Deploy and Host Civic Services Directory on Railway

Deploy a ready-to-publish, independent civic-services directory built on Drupal 11 + PostgreSQL in one click. The site installs itself on first boot and ships fully populated: a "Service" content type, a "Service Categories" taxonomy, six clearly-labeled fictional demo services, a category-grouped front page, and the independent-service disclaimer — no manual steps. This template pins a known-good dependency graph (Drupal core, PHP 8.5, Apache) and wires persistent storage and a readiness health check.

About Hosting

Everything runs on Railway's managed platform:

Web service — Apache + PHP 8.5 (Drupal 11.4.x), built from the public uttkarsh-26/civic-services-directory-railway repo. Apache adapts to Railway's dynamic PORT, and a /health.php endpoint drives the platform health check.
PostgreSQL 18 — managed database service with SSL, auto-provisioned. Drupal is wired to it through ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}.
Persistent volume — a 500 MB volume mounts at /data: uploaded files, the hash salt, and configuration exports survive redeploys. No volume, no persistence — files reset on every deploy.
Automatic install — on first boot the entrypoint runs drush site:install (idempotent, guarded by a PostgreSQL advisory lock), then the content bootstrap creates the directory product (content type, taxonomy, demo services, front-page view, disclaimer block). Both are idempotent — redeploys create nothing twice.

What You Get

A working directory out of the box — the homepage lists services grouped by category, every entry carries an "Official source URL" link to the real government portal, and a footer states the independence promise: "Independent information service — not a government website. Always confirm on official government portals."
A clear content model — add services from the UI (Content → Add content → Service): category, agency, summary, full description, eligibility, required documents, official source URL, last-verified date.
Independent branding — the site is an independent civic-tech directory: no government seals, no .gov styling, no domain mimicry. All demo content is fictional and labeled [Demo entry — fictional, for template preview].

Why Deploy

Reproducible — the dependency graph is pinned and verified by CI on every commit; Composer issues fail the build instead of shipping.
Battle-tested on Railway — this template ships with fixes for the two platform-specific pitfalls that break naive Drupal containers: Railway's builder rejects Dockerfile VOLUME instructions (volumes are attached natively instead), and the Drupal base image's multi-MPM state is resolved at boot so Apache always starts clean.
Secret-safe — the admin password is a required deploy-time variable (never baked into the image); private state (hash salt, config exports) lives under /data, outside the web root.
Zero local setup — no Drush, no Composer, no PHP install on your machine. Point, click, deploy.

Common Use Cases

Launch an independent civic services directory for a city, district, or community — pre-populated and ready to edit.
Publish a government-services guide that links out to official portals without imitating them.
Use as a starting point for custom Drupal work — composer require your modules in CI, keep the same storage and health-check guarantees.

Dependencies for

Drupal core 11.4.x (latest patch, updated weekly by Dependabot)
PostgreSQL 18 (Railway managed service)
PHP 8.5 + Apache on Debian Bookworm (official Drupal image)
Composer-managed contrib dependencies, pinned and audited

Deployment Dependencies

DATABASE_URL — provided automatically via ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}
DRUPAL_ACCOUNT_PASS — required; choose a strong admin password at deploy time
DRUPAL_ACCOUNT_NAME (default admin) and DRUPAL_ACCOUNT_MAIL — the initial admin account
DRUPAL_SITE_NAME — site title used by the installer
/data volume on the web service for persistent files and private state