQLite as the data source. To mitigate this, we're going make use of the Stormkit's Persistent Volumes feature to upload the database and tell Strapi where to locate it.

1. Go ahead and locate the config/database.ts file
2. Apply the following patch:

diff --git a/config/database.ts b/config/database.ts
index 1853ca4..ca8aeab 100644
--- a/config/database.ts
+++ b/config/database.ts
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ export default ({ env }) => {
     },
     sqlite: {
       connection: {
-        filename: path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', env('DATABASE_FILENAME', '.tmp/data.db')),
+        filename: env('DATABASE_FILENAME', path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', '.tmp/data.db')),
       },
       useNullAsDefault: true,
     },

This change will allow us using an absolute path for the DATABASE_FILENAME environment variable. Make sure to commit your changes:

git add .
git commit -m "chore: allow absolute path for sqlite databases"

Next, open your package.json and add the following script:

{
  "scripts": {
    // ... other scripts
    "start:stormkit": "rm -rf public/uploads && ln -s $VOLUME_PATH public/uploads && strapi start"
   }
}

And commit the changes:

git add .
git commit -m "chore: prepare the stormkit script"

This is needed to overcome Strapi's hard-coded upload path, which is relative to the project level. If we don't provide this script the uploaded files on Strapi won't be persisted.

3. Push to your GitHub repository

Once you committed the changes, push your changes to your repository.

# Make sure that the remote address exists
git remote add origin git@github.com:<your-repository>
git push -u origin HEAD

4. Deploy on Stormkit

Importing the project

• Log in to your Stormkit account at app.stormkit.io.
• Click to Create new app > Import from GitHub
• Choose your Strapi project and click Import

Configuring Volumes

If you haven't configured the volumes, follow these steps:

• Click on the Volumes tab in your environment page
• Click on Configure.
• Make sure Volume type is File system
• Specify the root folder as /shared/volumes
• Click on Save

This will tell Stormkit to upload persistent files under the /shared/volumes folder. Each environment has it's own folder. You can guess the folder name from the application and environment IDs, which is easily collectible from the URL. The folder structure uses the following format:

<volumes-base-path/a<app-id>e<env-id>`

For instance, if your URL looks like: /apps/5/environments/6 and your base path is /shared/volumes, the environment folder is located at /shared/volumes/a5e6. Note this path somewhere.

Configure your deployment

• Click on the Config tab and locate Server settings
• Provide the command that will start the server: npm run start:stormkit
• Click on Save.

Next, we need to setup the environment variables.

• Scroll down to the Environment variables section
• Click on Modify as String
• Copy the environment variables located inside the .env file in your Strapi project
• Make sure DATABASE_CLIENT is sqlite and DATABASE_FILENAME points to your volumes folder that you noted earlier
• Add an additional environment variable VOLUMES_PATH which points to the volumes folder

5. Verify the Deployment

Once you went through all the steps mentioned above, go ahead and Deploy your Strapi application. When the deployment is complete click on the Preview button to access your Strapi instance.