Few days ago I created an article on how to host Flipstarter with SSL on any VPS, Now I've successfully used some of the info there and tried to create a multiple campaign setup.

After doing the initial server setup for Ubuntu 20.04 using DigitalOcean guide you will have a normal user with sudo privileges that you can use.

Prepare The Domain

Get the domains for the campaigns, it could be two domain names or two sub domains. Just point both to the same VPS server in the A record on your domain name provider. We will setup Nginx to handle redirection based on target URL later.

Setting Up Docker

We install Docker using snap

sudo snap install docker

We get Flipstarter docker image

sudo docker pull flipstarter/flipstarter

We create a volume to store data for our first Flipstarter campaign, I call it flipstarter1

sudo  docker volume create flipstarter1

Create a volume for the second campaign:

sudo docker volume create flipstarter2

Setup Nginx

Nginx is the tool to direct requests to each container based on the domain requested

Install nginx

sudo apt install nginx

Open a port in the firewall for it

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

Create settings for the first campaign:

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/flipstarter1

Put this in the file replacing test1.example.com with your own domain:

server {
        server_name test1.example.com;

        access_log /var/log/nginx/flipstarter1-access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/flipstarter1-error.log;

        location / {
                        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
                        proxy_http_version 1.1;
                        proxy_buffering off;
                        proxy_cache off;
                        proxy_set_header Connection '';
                        chunked_transfer_encoding off;
  }
    listen 80;

}

Notice here the port is 3000 in proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;

settings for the second campaign:

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/flipstarter2

Put this in the file replacing test2.example.com with your own domain:

server {
        server_name test2.example.com;

        access_log /var/log/nginx/flipstarter2-access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/flipstarter2-error.log;

        location / {
                        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3001;
                        proxy_http_version 1.1;
                        proxy_buffering off;
                        proxy_cache off;
                        proxy_set_header Connection '';
                        chunked_transfer_encoding off;
  }
    listen 80;

}

Notice here the port is 3001 in proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3001; and we used different files for logs.

Remove the default Nginx site which shows a welcome page:

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Change directory to nginx site-enalbed

cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Activate the websites by creating a link to site-availble websites it in site-enabled directory:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/flipstarter1 .
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/flipstarter2 .

Check your Nginx settings:

sudo nginx -t

Restart Nginx:

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Back to Docker

Start the first container for the first flipstarter campaign:

sudo docker run -d --restart always --name flipstarter -v flipstarter1:/app/static/campaigns -p 3000:3000 flipstarter/flipstarter

Note we used flipstarter1 as a volume name.

sudo docker run -d --restart always --name flipstarter2 --env PORT=3001  -v flipstarter2:/app/static/campaigns -p 3001:3001 flipstarter/flipstarter

Note we used --env PORT=3001 to tell the software to use port 3001 and changed the port accordingly in -p 3001:3001 . This allows as to run multiple software instances on different ports. Here we used flipstarter2 as a volume.

You can test connection to the containers using curl:

curl 127.0.0.1:3000
curl 127.0.0.1:3001 

Getting SSL certificate

Without SSL certificate, our job is not complete. We install certbot:

sudo snap install --classic certbot

Do a required linking:

sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

Do the usual certbot setup for nginx, it should recognize your domains as setup in the your nginx website configuration file and offer you option to issue certificates for each one:

sudo certbot --nginx

That's it, Enjoy!