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Writebook

Stack

CMS Publishing

Writebook - 37signals' free, self-hosted publishing tool: write and share books, manuals, and documentation with a clean, fast reader. It is a Rails app (the same stack behind Basecamp and HEY) fronted by Thruster, 37signals' HTTP/2 proxy.

Image details

Architecture: amd64, arm64
Image size: 195 MB
User: basecamp

Source details

Repo: basecamp/writebook
Stars: 558
Forks: 96
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
Latest: v1.2.2 · 1 month ago
Updated: 32 minutes ago

Configuration

Type
Compose
Platform
linux
Image
ghcr.io/basecamp/writebook:v1.2.0
Ports
5000:5000
Volumes
/rails/storage : storage
Env vars
HTTP_PORT=5000DISABLE_SSL=trueSECRET_KEY_BASE=${SECRET_KEY_BASE}
Restart
unless-stopped
Source
Repo

Template by deployable-sh·Source

Report issue

Standalone Install

Select an install method, to see config/commands for deploying Writebook

Installation method

Install on Portainer

Import all app templates into your Portainer instance, for easy 1-click deploys

  1. Ensure both Docker and Portainer are installed, and up-to-date
  2. Log into your Portainer web UI
  3. Under Settings → App Templates, paste the below URL
  4. Head to Home → App Templates, and the list of apps will show up
  5. Select Writebook, fill in any config options, and hit Deploy

Template Import URL

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lissy93/portainer-templates/main/templates.json
Show Me demo
Original stackfile

The compose file this template deploys, straight from its repo:

name: writebook

services:
  writebook:
    image: ghcr.io/basecamp/writebook:v1.2.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      HTTP_PORT: "5000"
      DISABLE_SSL: "true"
      SECRET_KEY_BASE: ${SECRET_KEY_BASE}
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    volumes:
      - storage:/rails/storage

volumes:
  storage:

Or deploy it directly from the source:

git clone https://github.com/deployable-sh/stacks
cd stacks
docker compose -f writebook/compose.yaml up -d

More install options in our documentation, or see basecamp/writebook for app-specific guidance.

Writebook

Instantly publish your own books on the web for free, no publisher required.

Writebook is an easy-to-use application for publishing content on the web. Content is authored in Markdown, and books can contain picture pages, chapters, and title pages. Books can be published privately or publicly, and are searchable.

How to get Writebook

Writebook is distributed as a Docker image. The simplest way to install and run it is by using ONCE.
To get started, paste this snippet into a terminal on the machine where you want to install Writebook:
curl https://get.once.com/writebook | sh

Deploying manually with Docker

If you'd rather set the Docker image up yourself, you can use docker run or docker compose to do that. The official image is ghcr.io/basecamp/writebook.
You'll need to route the incoming web traffic to ports 80 and 443 (or just 80 if you run without SSL). To persist the storage of the application, mount a Docker volume to /rails/storage.
You can configure the SSL setting with the following environment variables:
  • SSL_DOMAIN - enable automatic SSL via Let's Encrypt for the given domain name
  • DISABLE_SSL - alternatively, set DISABLE_SSL to serve over plain HTTP

Running in development

Install dependencies:
bin/setup

Start the development server:
bin/dev

Serve Writebook on your own domain behind Caddy, Nginx or Traefik. Fill in your domain and copy the result. It's a starting point, some apps need their own base URL or extra headers set too.

Proxying writebook.example.com to http://writebook:5000

Add this to your Caddyfile

writebook.example.com {
	reverse_proxy http://writebook:5000
}

Check the logs first

Nine times out of ten the logs tell you exactly what went wrong.

  • In Portainer, go to Containers, click the container, then Logs. Or run docker logs <container>
  • Exit codes help too: 137 means killed, usually out of memory. 126 or 127 means the command inside the image is broken.

Port already in use

If deployment fails with "Bind for 0.0.0.0:5000 failed: port is already allocated", something else on your server is using that port.

  • Find what's using it: sudo ss -tlnp | grep :5000
  • Stop the other service, or pick a different host port. In 5000:5000 only the left number is yours to change, the right one belongs to the app.

Running but the page won't load

The container is up but nothing appears in your browser.

  • Use your server's real IP: http://your-server-ip:5000. The 0.0.0.0 link Portainer shows isn't a real address.
  • Give it a minute after first deploy, writebook can take a while to initialise.
  • Make sure your firewall allows the port, e.g. sudo ufw allow 5000

Image won't pull

Test the pull directly on the host: docker pull ghcr.io/basecamp/writebook:v1.2.0

  • "manifest unknown" means the tag no longer exists.
  • "toomanyrequests" is the Docker Hub rate limit. Log in with docker login to raise it.
  • "no space left on device" means a full disk. Reclaim space with docker system prune

"exec format error"

This means the image was built for a different CPU architecture than your server.

  • This image supports: amd64, arm64
  • Check yours with uname -m: x86_64 is amd64, aarch64 is arm64. Raspberry Pi and other ARM boards are the usual culprits.

Container keeps restarting

The unless-stopped restart policy relaunches the app after every crash, so the real error can scroll past.

  • Check the logs right after a restart, the last few lines before it died are the useful ones.
  • Get the exit code with docker inspect <container> --format '{{.State.ExitCode}}'
  • Still stuck? Redeploy once with the restart policy set to no so the failure stays visible.

Stack won't deploy

Compose stacks fail fast on small mistakes, and Portainer shows the reason just above the editor.

  • YAML only accepts spaces for indentation, a single tab breaks the whole file.

Raise an issue

Found something which isn't working as it should? Here's how to report it.

A Compose stack

Writebook is a Compose stack, a set of containers defined in one file and brought up together by Portainer, then started and stopped as a single app.

The app image

An image is the app packed up ready to go, everything Writebook needs bundled into one download. This template pulls ghcr.io/basecamp/writebook:v1.2.0, which Docker fetches once (about 195 MB) and then starts your own copy from.

Where the image comes from

Docker pulls its images from registries, public libraries of ready-built apps. Writebook's comes from the GitHub Container Registry, published by basecamp.

Version tags

The bit after the colon in the image name is the version tag. This one pins v1.2.0, so every redeploy gives you that exact build until you bump it yourself.

Which machines it runs on

Every image is built for particular CPU types. This one ships for amd64, arm64, so it runs on both regular x86 servers and ARM boards like a Raspberry Pi.

Ports

A port is the door the app answers on. A mapping like 5000:5000 means it's reachable on port 5000 of your server, where the left number is yours to change and the right one belongs to the app. It opens:

  • 5000:5000

Volumes

A volume is where Writebook keeps its files so they survive an update or a restart. Without one, anything it saves would sit inside the container and vanish the moment it's recreated. This template mounts:

  • /rails/storage kept in the storage volume Docker manages

Environment variables

Environment variables are the settings you hand over when you deploy, things like a password or a timezone. Writebook takes 3 of them, all with defaults you can leave alone or tweak:

  • HTTP_PORT, defaults to 5000
  • DISABLE_SSL, defaults to true
  • SECRET_KEY_BASE, pulled from your own environment. Rails secret - a long random string.

Restart policy

The restart policy here is unless-stopped, so Docker restarts Writebook after a crash or reboot, but leaves it off when you stop it on purpose. You can change this on the deploy screen. The choices are no (never restart), on-failure (only after a crash), unless-stopped (restart unless you stop it), and always (bring it back no matter what).

Networking

Nothing custom is set, so Writebook sits on Docker's default bridge network: its own private space that reaches the outside world only through the ports it publishes.

Container name

Once it's deployed, Portainer names the container writebook. That's what you'll spot in the containers list and use in commands like docker logs writebook.

Platform

The platform is linux, the kind of system the container is built to run on. Docker and Portainer handle this on a normal Linux server.

Open source license

Writebook is open source, released under the MIT license. In plain terms the code is out in the open, so you're free to run it and change it to fit what you need.

Portainer app templates

Zooming out, this whole page comes from a Portainer app template: a short recipe telling Portainer how to set Writebook up. Add the template list to Portainer once, then deploying Writebook is a click rather than a wall of config.