Talkyard is a free and open-source community discussion platform that helps you to share knowledge with your co-workers, customers, volunteers, users. It is an alternative to other discussion platforms including StackOverflow, Slack, Discourse, and Reddit. You can use it as a knowledge base, customer support, discussion forum, and much more.
In this post, we will show you how to install Talkyard Forum with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04.
Prerequisites
- A fresh Ubuntu 18.04 server on the Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform
- A valid domain name pointed with your virtual private server
- A root password configured on your server
Step 1 – Create Atlantic.Net Cloud Server
First, log in to your Atlantic.Net Cloud Server. Create a new server, choosing Ubuntu 18.04 as the operating system with at least 2GB RAM. Connect to your Cloud Server via SSH and log in using the credentials highlighted at the top of the page.
Once you are logged in to your Ubuntu 18.04 server, run the following command to update your base system with the latest available packages.
apt-get update -y
Step 2 – Install Required Dependencies
First, you will need to install some required dependencies to your server. You can install all of them with the following command:
apt-get install git curl gnupg2 unzip -y
Once all the dependencies are installed, you can proceed to the next step.
Step 3 – Download Talkyard
First, you will need to download the Talkyard from the Git Hub repository. You can download it with the following command:
git clone -b w-km2 --single-branch https://github.com/debiki/talkyard-prod-one.git talkyard
Once the download is completed, change the directory to talkyard and install the required packages with the following command:
cd talkyard ./scripts/prepare-ubuntu.sh
Step 4 – Install Docker and Docker Compose
Next, you will need to install the Docker and Docker compose to your system. You can install them by running the following script:
./scripts/install-docker-compose.sh
Once both are installed, edit the play-framework.conf file and change some required values:
nano conf/play-framework.conf
Change the following lines:
talkyard.becomeOwnerEmailAddress="[email protected]" talkyard.hostname="talkyard.example.com" play.http.secret.key="your-secure-key"
Save and close the file, then edit the .env file and define your database password:
nano .env
Change the following line:
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-database-password
Save and close the file when you are finished.
Step 5 – Copy Docker Compose File
Next, you will need to copy a desired Docker Compose file depending on how much RAM your server has. If your server has 2GB RAM, copy the following file:
cp mem/2g.yml docker-compose.override.yml
If your server has 4GB RAM, copy the following file:
cp mem/4g.yml docker-compose.override.yml
Step 6 – Install Talkyard
Now, you will need to install the Talkyard with all the required app. You can start the installation by running the following script:
./scripts/upgrade-if-needed.sh
You should get the following output:
2021-03-13T07:23:03+00:00 upgrade-script: Installing: Starting version v0.2021.08-639ccf013... Creating network "talkyard_internal_net" with driver "bridge" Creating talkyard_cache_1 ... done Creating talkyard_rdb_1 ... done Creating talkyard_search_1 ... done Creating talkyard_app_1 ... done Creating talkyard_web_1 ... done 2021-03-13T07:23:09+00:00 upgrade-script: Installing: Setting current version number to v0.2021.08-639ccf013... 2021-03-13T07:23:09+00:00 upgrade-script: Done. Bye.
Once the installation is completed, you can check all running containers with the following command:
docker ps
You should see the following output:
CONTAINER ID I MAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 5793fefc561b debiki/talkyard-web:v0.2021.08-639ccf013 "/bin/sh -c '/etc/ng…" 31 seconds ago Up 28 seconds 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp talkyard_web_1 b3fee6dd28b8 debiki/talkyard-app:v0.2021.08-639ccf013 "/bin/sh -c 'rm -f /…" 32 seconds ago Up 3 seconds 3333/tcp, 9000/tcp, 9443/tcp, 9999/tcp talkyard_app_1 0898dbac769d debiki/talkyard-cache:v0.2021.08-639ccf013 "docker-entrypoint.s…" 36 seconds ago Up 32 seconds 6379/tcp talkyard_cache_1 e583d8a4d553 debiki/talkyard-rdb:v0.2021.08-639ccf013 "/chown-logs-then-ex…" 36 seconds ago Restarting (1) 5 seconds ago talkyard_rdb_1 878e757d274d debiki/talkyard-search:v0.2021.08-639ccf013 "/docker-entrypoint.…" 36 seconds ago Up 33 seconds 9200/tcp, 9300/tcp talkyard_search_1
Step 7 – Setup Cron Job
Next, you will need to set up a cron job to schedule auto backup and enable automatic upgrades. You can set up it by running the following scripts:
./scripts/schedule-logrotate.sh ./scripts/schedule-daily-backups.sh ./scripts/schedule-automatic-upgrades.sh
You can also check the Talkyard container log with the following command:
docker-compose logs app docker-compose logs rdb
Step 8 – Access Talkyard
At this point, Talkyard is installed and configured. Now, open your web browser and access the URL http://talkyard.example.com. You will be redirected to the following page:
Click on the Continue button. You should see the following page:
Provide your admin email, username, and password, and click on the Create Account button. You will be redirected to the following page:
Provide your community name and click on the Next button. You should see the Talkyard dashboard on the following page:
Conclusion
Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured Talkyard on Ubuntu 18.04. You can now create your own discussion forum with Talkyard easily using your VPS hosting account from Atlantic.Net.
