Posts by laurenceh

    Hi,


    I’m using Perch 3.1.4 and it was a fresh install.


    When trying to add a new page that is a link only, I’m getting the error: "Sorry, that page could not be created."


    Here’s the debug report from the "Add a new page" Admin page:



    And here’s my general diagnostics report:



    Any help much appreciated.


    Thanks,

    Laurence

    @Jordin – many thanks for your input.


    You’re right: the issue isn’t so much Perch-related as Docker/Apache/Certbot related, but my feeling was that if a solution can be documented then it might be a useful tip for Perch users who are already using Docker locally.


    Your suggestion regarding mounting the location where Certbot has saved the certificates is good.

    So I guess I would firstly just create virtualhosts on the host server as normal then use certbot to get/install the certificates on the host server as normal before even running docker-compose up?


    I seem to recall that my problem before was that I was trying to install the certificates from within my docker Apache container and that was failing. Although my site was accessible over HTTP from a browser, the LE challenge was somehow failing when initiated from the Docker container. Maybe that was a stupid thing to do but it somehow felt against the spirit of using Docker for me to be doing lots of initial set-up on the host. It felt to me like all the set-up should be configured within docker files and run automatically on docker-compose up.


    Anyway I’m now considering your advice and have also been looking at these references:

    So I’ll try again and see how it goes.

    Since reading Rachel’s excellent tutorial https://perchrunway.com/blog/2…ker-for-local-development last year, I’ve been able to get several Perch-based sites running locally on Docker and it works really well.


    However I’ve had less luck in getting the same Docker-based environment to work on a remote server. That was the target for me – do the environmental set-up once then be able to bring it up easily via docker-compose elsewhere.


    I got tantalisingly close – my site was Dockerised and serving fine from my remote DigitalOcean server on http only – but the hump I couldn’t get over was to get LetsEncrypt secure certificate challenges to pass in order to serve the site over HTTPS. I tried hard but just couldn’t get the combination of Docker + Apache + LetsEncrypt to work. I ended up trashing that server and just building a new one with no Docker ;(.


    There seems to be more documentation out there for using LetsEncrypt/certbot in an Nginx + Docker environment, but the reasons I persisted with Apache were that:

    i) the original tutorial was based on Apache;

    ii) traditionally any Perch server config documentation has focused on Apache so Apache made sense; and

    iii) I personally know Apache better.


    Has anyone had any joy taking Rachel’s original post and successfully running it on your remote server, serving your site over HTTPS?


    I’m about to start a new project and am thinking about having another crack at this but any tips to get me over the hump would be much appreciated! I’d also be happy to switch from Apache to Nginx if that works better for the remote server certbot part.


    When I finally get there with this, I’m more than happy to write/share what I hope is a useful follow up piece to Rachel’s original post, sharing how to use that Docker Perch/Runway set-up both locally and on the remote server.