Deployment

Bookstack is a web application that is built on a LAMP stack. My deployment uses Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP to run services. Currently, I have this web application deployed on an Ubuntu Server.

Digital Ocean

I utilized Digital Ocean, which is Cloud Infrastructure similar to AWS or Azure. I went with Digital Ocean purely because of the cheaper costs of resources. 

Currently, I have a Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Server running on a Digital Ocean Droplet, comparable to an AWS EC2 instance. I used Squarespace to purchase my domain austinhomelabs.com and also to manage records, pointing it to my droplet public IPv4/IPv6 addresses.

CertBot

To enable HTTPS and provide my domain a certificate, I used the open source software CertBot. This automatically generates a certificate using Let's Encrypt and renews the certificate every 60 days, which allows for secure and continuous access to my web application. 

BookStack Deployment

After obtaining the virtual private server, installing BookStack is relatively simply. Their documentation has detailed guides and also scripts to automatically install and deploy your website. Remaining configurations can be done either via SSH into the VPS or through the Web GUI itself as administrator.