This page will guide you through the process of setting up a self-hosted instance of Rallly using the Docker Compose configuration published in the rallly-selfhosted repository on Github.

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Requirements

Before you get started you will need to have a server that has the following:
  • Docker
  • x86-64 Architecture
You will also need to have access to an SMTP server to send emails.

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Setup Instructions

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1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/lukevella/rallly-selfhosted.git
cd rallly-selfhosted
If you don’t have git installed you can download the repo using curl 
curl -L https://github.com/lukevella/rallly-selfhosted/archive/master.tar.gz | tar -xz
cd rallly-selfhosted-main

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2. Add required config

In the root of this project you will find a file called config.env. This is where you can set your environment variables to configure your instance. This guide will go through the basics but, you can check out the full list of configuration options in the self-hosting docs. Start by generating a secret key. Must be at least 32-characters long. 
openssl rand -base64 32
Open config.env and set SECRET_PASSWORD to your secret key. Next, set NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL. It should be the base url where this instance is accessible, including the scheme (eg. http:// or https://), the domain name, and optionally a port. Do not use trailing slashes or URLs with paths/subfolders..

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3. Configure your SMTP Server

First, set SUPPORT_EMAIL. Your users will see this as the contact email for any support issues and it will also appear as the sender of all emails. Next, use the following environment variables to configure your SMTP server:
  • SMTP_HOST - The host address of your SMTP server
  • SMTP_PORT - The port of your SMTP server
  • SMTP_SECURE - Set to “true” if SSL is enabled for your SMTP connection
  • SMTP_USER - The username (if auth is enabled)
  • SMTP_PWD - The password (if auth is enabled)

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4. Secure your instance

By default, anyone can register and login on your instance. You can restrict users by setting ALLOWED_EMAILS. If only you are planning on using this instance you can set ALLOWED_EMAILS to your email address. 
ALLOWED_EMAILS="john.doe@example.com"
If you would like to allow multiple users, you separate each email address with a comma. 
ALLOWED_EMAILS="john.doe@example.com,jane.doe@example.com"
You can also use wildcards to allow all emails from a domain. 
ALLOWED_EMAILS="*@example.com"

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6. Start the server

You can start the server by running: 
docker compose up -d
This command will:
  • Create a postgres database
  • Run migrations to set up the database schema
  • Start the Next.js server on port 3000

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Using a Reverse Proxy

By default the app will run unencrypted on port 3000. If you want to serve the app over HTTPS you will need to use a reverse proxy. After setting up a reverse proxy be sure to change this line - 3000:3000 to - 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 in docker-compose.yml and restart the container for it to apply the changes. This prevents Rallly from being accessed remotely using HTTP on port 3000 which is a security concern.

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Version Management

Rallly uses semantic versioning and releases are published as tags on Docker Hub. You can use latest to get the most recent release but it is recommended that you pin the image to a major version to avoid accidentally pulling in breaking changes. You can set the version in docker-compose.yml by changing the following line: 
- image: lukevella/rallly:<version>
Check the releases to see what versions are available. We follow semver versioning so you may want to set your version to a major release (e.g. lukevella/rallly:3) to avoid pulling in breaking changes.

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Update Instructions

Rallly is constantly being updated but you will need to manually pull these updates and restart the server to run the latest version. You can do this by running the following commands from within the same directory as your docker-compose.yml: 
docker compose down
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d