Two methods to deploy a D&D campaign website.

There are a few different things going on in this repo. I'm using this one repo for two different deployment methods:

• Harder method: The docker directory uses a docker-compose.yml file to deploy your D&D site as a Bookstack site to whatever docker host you use. This README has instructions for deploying to a public Linode host.

• Easier method: The gh-pages directory uses the MkDocs static site generator to deploy your D&D site to GitHub pages for free.

Unlike the gh-pages deployment, where all of the site content is in Markdown and YAML files, the docker deployment only deploys the underlying infrastructure. You will need to log into your new Bookstack site when using that deployment method to create your website content.

This deploys Bookstack from a docker-compose file in a Docker Linode container.

Here's what I did to set it up:

1. Make sure your docker/.env file is appropriately set up. You can use my docker/.env.sample as an example. Also, put your own subdomain for the server_name in docker/config/swag/nginx/proxy-confs/bookstack.subdomain.conf

2. Create account at Linode

3. Go to Marketplace > Docker, and then fill out the docker options.

Resource to download (use your own repo's docker-compose.yml file of course): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/willquill/dnd-vaelith-tir/main/docker/docker-compose.yml

Leave "Command to run?" blank

Add a user and password, and (optionally) an SSH public key.

By then creating this Docker Linode, it will automatically deploy three containers:

• bookstack, bookstack_db, and swag (the reverse proxy with Let's Encrypt)

The Linode interface will show you the IP of your new public host. Use this as the A record in your DNS records for the domain you are using.

For example, my domain is rakara.net, so I created an A record pointing the vaelith-tir subdomain in the rakara.net domain to the public IP of my Linode host.

If you put your own subdomain for the server_name in docker/config/swag/nginx/proxy-confs/bookstack.subdomain.conf before deploying to Linode, then the proxy is already configured correctly.

But if you didn't do that, then it's going to be using my subdomain (vaelith-tir), so you'll need to edit that file and then run docker restart swag.

If you only have bookstack.subdomain.conf.sample in that path (you are missing bookstack.subdomain.conf), then something went wrong and you will need to follow these nginx conf steps:

SSH into your new Linode host and run the following command, replacing vaelith-tir with the name of your subdomain if your subdomain is not bookstack:

sed -i 's/bookstack./vaelith-tir./g' /root/config/swag/nginx/proxy-confs/bookstack.subdomain.conf.sample

Followed by:

mv /root/config/swag/nginx/proxy-confs/bookstack.subdomain.conf.sample /root/config/swag/nginx/proxy-confs/bookstack.subdomain.conf

And lastly:

docker restart swag

The first command replaces the default subdomain of bookstack in your nginx conf file with your unique subdomain (if you aren't using bookstack).

The second command removes .sample from the end of the file so it can be used by swag.

The third command restart swag to use your new configuration.

If at any point you need to modify your docker-compose file, you can find it in /root/docker-compose.yml on your linode host.

Important: Changes to the docker-compose.yml file on GitHub do not reflect on your Linode host. Any changes to docker-compose.yml after initial deployment must take place directly on the Linode host. I recommend making any changes in two places - your repository and your host - to keep them in sync.

pip install mkdocs mkdocs-material

export PATH=/home/will/.local/bin:$PATH (use your own path of course)

git clone https://github.com/willquill/dnd-vaelith-tir.git

(or fork my repo and clone your fork)

Modify mkdocs.yml to reflect your own site_name, pages, and theme.

mkdocs build

echo "site/" > .gitignore

mkdocs serve

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your browser to see it in action.

Wanna know what's really cool? You can edit your files on the fly and see the effect while mkdocs serve is active.

For example, I'm using id_rsa_willquill

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa_willquill

vi ~/.ssh/config

Host github-as-willquill
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_willquill
IdentitiesOnly yes

Go to github and create a public repository.

Add the remote repo using the Host name from the config file above and use youruser/yourrepo.git

git remote add origin git@github-as-willquill:willquill/dnd-vaelith-tir.git

1. Go to the Github Emails page here

2. Copy the Github-provided email on that page and paste the following into your terminal:

git config user.email [email protected]

More info here

echo 'vaelith-tir.rakara.net' >> docs/CNAME

More info on custom domain here

git add -A
git commit -m "initial commit"
git push -u origin main

mkdocs gh-deploy

Never modify files directly within the site directory.

To make changes to your website after the initial deploy:

• Modify your yml and md files as needed.

• mkdocs gh-deploy

Breakdown of what mkdocs gh-deploy does:

• Repopulates the site directory with a static site generated from your md and yml files.

• Pushes the contents of the site directory into the gh-pages branch on Github.

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.