Deploy on a VPS

This guide covers deploying yawa on a fresh VPS. The example uses Hetzner Cloud with Ubuntu 24.04, but any VPS with a recent Ubuntu/Debian and Docker support works.

Prerequisites

A VPS with Ubuntu 24.04
A domain pointing to the VPS IP (A record)
SSH access as root

Setup

Update the system and install Caddy and Docker

apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install -y curl caddy docker.io docker-compose-plugin

Create the deployment directory
Terminal window
```
mkdir -p /opt/yawa
cd /opt/yawa
```

Create a docker-compose.yml

services:
  app:
    image: peterpeterparker/yawa:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - yawa-data:/data
    environment:
      - YAWA_SESSION_SECRET=${YAWA_SESSION_SECRET}
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  yawa-data:

Generate a secret and start the server

echo "YAWA_SESSION_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Configure Caddy

Once your domain’s DNS has propagated, configure Caddy as a reverse proxy. Check propagation first:
Terminal window
```
dig yourdomain.com +short @8.8.8.8
```
Then write the Caddyfile:
Terminal window
```
cat > /etc/caddy/Caddyfile << 'EOF'
yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:5987
}
EOF

systemctl restart caddy
```
Caddy automatically provisions and renews a TLS certificate via Let’s Encrypt.

Verify

curl https://yourdomain.com/health

Updating

To deploy a new release, pull the latest image and recreate the container:

cd /opt/yawa
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d