Deploying Docusaurus to Digital Ocean

Deploying Docusaurus to Digital Ocean

This guide will walk you through setting up automatic deployment of your Docusaurus project to a Digital Ocean droplet using GitHub Actions.

1. Set Up Your Digital Ocean Droplet

First, ensure your Digital Ocean droplet is properly configured:

1. SSH into your droplet:

   ssh root@your-droplet-ip

2. Copy the setup script from the scripts directory to your droplet and run it:

   chmod +x setup-droplet.sh
   ./setup-droplet.sh

3. Update the Nginx configuration with your actual domain name.

2. Set Up GitHub Secrets

In your GitHub repository containing the Docusaurus project:

1. Go to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions
2. Add the following secrets:
   • SSH_PRIVATE_KEY: Your private SSH key (generate a new one for deployment)
   • SSH_KNOWN_HOSTS: Output of ssh-keyscan your-droplet-ip
   • SSH_USER: Username for SSH (usually ‘root’)
   • SSH_HOST: Your droplet’s IP address

3. Add GitHub Actions Workflow

The workflow file is already added at .github/workflows/deploy.yml

4. Generate SSH Keys for Deployment

# On your local machine
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "github-actions-deploy" -f ~/.ssh/do_deploy_key

Add the public key to your Digital Ocean droplet:

# On your local machine
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/do_deploy_key.pub root@your-droplet-ip

Use the private key content as the value for the SSH_PRIVATE_KEY GitHub secret.

5. Testing the Deployment

1. Push a commit to your main branch on GitHub
2. Go to the “Actions” tab in your GitHub repository to monitor the workflow
3. Verify that your site is deployed to your Digital Ocean droplet

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues with the deployment:

1. Check the GitHub Actions logs for detailed error messages
2. Ensure your SSH keys are correctly set up
3. Verify that the paths in the rsync command match your Docusaurus build output
4. Check Nginx logs: sudo tail -f /var/nginx/error.log

Additional Configuration

Custom Domain

If you want to use a custom domain:

1. Update your DNS records to point to your Digital Ocean droplet IP
2. Update the Nginx configuration with your domain name
3. Consider setting up HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt:

apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
certbot --nginx -d your-domain.com

Environment Variables

If your Docusaurus site needs environment variables:

1. Add them as GitHub secrets
2. Update the GitHub Actions workflow to use them during the build step