Launch Your Wagtail Website On Digital Ocean With Ubuntu 18

How to launch your Wagtail website on Digital Ocean (from scratch!)

If you enter your server and project details on this page, the list of commands below the form will automatically update (it's using JavaScript; nothing is being saved, I promise!)

Because launching a new website on a new server from scratch can be quite the task (over 50 steps!) the idea is you can copy/paste your server and project details into this form and get a list of commands to run by copying and pasting most of the code that's generated for you.

Enter your Droplet and Project Details Below 👇

Droplet IP Address

Ubuntu User Name

Project Name

Database Name

Database User Name

Database Password

Your Git Repo URL

Final Domain Name

Create a new Ubuntu 18 Droplet
You'll need your Droplet IP address ssh root@167.172.xxx.xx
Create a new user on your new ubuntu server adduser newuser
Give your new user admin privileges usermod -aG sudo newuser

Make sure OpenSSH is enabled


ufw app list
ufw allow OpenSSH
ufw enable
ufw status

Copy your root SSH Key to the new Ubuntu user account rsync --archive --chown=newuser:newuser ~/.ssh /home/newuser
SSH into your server as your new Ubuntu user (don't use root) exit your ssh session with ctrl + d
ssh newuser@167.172.xxx.xx
Update Ubuntu sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-dev libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib nginx curl
Log into a postgres session sudo -u postgres psql
Create a new database CREATE DATABASE your_db_name;
Create a new postres user with a password CREATE USER your_db_user WITH PASSWORD 'your_db_password';

Alter the postgres role


ALTER ROLE your_db_user SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';
ALTER ROLE your_db_user SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
ALTER ROLE your_db_user SET timezone TO 'UTC';

Make the postgres user an admin GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE your_db_name TO your_db_user;
Quit postgres \q
Upgrade pip and install virtualenv sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip && sudo -H pip3 install virtualenv
Create a new project directory mkdir ~/yourprojectname && cd ~/yourprojectname
Clone your project from github into this directory git clone https://github.com/your-repo-url/ .
Create a new virtualenv virtualenv .venv
Activate your virtualenv source .venv/bin/activate
Install gunicorn and psycopg2-binary pip install gunicorn psycopg2-binary
Install your project requirements pip install -r requirements.txt
Collect static with: python manage.py collectstatic --settings=yourprojectname.settings.production
Re-run your server with python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 --settings=yourprojectname.settings.production At this point you should see migrations are required.
Cancel your server and run it normally with Set the DJANGO SETTINGS MODULE with: export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE='yourprojectname.settings.production' Re run the server and we no longer need to specify a settings file
Apply migrations python manage.py migrate
Create a new superuser python manage.py createsuperuser
Allow port 8000 through ufw sudo ufw allow 8000
Run the server on port 8000 and preview it python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 Go to http://167.172.xxx.xx:8000/ and you'll see it at least loads. It'll look terrible, but it works!
The site now only work on port 8000. That's no good. We need it to run all the time.
Make sure your in your main directory cd ~/yourprojectname
Run gunicorn on port 8000 gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 yourprojectname.wsgi
Preview your site on port 8000 again, but notice this time we are running it with gunicorn Go to http://167.172.xxx.xx:8000/ and you'll it loads.
Cancel gunicorn and deactivate your virtualenv ctrl + c and deactivate

Create a gunicorn socket file sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.socket Add this to it:

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=/run/gunicorn.sock

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target

Create a systemd file for gunicorn with sudo privileges sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service And add this into it:

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn daemon
Requires=gunicorn.socket
After=network.target

[Service]
User=newuser
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/newuser/yourprojectname
ExecStart=/home/newuser/yourprojectname/.venv/bin/gunicorn \
        --access-logfile - \
        --workers 3 \
        --bind unix:/run/gunicorn.sock \
        yourprojectname.wsgi:application

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start and enable the gunicorn sudo systemctl start gunicorn.socket && sudo systemctl enable gunicorn.socket
Check the status of the process with: sudo systemctl status gunicorn.socket Should say active listening
Check the existence of the new socket file file /run/gunicorn.sock
Check the gunicorn status with sudo systemctl status gunicorn You should see INACTIVE DEAD
Test the socket activation with a curl command curl --unix-socket /run/gunicorn.sock localhost You should see the html output of your site.
If you didnt, something is wrong with gunicorn. Double check your wsgi.py file, double check the gunicorn paths.
At this point it doesnt hurt to restart gunicorn with sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl restart gunicorn

Create a new server block in nginx sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourprojectname And add this:

server {
    listen      80;
    listen      [::]:80;
    server_name 167.172.xxx.xx;
    charset     UTF-8;

    error_log   /home/newuser/yourprojectname/nginx-error.log;
    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location /static/ {
        alias /home/newuser/yourprojectname/static/;
    }

    location /media/ {
        alias /home/newuser/yourprojectname/media/;
    }

    location / {
        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://unix:/run/gunicorn.sock;
    }
}

Create a file by linking it to the sites-enabled directory sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourprojectname /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
Test nginx with: sudo nginx -t
If there were no errors, restart nginx sudo systemctl restart nginx
Open the firewall to normal traffic with Nginx, and delete port 8000 sudo ufw delete allow 8000 && sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
If NGINX shows the welcome to nginx page, double check your server_name ip in your nginx config file (the one we created earlier).
Add your IP to your domain DNS.
When launching your website update your nginx settings sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourprojectname Replace 167.172.xxx.xx with yourwebsite.com
Test nginx settings with sudo nginx -t
Restart nginx with sudo systemctl restart nginx
Add your new domain to your allowed hosts sudo nano yourprojectname/settings/production.py Add yourwebsite.com to the ALLOWED_HOSTS and Remove the ip address of 167.172.xxx.xx
Add 167.172.xxx.xx to your domain DNS settings and wait for it to propogate
View your new website at yourwebsite.com
Update the wagtail site settings Go to http://yourwebsite.com/admin/sites/2/ and: change localhost to yourwebsite.com

Launch Your Wagtail Website On Digital Ocean With Ubuntu 18

How to launch your Wagtail website on Digital Ocean (from scratch!)

Enter your Droplet and Project Details Below 👇

Get notified about new Wagtail content.