Hosting¶

Deploying MeetAgain to a production server.

For the local development environment, see Getting Started.

Requirements¶

PHP 8.4 with extensions: gd, pdo_mysql, intl, redis, imagick, opcache, zip
MariaDB 10.6+
Redis or Valkey (session and application cache)
Writable var/ and data/ directories (owned by the PHP process user)

Recommended: FrankenPHP¶

FrankenPHP is a single binary that embeds PHP with built-in HTTPS, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3. No separate web server needed.

Minimal Caddyfile:

your-domain.com {
    root * /var/www/meetagain/public
    encode zstd br gzip
    @phpRoute { not file {path} }
    rewrite @phpRoute index.php
    @frontController path index.php
    php @frontController
    file_server { hide *.php }
}

Alternative: Nginx + PHP-FPM¶

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;
    root /var/www/meetagain/public;

    location / {
        try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/index\.php {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.4-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        return 404;
    }
}

Environment¶

Copy .env.dist to .env and set the required values:

APP_ENV=prod
APP_SECRET=<random 32-character string>
DATABASE_URL=mysql://user:password@127.0.0.1:3306/meetagain
MAILER_DSN=smtp://user:password@smtp.example.com:587
REDIS_URL=redis://127.0.0.1:6379

First-time setup¶

After configuring the environment, navigate to /install/ in your browser to run the web installer. The wizard creates your admin account and initialises the database.

Deploying updates¶

git pull
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate -n
php bin/console cache:clear --env=prod

Cron job¶

The app:cron command must run every minute for scheduled tasks (email sends, recurring event generation, etc.).

crontab (as web server user):

* * * * * php /var/www/meetagain/bin/console app:cron >> /dev/null 2>&1

Systemd timer alternative:

# /etc/systemd/system/meetagain-cron.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
User=www-data
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /var/www/meetagain/bin/console app:cron

# /etc/systemd/system/meetagain-cron.timer
[Timer]
OnCalendar=*:*:00
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

File permissions¶

The PHP process user must have write access to:

var/ — Symfony cache and logs
data/images/ — user-uploaded images