Deploy and Host Drupal 11 on Railway

Deploy a production-ready Drupal 11 site backed by PostgreSQL in one click. This template pins a known-good dependency graph (Drupal core, PHP 8.5, Apache) and wires persistent storage, a readiness health check, and automatic first-boot installation — no local tooling required.

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/drupal-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) with the variables you provide, then hands off to Apache.

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 a new Drupal site (blog, corporate site, intranet, community portal) without managing servers.
Preview a Drupal 11 codebase or contribute upstream: the repo's test.sh gives you a full local smoke test (install, health, drush, cron, persistence) in minutes.
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