Posted on 9/8/2024 in Vitepress, Dokku, Deployment

Deploying Vitepress Blog to Dokku

I have recently set up a Dokku instance on a simple VPS, naturally I wanted to host this blog on it. Mainly because Google does not index github.io blogs.

The setup is based on this article.

Vitepress setup ​

1. create an empty .static file to tell Dokku to serve static files ​

2. define buildpacks ​

Create a file called .buildpacks with the following content:

https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git
https://github.com/dokku/buildpack-nginx.git

https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git
https://github.com/dokku/buildpack-nginx.git

Dokku deploy ​

Prerequisites ​

• A Dokku server set up and running.
• SSH access to your Dokku server.

Steps on Dokku server ​

1. Create dokku app and configure environment variables ​

dokku apps:create blog
dokku config:set blog --no-restart NODE_ENV=production NGINX_ROOT=_site

dokku apps:create blog
dokku config:set blog --no-restart NODE_ENV=production NGINX_ROOT=_site

2. Let's Encrypt ​

If not already installed:

sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
dokku letsencrypt:set --global email your@email.address  
dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
dokku letsencrypt:set --global email your@email.address  
dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

Enable SSL for the app:

dokku letsencrypt:enable blog

dokku letsencrypt:enable blog

Steps on local machine ​

1. Add dokku as a remote on local machine ​

git remote add dokku dokku@your-dokku-server:blog

git remote add dokku dokku@your-dokku-server:blog

2. Push to dokku server ​

git push dokku main

git push dokku main