Quickstart

From nothing to a board people can reach, on a domain, over HTTPS. About half an hour, most of it waiting for a build.

This is the guided route: Coolify on your own server. It is the shortest path to a real board, and a real board is the only kind worth setting up — a development server on localhost:3000 is not something anybody else can post on.

You need:

Prefer no panel? Deploying by hand is the same board from the same image, with a .env you write and a proxy you run. It is the advanced route, and it is a fair bit more work.

Only want to read the code or write a theme? Development runs it on your laptop in two commands.

1. Install Coolify

SSH into the server as root:

curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash

It installs Docker if it is missing and serves its own UI on port 8000.

Open http://your-server-ip:8000 and create the first account straight away — that registration page is open until somebody uses it.

Then close the machine down to what is actually used:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow OpenSSH
ufw allow 80,443/tcp
ufw allow 8000/tcp     # the panel; drop this once it is behind a domain
ufw enable

Coolify can serve its own UI over HTTPS on a subdomain of yours, using the same proxy that will serve your board. Worth doing before you close 8000.

2. Point it at the board

In the panel: New Resource → Docker Compose → Public Repository.

3. Set your domain and deploy

Coolify offers a generated domain and accepts your own. Put yours in — the one whose A record you pointed at this server — and press deploy.

The first build takes five to ten minutes. Watch the log. Four containers come up, in order:

Four things happen without your involvement, and they are the reason this route exists:

• The secrets are generated. AUTH_SECRET and TICK_SECRET come from Coolify's SERVICE_BASE64_64_*, filled in on the first deploy and kept for the life of the resource. The database password comes from SERVICE_PASSWORD_POSTGRES. All three are visible in the panel; none is typed.
• The board is told its own URL, which is what every link in an e-mail is absolute against.
• The certificate is issued and renewed by Coolify's proxy.
• Nothing is published on the host, so the proxy is the only way in.

4. Run the installer

Open https://your-domain/install.

It checks your environment before it offers you a form, and separates two kinds of problem:

Anything that passed is folded into a "N checks passed" line you can open if you want the roll call. What is on the page is what needs a decision — so read the warnings. Nearly every way a new board disappoints somebody a month in is visible on that screen on day one.

If there is a blocker, there is no form: fix it, redeploy if it was an environment variable, and reload.

Otherwise the form is three numbered sections — Your board, Your account and Sending mail. The first two are four boxes between them: what the board is called, and the name, address and password of the first account.

The third is a list of providers, not a page of server details. Pick the one you already have and it fills in the host, the port and the TLS mode, leaving you a sender address and a single credential to paste. Fill it in here: step 5 is the answer sheet for that list, and mail is the one thing on this form that is harder to add later than now.

It does not ask for the board's address. Coolify supplies that (APP_URL), so the installer shows it as already decided rather than asking you to retype your own domain.

Pressing Install runs five steps. They are listed beside the button under What installing does, and if anything goes wrong the same list reopens as How far it got, marking each one done, failed or not run:

1. Apply migrations — every table, index and seeded usergroup.
2. Record the board's name, address and mail settings — the only settings it writes.
3. Create the administrator — your account.
4. Create a first forum — so the index is not empty.
5. Disable the installer.

If you filled in section 3, it sends a test message to the address from section 2 before step 1, and installs nothing at all if that fails. A mistyped API key costs you a retry on this form rather than a finished board that cannot e-mail anybody.

That is a board. It sends you to the sign-in page and says so; sign in with the account you just made.

If the header still says Meith rather than your board's name, wait a minute and reload — settings are cached briefly, and the name you typed outlives the cache. Nothing needs doing.

Then go to /admin, which asks for your password a second time. That is not a bug and not a failed sign-in: the control panel keeps a session of its own, separate from your board session, so an unattended browser that is still signed in to the board is not also signed in to the panel. It lapses after 30 minutes idle, and again after 8 hours whatever you are doing.

5. Mail

This is the answer sheet for section 3 of the installer, so read it before you fill that section in. If the board is already installed, the same settings are at /admin/settings?group=mail and take effect on the next message — no redeploy either way.

Pick the one you already have

How mail is sent is a list of providers that opens on Skip for now — this board sends no mail, which is a real answer and the wrong one for most boards. Every other row is the ordinary SMTP or API transport with the fiddly half typed in for you: prefills rather than integrations, so anything you type yourself wins over the choice and a provider that moves a hostname cannot make the board un-installable.

Three boxes are on the page whichever you pick: Sender address, Username and Password or API key — one credential box, because the transport already knows whether it is asking for an app password or an API key. Everything else lives behind Server details — only if yours differ from the choice above, which is where the two rows that still need a hostname go: a mailbox provider's, and the SES host for your region. A box left blank uses the choice's own value.

You receive mail on this domain already — Fastmail, Migadu, Google Workspace, your host's mailbox. Take the first row. It is the shortest path by a distance, because SPF and DKIM are published for the domain already and there are no DNS records to add.

Everything else on the list needs the sending domain verified with the provider first, and the board cannot do that step for you. Until it finishes, a new account can usually only mail the address you signed up with, whatever the board is configured to do — and SES starts in a sandbox that needs a support request to leave. The installer says which caveat belongs to which provider, under What each of these needs before it will send; free tiers and deliverability are compared in Running a board § Mail.

The installer proves it before it writes anything

Press Install and a real message goes to the address you gave for the administrator before the first migration, with nothing installed if it fails. A provider that refuses says why, and that sentence is put on the form word for word — "the domain example.com is not verified" is the whole answer, and it is the one that saves the afternoon.

That is what makes this a minute now rather than a visit later: a wrong key found here costs a retry, and the same key found afterwards costs a sealed board that cannot e-mail anybody, fixable only from a panel you have not seen yet.

If you skipped it

Do it at /admin/settings?group=mail. Same settings, minus the provider list — that screen is generated from the setting registry and has never heard of Brevo, so How mail is sent there is the transport rather than the provider (SMTP server, or Provider API (Resend-compatible JSON)) and you type the host, the port and the security mode from the table above.

Then save, and press Send a test message to me. It goes to the address on your own account and sends through what is stored, so save first or you are testing the old configuration. The provider's refusal is shown here verbatim too.

Last, check Activation method under /admin/settings?group=registration. It decides whether new members need a confirmation link at all, and it is the one setting that turns a mail problem into a board nobody can join.

None of this is an environment variable, and on this route none of it needs to be. MAIL_DRIVER and its companions still exist and still win outright when set — the installer then hides its mail section and says so, and the settings screen warns that what it stores is not used until the variable is unset. That is for a deployment configured wholly from files, at the cost of a redeploy to rotate a key, and it is Running a board § Mail.

6. Set up backups

Not optional, and not the panel's job alone. Two separate things live on that machine:

• The database. Coolify schedules pg_dump per resource, with S3 as a destination. Turn it on now.
• The uploads volume. Avatars and attachments. Coolify's scheduled backup does not include it, and finding that out during a restore is the worst possible time.

Backup and restore has the commands for both, and the order they have to go back in.

A backup nobody has restored is a file, not a backup.

If the install fails halfway

The run stops at the first failed step, and the step list beside the button reopens as How far it got — each step marked done, failed or not run. That list is the answer to "is it safe to press this again", so read it before you do.

Most of what stops it is an answer, not a fault. "Create the administrator" runs the board's ordinary registration, so a reserved name, an address already in use or a password below the board's own minimum all stop the run there. When that is what happened, the message is repeated beside the box that caused it and the summary links straight to it — change that one answer, retype the passwords, and press Install again.

Sealing is deliberately last, so a failure before it leaves a board you can fix and retry. What to do depends on how far it got:

• It failed before the administrator was created. Fix the cause and run it again. Migrations and the board-name setting are both safe to apply twice.

• It failed after the administrator was created. The installer will refuse to run again — its preflight blocks on any account existing, so a retry cannot add a second administrator to a board that already has members.

  If the board is genuinely yours to reset, recover at the database: restore the empty database, or drop and recreate it, and start again. If the only thing missing is administrator access on a board that otherwise works, do not reinstall — use the operator CLI: community user:promote.

When something else goes wrong

Running a board § Troubleshooting covers the failures that are about the board rather than about the deploy.

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