Deploy and Host Bonfire on Railway

Bonfire is an open-source, modular, federated social networking platform built with Elixir and Phoenix. It empowers communities to create custom digital spaces with ActivityPub federation. This Railway template deploys a complete Bonfire stack featuring the core application server (bonfire), a PostGIS geospatial database (db), and a Meilisearch search engine instance (search).

About Hosting Bonfire

Hosting Bonfire on Railway runs a modern three-tier infrastructure stack:

Bonfire App Server (bonfire): The core Elixir/Phoenix backend and social web interface (bonfirenetworks/bonfire:1.0.5-social-amd64). It handles user interactions, ActivityPub federation protocol messages, and media processing. It mounts a persistent volume at /opt/app/data/uploads for media storage and listens on port 4000.
PostGIS Database (db): PostgreSQL database with geospatial extensions (postgis/postgis:17-3.5-alpine). It stores application state, user profiles, posts, and social graph data with persistent storage mounted at /var/lib/postgresql/data.
Meilisearch (search): Lightning-fast full-text search engine (getmeili/meilisearch:v1.11) configured with SEARCH_ADAPTER=meili to power instant search across social feeds, users, topics, and federated content. Persistent storage is mounted at /meili_data.

Common Use Cases

Self-hosted federated social networks: Launch an independent node connected to the broader ActivityPub Fediverse (Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc.).
Custom community platforms: Build tailored digital spaces for discussions, collaboration, and content sharing.
Privacy-focused social networking: Maintain full ownership of community data, uploaded media, and social analytics.
Full-text search enabled community hubs: Provide high-performance search across discussions, posts, tags, and user profiles via Meilisearch integration.

Dependencies for Bonfire Hosting

Bonfire Application image: bonfirenetworks/bonfire:1.0.5-social-amd64
PostGIS Database image: postgis/postgis:17-3.5-alpine
Meilisearch image: getmeili/meilisearch:v1.11
Three persistent volumes:
- bonfire: /opt/app/data/uploads (User media and file attachments)
- db: /var/lib/postgresql/data (PostgreSQL database files)
- search: /meili_data (Meilisearch indices and internal state)
Railway public domain for the bonfire web interface (port 4000)
Auto-generated secrets: SECRET_KEY_BASE (64 chars) and POSTGRES_PASSWORD (32 chars)

Upstream: Bonfire Networks · GitHub Repo · Meilisearch Docs

Implementation Details

Service	Image	Role	Port	Volume Mount
bonfire	`bonfirenetworks/bonfire:1.0.5-social-amd64`	Social Network Core & Web UI	`4000`	`/opt/app/data/uploads`
db	`postgis/postgis:17-3.5-alpine`	Relational & Geospatial Database	`5432`	`/var/lib/postgresql/data`
search	`getmeili/meilisearch:v1.11`	Full-Text Search Engine	`7700`	`/meili_data`

Volumes (drives) — what to mount

Service	Mount path	What is stored
bonfire	`/opt/app/data/uploads`	User avatars, images, media attachments, and uploaded files
db	`/var/lib/postgresql/data`	PostgreSQL tables, PostGIS spatial data, indexes, and transaction logs
search	`/meili_data`	Meilisearch indexes, documents, and search engine state

Quick Start

Click the Deploy on Railway button above.
Sign in (or create a free Railway account) and click Deploy.
Allow 2–3 minutes for all three services (db, search, and bonfire) to build and provision.
Open the bonfire service → Settings → Networking and click the generated public domain URL.
Complete the initial admin setup in the Bonfire web onboarding wizard.
(Optional) Configure SMTP settings in the bonfire environment variables if email verification or notification delivery is required for your network.

Configuration

Core Application Variables (`bonfire`)

Variable	Default / Source	Description / Notes
`HOSTNAME`	`${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}`	Canonical public hostname for web traffic and ActivityPub federation
`SERVER_PORT`	`4000`	HTTP listening port for the Elixir application server
`PUBLIC_PORT`	`80`	Public HTTP port exposed to clients
`APP_NAME`	`Bonfire`	Name of your social networking instance
`LANG`	`en_US.UTF-8`	System locale setting
`SECRET_KEY_BASE`	Auto-generated secret (64 chars)	Cryptographic secret for session signing and cookies
`SIGNING_SALT`	`${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}`	Salt for security token signing
`ENCRYPTION_SALT`	`${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}`	Salt for data encryption at rest
`RELEASE_COOKIE`	`${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}`	Erlang cluster distribution release cookie
`POSTGRES_HOST`	`${{db.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}`	Private network hostname of the PostGIS database
`POSTGRES_USER`	`postgres`	Database username
`POSTGRES_DB`	`bonfire_db`	Main database name
`POSTGRES_PASSWORD`	`${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}`	Database authentication password
`DB_MIGRATE_INDEXES_CONCURRENTLY`	`false`	Disable concurrent index creation during database migrations
`SEARCH_ADAPTER`	`meili`	Enables Meilisearch integration for full-text search
`SEARCH_MEILI_INSTANCE`	`https://${{search.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:7700`	Internal Meilisearch connection URL
`MEILI_MASTER_KEY`	`${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}`	Master API key for Meilisearch authentication
`UPLOAD_LIMIT`	`20`	Maximum file upload size limit in MB
`MAIL_BACKEND`	`none`	Email delivery backend (`none`, `smtp`, etc.)
`MAIL_SERVER`	`""`	SMTP mail server hostname
`MAIL_PORT`	`""`	SMTP mail server port
`MAIL_USER`	`""`	SMTP authentication username
`MAIL_PASSWORD`	`""`	SMTP authentication password
`PORT`	`4000`	Web server listening port

Database Variables (`db`)

Variable	Default / Source	Description / Notes
`PGDATA`	`/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata`	Internal data path inside the PostgreSQL container
`POSTGRES_DB`	`bonfire_db`	Initial database created on startup
`POSTGRES_USER`	`postgres`	Default superuser name
`POSTGRES_PASSWORD`	Auto-generated secret (32 chars)	Database password secret
`DATABASE_URL`	`postgresql://${{PGUSER}}:${{POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}@${{RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:5432/${{PGDATABASE}}`	Internal database connection string

Search Variables (`search`)

Variable	Default / Source	Description / Notes
`MEILI_MASTER_KEY`	`${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}}`	Authentication key shared with `bonfire`
`MEILI_ENV`	`production`	Production environment mode
`MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS`	`true`	Disables telemetry reporting

Custom Domain

Open the bonfire service → Settings → Networking → Custom Domain.
Enter your custom domain (e.g., social.yourdomain.com) and configure the CNAME record in your DNS provider.
Update the HOSTNAME environment variable on the bonfire service to match your custom domain (social.yourdomain.com).
Railway automatically handles SSL/TLS certificate provisioning.

Updating Bonfire

Open the bonfire service → Settings → Source.
Update the image tag to a newer release (e.g., bonfirenetworks/bonfire:1.0.5-social-amd64).
Click Redeploy.

Database schema migrations run automatically on startup. All database state, uploaded files, and search indexes remain safe inside their attached volumes.

Traps

Common pitfalls and failure modes:

HOSTNAME Mismatch for ActivityPub Federation — Federation protocol messages embed canonical URLs. Changing HOSTNAME after creating federated accounts or posts can break existing ActivityPub actor IDs and remote follower connections.
Unconfigured Mail Backend (MAIL_BACKEND=none) — With email disabled by default, password reset emails and user registration confirmations will not be delivered. Configure SMTP settings (MAIL_SERVER, MAIL_USER, MAIL_PASSWORD, MAIL_FROM) for production deployments.
Database Connection Race Condition — On cold starts or first-time deploys, the bonfire container may attempt to run database migrations before PostGIS is fully initialized. Railway will auto-restart bonfire until db accepts connections.
Meilisearch Master Key Mismatch — Ensure MEILI_MASTER_KEY in the search service matches the MEILI_MASTER_KEY variable in bonfire. They both derive from ${{db.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}} by default.

Why Deploy Bonfire on Railway?

Railway delivers a powerful cloud platform for deploying multi-container federated architectures. Hosting Bonfire on Railway provides high-performance PostGIS database support, private inter-service networking, persistent storage volumes, automated SSL encryption, and simple scale-out capabilities without managing underlying servers.