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title CourseLit Self Hosting Guide
description CourseLit Self Hosting Guide
layout ../../../layouts/MainLayout.astro

Before you self-host: Although we believe in the power of hosting your own software, we still think that buying a subscription to CourseLit will save you a lot of time and money of maintaining your own CourseLit instance. Check out our pricing.

We offer two ways to self-host CourseLit, which are as follows.

  1. On Vercel.
  2. On a VPS using Docker.

Hosting on Vercel

To quickly spin up an instance of CourseLit on Vercel, click the following button.

Deploy with Vercel

Note: Certain essential features like file uploads, email automation and drip content will not work as these cannot run on a serverless platform like Vercel. However, you can make file uploads work by using the hosted instance of MediaLit (our open-source service for file uploads, which CourseLit uses under the hood) for free.

Hosting on a VPS using Docker

If you want to harness the full capabilities of CourseLit, you can deploy it via Docker. We recommend docker-compose for hosting CourseLit.

Run the following commands in order.

1. Download docker-compose.yml file onto your system.
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codelitdev/courselit/main/deployment/docker/docker-compose.yml --output docker-compose.yml --silent
2. Start the app
SUPER_ADMIN_EMAIL=your@email.com docker compose up

The email you specify here will be set as the super admin of your CourseLit instance.

Troubleshooting: If you are going to run this command multiple times, be aware that the super admin user will only be created once and with the email ID you provided the very first time. Hence, if you are not able to access the /dashboard route, it is most likely that the email you are using is not associated with the super admin account. Try removing the Docker containers by running SUPER_ADMIN_EMAIL=your@email.com docker compose down and start again.

3. Test drive your CourseLit school

Visit http://localhost to see your school. There won't be much to see at this point. You need to customise it.

4. Log in to your school

Click on the top right icon and then on the login menu. Enter the email you provided in Step #2 to log in. Since, we haven't set the mail yet, the magic link to log in will be dumped onto the docker compose logs. Locate the link and click on it (or copy paste it in the browser) to log in.

The login link looks something like http://localhost/login?token=some-long-string.

5. Customise your school

Visit http://localhost/dashboard to customise your school.

Note: This will be a barebones instance. Things like mails and file uploads will not work. You can follow rest of this guide to set those things up.

Enabling emails

If you want to send emails (including Magic links to log in) using CourseLit, it is easy as well.

  1. Create an enviroment file called .env with the following content (in the same directory as your docker-compose.yml file) and replace the values accordingly.
SUPER_ADMIN_EMAIL=your@email.com

# Email
EMAIL_HOST=host
EMAIL_USER=user
EMAIL_PASS=pass
EMAIL_FROM=from_field
  1. Restart the app
docker compose stop
docker compose up

Enabling file uploads

If you want to upload media (images, videos etc.) to your school, you need to configure MediaLit. MediaLit powers CourseLit's media management and optimisation. MediaLit offers a Docker image which you can self host.

To self host, follow the following steps.

  1. Uncomment the block under the app service in docker-compose.yml which says the following.

    # - MEDIALIT_APIKEY=${MEDIALIT_APIKEY}
# - MEDIALIT_SERVER=http://medialit

  2. Uncomment the block titled MediaLit in docker-compose.yml.

  3. In your .env file, paste the following code (under the existing content) and change the values as per your environment.

    # Medialit Server
CLOUD_ENDPOINT=aws_s3_endpoint
CLOUD_REGION=aws_s3_region
CLOUD_KEY=aws_s3_key
CLOUD_SECRET=aws_s3_secret
CLOUD_BUCKET_NAME=aws_s3_bucket_name
S3_ENDPOINT=aws_s3_cdn_endpoint
CLOUD_PREFIX=medialit
MEDIALIT_APIKEY=key_to_be_obtained_docker_compose_logs

    To learn how to configure an AWS S3 bucket for MediaLit, click here.

  4. Start the MediaLit service once to generate an API key to use with CourseLit.

    docker compose up medialit

    The above command will start the MediaLit service and display a fresh API key on the console. The relevant logs will look something like the following.

    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@     API key: testcktI8Sa71QUgYtest      @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

    Copy the API key.

  5. Update the MEDIALIT_APIKEY value in .env file and restart the service once again.

  6. That's it! You now have a fully functioning LMS powered by CourseLit and MediaLit.

Kubernetes

Note: For the purpose of this documentation, the following are assumed:
- A Kubernetes cluster (e.g Talos) is created
- Reverse Proxy (e.g Traefik) installed and working in the cluster
- Storage Provider with valid StorageClass installed
- CNPG Operator installed

MongoDB (CNPG + FerretDB)

FerretDB is an alternative to MongoDB Operator, where FerretDB acts as an proxy that converts MongoDB protocols to SQL and uses PostgresQL with DocumentDB extension as a database engine. (Source)

CNPG Operator is used create PostgresSQL databases.

Note: FerretDB uses the same credentials of PostgresSQL for MongoDB.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: cnpg
stringData:
  username: admin # username for postgresSQL and MongoDB
  password: password # password for postgresSQL and MongoDB
# Creating PostgresSQL database
apiVersion: postgresql.cnpg.io/v1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: courselit
spec:
  imageName: ghcr.io/ferretdb/postgres-documentdb:17-0.106.0-ferretdb-2.5.0
  postgresUID: 999
  postgresGID: 999
  enableSuperuserAccess: true
  instances: 2
  primaryUpdateStrategy: unsupervised
  storage:
    size: 4Gi
    storageClass: longhorn # replace with your storageclass
  managed:
    roles:
      - name: admin
        ensure: present
        login: true
        superuser: true
        passwordSecret:
          name: cnpg
  bootstrap:
    initdb:
      postInitSQL:
        - 'CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS documentdb CASCADE;'
  postgresql:
    shared_preload_libraries:
      - pg_cron
      - pg_documentdb_core
      - pg_documentdb
    parameters:
      cron.database_name: 'postgres'
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: courselit-mongo-secret
stringData:
  FERRETDB_POSTGRESQL_URL: postgres://admin:password@courselit-rw.svc.cluster.local:5432/postgres # replace "admin" and "password" with the credentials used when creating PostgresSQL database
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: courselit-ferret
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: courselit-ferret
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: courselit-ferret
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: courselit-ferret
          image: ghcr.io/ferretdb/ferretdb:2.5.0
          ports:
            - containerPort: 27017
          envFrom:  
            - secretRef:
                name: courselit-mongo-secret
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: courselit-ferret
spec:
  selector:
    app: courselit-ferret
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 27017
      targetPort: 27017

ConfigMap

To learn how to configure an AWS S3 bucket for MediaLit, click here.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: courselit-cm
data:
  NODE_ENV: production
  PORT: "80"
  CACHE_DIR: /tmp
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: medialit-cm
data:
  EMAIL: admin@example.com
  CLOUD_ENDPOINT: aws_s3_endpoint
  CLOUD_ENDPOINT_PUBLIC: aws_s3_endpoint
  S3_ENDPOINT: s3_cdn_endpoint
  CLOUD_REGION: aws_s3_region
  CLOUD_BUCKET_NAME: aws_s3_bucket_name
  CLOUD_PUBLIC_BUCKET_NAME: courselit-public
  CDN_ENDPOINT: aws_s3_endpoint
  CLOUD_PREFIX: medialit
  TEMP_FILE_DIR_FOR_UPLOADS: /tmp

Secrets

Note: Make use of External Secrets Operator to keep secrets out of the cluster.

MEDIALIT_APIKEY & MEDIALIT_SERVER should be populated after MediaLit pod is created for the first time.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: courselit-secret
stringData:
  AUTH_SECRET: <random string> # openssl rand -hex 32
  DB_CONNECTION_STRING: mongodb://admin:password@courselit-ferret-svc.svc.cluster.local/medialit?authSource=admin # replace "admin" and "password" with the credential used when creating CNPG postgres database
  # MEDIALIT_API_KEY: <api key from medialit> # update after MediaLit generate API key when running for the first time
  # MEDIALIT_SERVER: https://medialit.example.com # update after retrieving MediaLit API key
  SUPER_ADMIN_EMAIL: admin@example.com
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: medialit-secret.yaml
stringData:
  CLOUD_KEY: <aws_s3_key>
  CLOUD_SECRET: <aws_s3_secret>
  DB_CONNECTION_STRING: mongodb://admin:password@courselit-ferret-svc.svc.cluster.local/medialit?authSource=admin # replace "admin" and "password" with the credential used when creating CNPG postgres database

Deployment

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: courselit
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: courselit
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: courselit
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: courselit
        image: codelit/courselit-app:v0.73.9
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        envFrom:
          - configMapRef:
              name: courselit-cm
          - secretRef:
              name: courselit-secret
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: medialit
  annotations:
    reloader.stakater.com/auto: "true"
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: medialit
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: medialit
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: medialit
        image: codelit/medialit:v0.3.1
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        envFrom:
          - secretRef:
              name: medialit-secret
          - configMapRef:
              name: medialit-cm

Service

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: courselit
spec:
  selector:
    app: courselit
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: medialit
spec:
  selector:
    app: medialit
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80

Ingress

Below example uses Traefik IngressRoute for reverse proxy.

apiVersion: traefik.io/v1alpha1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: courselit
spec:
  entryPoints: 
    - websecure
  routes:
    - match: Host(`courselit.example.com`) 
      kind: Rule
      services:
      - name: courselit
        port: 80
---
apiVersion: traefik.io/v1alpha1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: medialit
spec:
  entryPoints: 
    - websecure
  routes:
    - match: Host(`medialit.example.com`) 
      kind: Rule
      services:
      - name: medialit
        port: 80

MediaLit API Key

After all the manifests are created and running, retrieve the API key of MediaLit from the pod:

kubectl get pod
kubectl logs <medialit-pod-name>

Update the MEDIALIT_APIKEY and MEDIALIT_SERVER in courselit-secret and restart courselit deployment.

Hosted version

If this is too technical for you to handle, CourseLit's hosted version is available at CourseLit.app.

It is managed by the team behind CourseLit. We will take care of everything, just come with your team and content.

Stuck somewhere?

We are always here for you. Come chat with us in our Discord channel or send a tweet at @CourseLit.