How to deploy your rails app to dokku

Get a VPS with Debian or Ubuntu pre-installed. I prefer Hetzner for price performance ratio, vpsbenchmarks has a great overview of the market. At these prices in my opinion it’s worth having two so you can sync a full backup to another location 🙌.

1. Install Dokku

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dokku/dokku/v0.26.8/bootstrap.sh;
   sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.26.8 bash bootstrap.sh
   

2. Setup SSH key

   cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys | dokku ssh-keys:add admin
   

3. Set a virtual domain

   You can use any domain you already have access to, this domain should have an A record or CNAME pointing at your server’s IP, from step 1. This will give you subdomain support for each app you deploy. e.g. myapp.mydomain.com

   dokku domains:set-global mydomain.com
   

4. Create your app on dokku and link with a database

   # remote machine
   dokku apps:create app-name
   
   # install postgres plugin
   sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres.git postgres
   dokku postgres:create app-name-db
   dokku postgres:link app-name-db app-name
   

5. Deploy! 🤞

   # local machine
   # the remote username *must* be dokku or pushes will fail
   git remote add dokku dokku@mydomain.com:app-name
   git push dokku main:master
   

Feb 2, 2023