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 of maintaining your own CourseLit instance. Check out our pricing.

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

On Vercel.
On a VPS using Docker.

Hosting on Vercel

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

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.

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

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, paste the following code in your docker-compose.yml file, under the existing content.

medialit:
  image: codelit/medialit
  environment:
    - DB_CONNECTION_STRING=${DB_CONNECTION_STRING_MEDIALIT}
    - CLOUD_ENDPOINT=${CLOUD_ENDPOINT}
    - CLOUD_REGION=${CLOUD_REGION}
    - CLOUD_KEY=${CLOUD_KEY}
    - CLOUD_SECRET=${CLOUD_SECRET}
    - CLOUD_BUCKET_NAME=${CLOUD_BUCKET_NAME}
    - CDN_ENDPOINT=${CDN_ENDPOINT}
    - TEMP_FILE_DIR_FOR_UPLOADS=${TEMP_FILE_DIR_FOR_UPLOADS}
    - PORT=8000
    - EMAIL_HOST=${EMAIL_HOST}
    - EMAIL_USER=${EMAIL_USER}
    - EMAIL_PASS=${EMAIL_PASS}
    - EMAIL_FROM=${EMAIL_FROM}
    - ENABLE_TRUST_PROXY=${ENABLE_TRUST_PROXY}
    - CLOUD_PREFIX=${CLOUD_PREFIX}
  ports:
    - "8000:8000"
  container_name: medialit
  restart: on-failure

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

# Medialit Server
DB_CONNECTION_STRING_MEDIALIT=mongodb_connection_string
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
CDN_ENDPOINT=aws_s3_cdn_endpoint
TEMP_FILE_DIR_FOR_UPLOADS=path_to_directory
PORT=8000
CLOUD_PREFIX=medialit

Restart the services by running the following commands.

docker compose stop
docker compose up

NOTE: The MediaLit installation is done but is not yet integrated with CourseLit! There are a few more steps. Keep reading.

Obtain the API key from MediaLit

First you need to obtain the container id of your MediaLit instance. To do this, run:

docker ps

Once you have the ID of the MediaLit container, run the following to generate an API key

docker exec <container_id | container_name> node /app/apps/api/dist/src/scripts/create-local-user.js <email>

Keep the generated API key safe. We will use it in the following step.

For the most up-to-date instructions, refer to the official Readme of MediaLit.

Using Self-hosted MediaLit With CourseLit

Open the .env file and add the following lines.

MEDIALIT_SERVER=http://localhost:8000
MEDIALIT_APIKEY=key_from_above_step

Now, in the docker-compose.yml file, add the following two lines under the environment block of the app service.

      - MEDIALIT_APIKEY=${MEDIALIT_APIKEY}
      - MEDIALIT_SERVER=${MEDIALIT_SERVER}

Restart the server by running the following commands.

docker compose stop
docker compose up

That’s it! You now have a fully functioning LMS powered by CourseLit.

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.