CourseLit Self Hosting Guide

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 compared with maintaining your own CourseLit instance. Check out our pricing.

We distribute Docker images for all our services through Docker Hub.

Hosting on a VPS using Docker

We recommend Docker Compose for hosting CourseLit.

Run the following commands in order.

1. Download the `docker-compose.yml` file to 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 run this command multiple times, note that the super admin user will be created only once, using the email address you provided the first time. If you are unable to access the /dashboard route, it is most likely because 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, then start again.

3. Test drive your CourseLit school

Visit http://localhost to see your school. There will not be much to see at this point, because you still need to customize it.

Click the top-right icon, then click the login menu item. Enter the email you provided in Step 2 to log in. Since mail is not configured yet, the magic login link will be printed in the docker compose logs. Locate the link and click it, or copy and paste it into your 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 customize your school.

Note: This will be a bare-bones instance. Features such as email and file uploads will not work yet. You can follow the rest of this guide to set those up.

Enabling emails

If you want to send emails, including magic login links, with CourseLit, that is easy to set up as well.

Create an environment file called .env with the following content in the same directory as your docker-compose.yml file, and replace the values as needed.

SUPER_ADMIN_EMAIL=your@email.com

# Email
EMAIL_HOST=host
EMAIL_USER=user
EMAIL_PASS=pass
EMAIL_FROM=from_field

Restart the app

docker compose stop
docker compose up

Enabling file uploads

If you want to upload media such as images and videos to your school, you need to configure MediaLit. MediaLit powers CourseLit's media management and optimization. MediaLit provides a Docker image that you can self-host.

To self-host it, follow these steps.

Uncomment the block under the app service in docker-compose.yml that looks like this:
```
# - MEDIALIT_APIKEY=${MEDIALIT_APIKEY}
# - MEDIALIT_SERVER=http://medialit
```
Uncomment the block titled MediaLit in docker-compose.yml.

In your .env file, paste the following code under the existing content and change the values to match 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.

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.
Update the MEDIALIT_APIKEY value in your .env file and restart the service.
That's it! You now have a fully functioning LMS powered by CourseLit and MediaLit.

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 take care of everything, so you can focus on 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.