Deploy and Host Otter Wiki — Private Wiki on Railway

Otter Wiki is a Markdown wiki with a web editor, Git-backed page history and file attachments. This independent template provides a private starting configuration for personal notes, project documentation and small-team knowledge bases. It deploys the upstream application with one service, one persistent volume and an initial administrator.

About Hosting Otter Wiki — Private Wiki

Enter your administrator email when deploying. Railway generates a unique 64-character password for the new installation. The administrator is created before the web server starts; public registration is disabled and pages, edits and attachments require an approved account.

The volume mounted at /app-data holds the SQLite database, settings, Git repository and attachments. Keep it attached when redeploying. The container image is pinned to Otter Wiki 2.26.3 and an immutable digest. A native readiness check runs at /-/healthz, and public HTTPS routes to port 8080.

This is a single-instance deployment. Hosting and storage are charged under your Railway plan. The template does not configure automatic backups or a monthly spending cap.

Common Use Cases

Private personal notes and Markdown documentation.
Project runbooks with page history and attachments.
A small team knowledge base with administrator-managed access.

Dependencies for Otter Wiki — Private Wiki Hosting

A Railway account with capacity for one application service and a persistent volume.
An administrator email and secure storage for the generated password.
The deployment wrapper at https://github.com/Peinne/otterwiki-railway-template, which builds the pinned upstream container.

SQLite and Git storage are included in the application image. No separate database service or external model API is required.

First Login and Ongoing Operation

After deployment succeeds, retrieve the generated password privately from the service variables and sign in at the HTTPS address. Create a disposable page and attachment, redeploy on the same volume, and confirm their persistence. Save your working credentials securely. Then remove both BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_EMAIL and BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD from Railway, apply the changes, and verify the same login and content again.

Existing administrator credentials are preserved on later starts. Bootstrap variables are not a password-reset mechanism. Manage users and passwords within Otter Wiki.

Before updates, take a private backup and verify recovery to a separate empty volume. The repository includes a checked export and offline recovery procedure. The export requires a quiet period without writes and is not an atomic filesystem snapshot. Archives contain sensitive settings and authentication material; never post them in support requests.

Read the installation and recovery guides in the repository. This template provides no support response-time or availability guarantee. Report wrapper issues through the repository with sanitized details, and distinguish them from upstream application issues.

Why Deploy Otter Wiki — Private Wiki on Railway?

Railway builds the repository, provides HTTPS routing and mounts persistent storage in one project. This template supplies the application settings, generated first-run credentials and readiness check for a small private wiki. Administrators remain responsible for access, updates, backups, storage and charges. The readiness check is not continuous monitoring, and a single replica with a volume does not provide high availability.

Otter Wiki is maintained at https://github.com/redimp/otterwiki. This is an independent deployment wrapper, not an official upstream or Railway-verified template.

Otter artwork by Christy Presler, CC BY 3.0, from the upstream Otter Wiki project; used without modification.