Hosting with Coolify

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Prerequisites

A server running coolify https://coolify.io/

Coolify is an excellent way to host your fider app. Coolify is like a PaaS - a layer sitting on top of your server managing your docker containers for you. It provides a nice way to get your apps set up and running with little fuss. And best of all - there's a Fider Service ready to install with a single click.

Installing and Running

This guide assumes you already have your coolify setup, so you have one server that's running coolify (or you're using the hosted paid for version), and you have at least one server that coolify is managing (these could be the same server - they often are).

Step 1: Add fider to your server.

This is as simple as adding a new resource to your server, using the coolify UI. You'll find fider there as a pre-configured service, so select that. That will set you up with a fider app instance, and also a postgres database which is used by the fider instance.

Step 2: Configure your setup as required.

If you click on "Edit Compose file" in coolify, you'll see the docker compose file that is going to be deployed on your server. At the time of writing, it looks like this:

services:
  fider:
    image: getfider/fider:stable
    environment:
      - SERVICE_URL_FIDER_3000
      - BASE_URL=$SERVICE_URL_FIDER
      - DATABASE_URL=postgres://$SERVICE_USER_POSTGRES:$SERVICE_PASSWORD_POSTGRES@database:5432/fider?sslmode=disable
      - JWT_SECRET=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_64_FIDER
      - EMAIL_NOREPLY=${EMAIL_NOREPLY:-noreply@example.com}
      - EMAIL_MAILGUN_API=$EMAIL_MAILGUN_API
      - EMAIL_MAILGUN_DOMAIN=$EMAIL_MAILGUN_DOMAIN
      - EMAIL_MAILGUN_REGION=$EMAIL_MAILGUN_REGION
      - EMAIL_SMTP_HOST=${EMAIL_SMTP_HOST:-smtp.mailgun.com}
      - EMAIL_SMTP_PORT=${EMAIL_SMTP_PORT:-587}
      - EMAIL_SMTP_USERNAME=${EMAIL_SMTP_USERNAME:-postmaster@mailgun.com}
      - EMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD=$EMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD
      - EMAIL_SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS=$EMAIL_SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS
      - EMAIL_AWSSES_REGION=$EMAIL_AWSSES_REGION
      - EMAIL_AWSSES_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$EMAIL_AWSSES_ACCESS_KEY_ID
      - EMAIL_AWSSES_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$EMAIL_AWSSES_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "/app/fider", "ping"]
      interval: 2s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 10
  database:
    image: postgres:12
    volumes:
      - pg_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=$SERVICE_USER_POSTGRES
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_POSTGRES
      - POSTGRES_DB=${POSTGRES_DB:-fider}
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -d $${POSTGRES_DB} -U $${POSTGRES_USER}"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 20s
      retries: 10

Now this should be enough to get running without any changes, simply deploy in coolify, and then open the link to your fider instance, as configured by coolify.

The template uses PostgreSQL 12, which no longer receives security updates. For a new installation, you can change the database image to a newer version such as postgres:17 before you deploy for the first time. Don't change it on an existing installation: PostgreSQL can't read data files from a different major version, so you'd need to dump and restore your database first.

Chances are you'll probably need / want to change the URL in some way - e.g. for me just now my newly created instance has a URL that includes the UUID of the instance that coolify created. That's pretty simple to do in coolify too - just click on "settings" for the fider service, and in there you can change the URL that coolify is using for you. You might need to restart once you've changed this.

BASE_URL is set from this URL automatically. Make sure it starts with https://, because Fider uses BASE_URL to build every link, including the sign-in links it emails.

Step 3: Configure your email provider.

Fider isn't going to work very well without a way to send emails. You can set the email environment variables in the "Environment Variables" section of the fider service in coolify. Fider supports SMTP, Mailgun and Amazon SES, and all the options are listed in the configuration reference.

The template defaults to SMTP. For example, to send emails through your own SMTP server:

EMAIL_NOREPLY=noreply@yourdomain.com
EMAIL_SMTP_HOST=smtp.yourdomain.com
EMAIL_SMTP_PORT=587
EMAIL_SMTP_USERNAME=postmaster@yourdomain.com
EMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD=nottellingyou

If your SMTP server uses port 465, set EMAIL_SMTP_PORT=465 and add EMAIL_SMTP_ENABLE_IMPLICIT_TLS=true to the environment section of the compose file, as the template doesn't include it. To use Mailgun or Amazon SES instead, fill in the EMAIL_MAILGUN_* or EMAIL_AWSSES_* variables. Fider uses Mailgun when EMAIL_MAILGUN_API is set, and Amazon SES when EMAIL_AWSSES_ACCESS_KEY_ID is set.

That's pretty much all there is to it !