How to self-host Deno Fresh

I self-host my own website built with Deno Fresh on my own VPS using systemd and Caddy. The reason behind this is that I don't want to rely on a third-party service that I don't have control over and I don't want to use GitHub Actions when I can use my sourceforge of choice, which is SourceHut.

Requirements

You need the following to be installed:

1. systemd
   • You can check by running systemctl --version.
2. Caddy (useful to have some beginner knowledge on how to use it)
   • Installation guide
3. Deno
   • Installation guide
   • or run: curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sudo DENO_INSTALL=/usr/local sh

Setup

1. Set up a systemd service

We want to use systemd so that we have a reliable way of running Deno in a way that don't require our input. Therefore we need to create a new service, and that can look like the following:

[Unit]
Description=<name-of-service> (Deno Fresh)
Documentation=http://deno.land
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=<user>
EnvironmentFile=<path-to-project>/.env.prod
WorkingDirectory=<path-to-project>
ExecStart="PORT=6969 deno run --no-lock -A <path-to-project>/main.ts"
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This service-configuration lets us access the network attached to the server, has a environment file attached, is being run from a specific directory and restarts on failure.

Remember to replace:

• <name-of-service>
• <user>
• <path-to-project>

Then create the configuration file in /etc/systemd/system/<name-of-service>.service.

You can now enable the service with:

systemctl enable <name-of-service>.service

Note that you don't have to prefix the ExecStart with PORT=6969, you can also provide that in the environment file in your project.

2. Configure Caddy

In your Caddyfile you can add the following:

<domain-with-tld> {
    reverse_proxy localhost:6969
}

This makes a reverse-proxy on the server, ie. why localhost is there, and points the proxy to the port 6969.

Replace <domain-with-tld> with your actual domain, like example.org.

Then run caddy reload to reload your Caddyfile with your latest changes.

3. Start your project

systemctl start <name-of-service>.service

Then you can check if your Deno Fresh project is running with:

systemctl status <name-of-service>.service

And then you can check if your web-project is available on the domain you set up in your Caddyfile.

Summary

Now you should be able to run a Deno Fresh on your own server with systemd, Caddy and Deno installed.