talk/INSTALL.md

Contents

• Installation - install the application on a machine
  • Via Docker
  • Via Source
• Setup - setup the application for first use
• Usage - connect the application to a website

Installation

Requirements

• Any flavour of Linux, OSX or Windows
• 1GB memory (minimum)
• 5GB storage (minimum)
• MongoDB v3.4 or later
• Redis v3.2 or later
• SSL Certificate
  • This application assumes that you will be serving this application in a production environment, and therefore requires that you serve it behind a webserver with a valid SSL certificate. This is chosen in order to secure user's sessions.

Installation From Docker

We currently support packaging the Talk application via Docker, which automates the dependency install and asset build process. This is the recommended way to deploy the application when used in production.

Available as coralproject/talk on Docker Hub.

Images are tagged using the following notation:

• x (where x is the major version number): any minor or patch updates will be included in this. If you're ok getting new features occasionally and all the bug fixes, this is the tag for you.
• x.y (where y is the minor version number): any patch updates will be included with this tag. If you like getting fixes and having features change only when you want, this is the tag for you. (recommended)
• x.y.z (where z is the patch version): this tag never gets updated, and essentially freezes your version, this should only be used when you are either extending Talk or are sure of a specific version you want to freeze.

We provide tags with *-onbuild that can be used for easy plugin integration and acts as a customization endpoint. Instructions are provided in the PLUGINS.md document as to how to use it.

Requirements

There are some runtime requirements for running Talk for Docker:

• Docker v1.13.0 or later
• Docker Compose v1.10.0 or later

Please be sure to check the versions of these requirements. Incorrect versions of these may lead to unexpected errors!

Installing

An example docker-compose.yml:

version: '2'
services:
  talk:
    image: coralproject/talk:1.5
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    depends_on:
      - mongo
      - redis
    environment:
      - TALK_MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo/talk
      - TALK_REDIS_URL=redis://redis
  mongo:
    image: mongo:3.2
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - mongo:/data/db
  redis:
    image: redis:3.2
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - redis:/data
volumes:
  mongo:
    external: false
  redis:
    external: false

At this stage, you should refer to the README.md for configuration variables that are specific to your installation. Some pre-defined fields have been filled in the above example which are consistent with Docker Compose naming conventions for Docker Links.

Scaling

If you are interested in splitting apart services, you can simply adjust the command being executed in the container to optimize for your use case. An example would be if you wanted to run the API server and the job processor on different machines. You can achieve this easily with docker compose:

version: '2'
services:
  talk-api:
    image: coralproject/talk:1.5
    command: cli serve
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    depends_on:
      - mongo
      - redis
    environment:
      - TALK_MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo/talk
      - TALK_REDIS_URL=redis://redis
  talk-jobs:
    image: coralproject/talk:1.5
    command: cli jobs process
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "5001:5000"
    depends_on:
      - mongo
      - redis
    environment:
      - TALK_MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo/talk
      - TALK_REDIS_URL=redis://redis
  mongo:
    image: mongo:3.2
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - mongo:/data/db
  redis:
    image: redis:3.2
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - redis:/data
volumes:
  mongo:
    external: false
  redis:
    external: false

Note that the only difference is in the command key. From this, you are able to discretely control which modules are running in order to have the maximum flexibility when managing your application.

Running

If you're using docker compose:

# Start the services using compose
docker-compose up -d

If you're using plain docker:

docker run -d -P coralproject/talk:latest

Installation From Source

This provides information on how to setup the application from source. Note that this is not recommended for production deploys, but will work for development and testing purposes.

Requirements

There are some runtime requirements for running Talk from source:

• Node ~7.8
• Yarn ^0.22.0

Please be sure to check the versions of these requirements. Incorrect versions of these may lead to unexpected errors!

Installing

Download

It is highly recommended that you download a released version as the code available in master may not be stable. You can download the latest release from the releases page.

You can also clone the git repository via:

git clone https://github.com/coralproject/talk.git

Building

We now have to install the dependencies and build the static assets.

# Install package dependancies
yarn

# Build static files
yarn build

After you create/modify the plugins.json (refer to PLUGINS.md for plugin docs) file, you can re-run the following to install their dependencies:

# Reconcile plugins
./bin/cli plugins reconcile

# Build static files
yarn build

Running

Refer to the README.md file for required configuration variables to add to the environment.

You can start the server after configuring the server using the command:

yarn start

This will setup the server to serve everything on a single node.js process and is designed to be used in production.

You can see other scripts we've made available by consulting the package.json file under the scripts key including:

• yarn test run unit tests
• yarn e2e run end to end tests
• yarn build-watch watch for changes to client files and build static assets
• yarn dev-start watch for changes to server files and reload the server while also sourcing a .env file in your local directory for configuration

Setup

Once you've installed Talk (either via Docker or source), you still need to setup the application. If you are unfamiliar with any terminology used in the setup process, refer to the TERMINOLOGY.md document.

Via Web

If you want to perform your setup via the web, you can navigate to your installation of Talk at the path /admin/install. There you will be asked a series of questions for your installation.

Via CLI

If you want to perform your setup through the terminal, you can simply run:

cli setup

And follow the instructions to perform initial setup and create your first user account.

Usage

After setup is complete, you can then refer to the /admin/configure path to get the embed code that you can copy/paste onto your blog or website in order to start using Talk.

In order for the embed to work correctly, you will need to whitelist the domain that is allowed to embed your site on the /admin/configure page, failure to do so will result in the comment stream not loading.