Hosting a Django app with Caddy and PostgreSQL

THIS IS A WIP!

This (unofficial) guide was made by [@twonum https://hackclub.slack.com/team/U094NTBR1S5] (feel free to ask me for help).

I'm using Hypercorn as it's an ASGI server (for WebSockets support). To use a different server, replace the hypercorn commands with the ones that your server uses.

Tools this guide uses

Hypercorn ASGI server
Caddy reverse proxy and web server with automatic HTTPS
PostgreSQL relational database for Django's ORM
systemd "daemon" (as it's called in Unix) to manage services

I'll assume that orpheus is your username and this is your directory structure:

~ (/home/orpheus)
- project
  - manage.py
  - ...
- static
  - project
    - static
    - media
- Caddyfile
- .config
- ...

Getting ready

First, get a shell to Nest. Don't have a Nest account?

ssh orpheus@hackclub.app

Get Nest resources

ssh orpheus@hackclub.app
export PROJECT_NAME="your project directory name" # set this to your project's directory name (like "project" in <code>/home/$USERNAME/project</code>)

hackclub.app or custom domain?

`$PROJECT_NAME.$USERNAME.hackclub.app` (free)

export PROJECT_DOMAIN=$PROJECT_NAME.$USERNAME.hackclub.app
nest caddy add $PROJECT_DOMAIN

Custom domain (looks better, but you need your own DNS)

Add a CNAME record to $USERNAME.hackclub.app

export PROJECT_DOMAIN="hello.example.com" # set this

Get your project on Nest

Copy the directory containing manage.py to /home/$USERNAME/$PROJECT_NAME. See Quickstart#Using_the_Account.

cd ~/$PROJECT_NAME