Deploy and Host elk-zone on Railway

What is Elk?

Elk is a nimble, modern Mastodon web client designed to provide a fast, user-friendly interface to interact with Mastodon servers.

Currently in alpha, Elk aims to enhance your Mastodon experience with smooth performance and progressive web app capabilities.

Features of Elk

• Lightweight and nimble Mastodon web client
• Progressive Web App (PWA) support for desktop and mobile
• Multi-instance login compatibility
• Rich timeline views and notifications support
• Emoji and content rendering with Iconify and TipTap editor
• High-performance state management with Pinia
• Multilingual support using i18n integration
• Dark mode and color mode toggling
• Advanced compose editor with rich text features
• Offline support and caching via Workbox
• Syntax highlighting with Shiki
• Customizable UI powered by UnoCSS and Vue macros
• Integration with Mastodon API client in TypeScript (Masto.js)
• Smooth animations and gestures with VueUse and Motion

About Hosting Elk

Hosting Elk on Railway leverages Railway’s native Docker support and persistent volumes. The application requires persistent storage for user data and configuration, by default through volumes mounted at /elk/data.

All configuration, including dependency management and build steps, are done within the container, ensuring consistency and reliability. Railway provides automatic HTTPS for your instance, and you can easily add custom domains if you want to host your own self-managed version of Elk.

Common Use Cases

• Host a fast and modern Mastodon web client accessible globally
• Customize and extend Elk for specialized Fediverse projects
• Provide a lightweight alternative UI to Mastodon servers or instances

Dependencies for Elk Hosting

• Vite + Vue + Nuxt
• Node.js (LTS)
• Railway persistent volume (/elk/data)

Deployment Dependencies

• Dockerfile configured for Railway compatibility (no VOLUME instruction, dynamic permission fix)
• Environment variables properly set for user permissions and ports

Why Deploy elk-zone on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying elk-zone on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.