Deployment

This page contains information about deployment-related considerations.

Important Notes

• Branch information: The application is currently running on its local branch final-branch on the DigitalOcean server. This is because the local master branch on the DigitalOcean server has double commits due to the retroactive removal of .env files from earlier commits, and the student team opted not to push these changes to the remote master branch out of concern for affecting the application. This means the final-branch is functioning as the master branch on the server.

  • The remote master branch does not have this double commit history, and matches the remote final-branch. The remote final-branch matches the final-branch on the server.

• Email update: Emails sent through the application will not function if the server is shut down and restarted. If the server is shut down for any reason, ask the administrator (currently Taili Thompson) to visit https://accounts.google.com/DisplayUnlockCaptcha, sign in using the email used on the server (currently [email protected]), and press "Continue". This will re-enable email access to the app.

  • The student team believes this is because the site is labelled as non-secure by web browsers and lacks a certificate. Adding a certificate could resolve this need to revisit the link.

• When deploying the application, review the custom application vars at the bottom of the settings.py file. Link to code.

• The instance was set up using the following DO tutorial: link.

• Environment variables are stored in a .env file on the Digital Ocean instance. They are fetched here in settings.py.

• CRITICAL FIX: When changing the domain name of the application, make sure to update hard-coded notification link paths. See the github issue.