dokku-plausible

This is an example of how run plausible on dokku.

Setup

First create the plausible application:

dokku apps:create plausible

Plausible needs a postgresql and a clickhouse database. Dokku has official plugins for both. Install the plugins:

sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres.git postgres
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-clickhouse.git clickhouse

Create the postgresql database and link it to the plausible app:

dokku postgres:create plausible-postgres
dokku postgres:link plausible-postgres plausible

Create the clickhouse database and link it to the plausible app:

dokku clickhouse:create plausible-clickhouse
dokku clickhouse:link plausible-clickhouse plausible

General Plausible Configuration

Set the plausible admin user credentials:

dokku config:set plausible ADMIN_USER_EMAIL=admin@example.com
dokku config:set plausible ADMIN_USER_NAME=admin
dokku config:set plausible ADMIN_USER_PWD=secret

Set the base URL, i.e., the URL plausible will be hosted from:

dokku config:set plausible BASE_URL=http://plausible.example.com/

Set the secret key base. It should be long (at least 64 characters) and random. If you have Phoenix installed, you can generate this with mix phx.gen.secret. Otherwise you can use openssl to generate some random bytes and base64 encode it:

dokku config:set plausible SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(openssl rand 60 | base64 -w 0)

You can optionally disable registrations to your Plausble instance.

dokku config:set plausible DISABLE_REGISTRATION=true

SMTP Configuration

Plausible needs a SMTP server to send emails. I'm using SES. Substitute your own values:

dokku config:set plausible MAILER_EMAIL=sender@example.com --no-restart
dokku config:set plausible SMTP_HOST_ADDR=email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
dokku config:set plausible SMTP_HOST_PORT=587
dokku config:set plausible SMTP_USER_NAME=your_smtp_user_name
dokku config:set plausible SMTP_USER_PWD=your_smtp_user_password

Understand this Dockerfile

Before deploying, take a look at the Dockerfile in this repository to understand what's going on.

When you link the plausible clickhouse database to the plausible application, dokku makes some environment variables available inside of your plausible container. One is called CLICKHOUSE_URL:

CLICKHOUSE_URL=clickhouse://plausible-clickhouse:3e1dd262671f044e@dokku-clickhouse-plausible-clickhouse:9000/plausible_clickhouse

However that's not exactly what we want for two reasons:

1. Plausible is expecting an environment variable called CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL, and
2. The URL is for port 9000 which is for the clickhouse native TCP interface and plausible expects to connect to clickhouse's HTTP interface running on port 8123.

Fortunately the dokku clickhouse plugin adds some other environment variables which we can use to construct the URL that plausible expects:

DOKKU_CLICKHOUSE_PLAUSIBLE_CLICKHOUSE_ENV_CLICKHOUSE_DB=plausible
DOKKU_CLICKHOUSE_PLAUSIBLE_CLICKHOUSE_ENV_CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD=3e1dd262671f044e
DOKKU_CLICKHOUSE_PLAUSIBLE_CLICKHOUSE_PORT_8123_TCP_ADDR=172.17.0.4
DOKKU_CLICKHOUSE_PLAUSIBLE_CLICKHOUSE_PORT_8123_TCP_PORT=8123
DOKKU_CLICKHOUSE_PLAUSIBLE_CLICKHOUSE_ENV_CLICKHOUSE_DB=plausible

The Dockerfile in this project uses these to export the CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL environment variable which plausible uses to connect to the database.

Deploy

Plausible listens on port 8000. Configure Dokku to forward requests from port 80 and 443 to Plausible.

dokku proxy:ports-set plausible http:80:8080 https:443:8080

Clone this repository, add a remote pointing to your dokku server, and push:

git clone https://github.com/b-ggs/dokku-plausible.git
cd dokku-plausible
git remote add dokku dokku@example.com:plausible
git push dokku master

With that, plausible should be up and running having everything it needs to connect to the postgresql database, the clickhouse database, and the SMTP server.

IP Geolocation

You'll need an account ID and license key from MaxMind. Once you have those, create a maxmind app to periodically download the maxmind country database:

dokku apps:create maxmind

Configure it:

dokku config:set maxmind GEOIPUPDATE_ACCOUNT_ID=<account_id>
dokku config:set maxmind GEOIPUPDATE_LICENSE_KEY=<license_key>
dokku config:set maxmind GEOIPUPDATE_FREQUENCY=168
dokku config:set maxmind GEOIPUPDATE_EDITION_IDS=GeoLite2-Country

As root, create a shared mount point to share the MaxMind country database:

cd /var/lib/dokku/data/storage
mkdir maxmind
sudo chown -R 32767:32767 maxmind

Mount it in the filesystem where the container downloads the database:

dokku storage:mount maxmind /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/maxmind:/usr/share/GeoIP

Install the container: (Requires dokku 0.24)

dokku git:from-image maxmind maxmindinc/geoipupdate

Mount the same directory in the plausible container:

dokku storage:mount plausible /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/maxmind:/geoip

Finally, configure plausible to use the country database:

dokku config:set plausible GEOLITE2_COUNTRY_DB=/geoip/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb

Additional tips

Updating a user's password

On your Dokku host, run:

dokku enter plausible web /app/bin/plausible remote

When an interactive Elixir shell appears, run the following, replacing the email with your user's email, and the password with your preferred password:

Plausible.Repo.get_by(Plausible.Auth.User, email: "admin@example.com") |> Plausible.Auth.User.set_password("yourpassword") |> Plausible.Repo.update