Running a public server

To let other people connect to your server and play games, there are a few other things you will need to set up.

Recovering from a crash

Use nodemon to restart the server if it crashes. This also restarts the server if the software is updated.

nodemon server.js

Database & Backups

For best performance, you should turn on WAL mode on the database.

sqlite3 db "pragma journal_mode = wal"

You will want to backup your database periodically. This is easy to do with a single sqlite command. Schedule the following command using cron or something similar, and make sure to copy the resulting backup database to another machine!

sqlite3 db "vacuum into strftime('backup-%Y%m%d-%H%M.db')"

Customize settings

The server reads its settings from the .env file.

NODE_ENV=production

SITE_NAME=Example
SITE_URL=https://example.com
SITE_IMPRINT="This website is operated by ..."

HTTP_HOST=localhost
HTTP_PORT=8080

# Enable mail notifications
MAIL_FROM=Example Notifications <notifications@example.com>
MAIL_HOST=localhost
MAIL_PORT=25

# Enable webhooks
WEBHOOKS=1

# Enable forum
FORUM=1

Expose the server to the internet

For simplicity, the server only talks plain HTTP on localhost. To expose the server to your LAN and/or WAN, either listen to 0.0.0.0 or use a reverse proxy server such as Nginx. To use SSL (HTTPS) you need a reverse proxy server.

Here is an example Nginx configuration:

server {
	listen 80;
	server_name example.com www.example.com;
	return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
	listen 443 ssl;
	server_name example.com www.example.com;
	ssl_certificate /path/to/ssl/certificate/fullchain.cer;
	ssl_certificate_key /path/to/ssl/certificate/example.com.key;
	root /path/to/server/public;
	location / {
		try_files $uri @rally;
	}
	location @rally {
                proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
                proxy_http_version 1.1;
                proxy_set_header Host $host;
                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
                proxy_read_timeout 86400s;
                proxy_send_timeout 86400s;
        }
}

Running a public server

Recovering from a crash

Database & Backups

Customize settings

Expose the server to the internet

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