Campfire-CE (Community Edition)

A community-driven fork of Small Bets that makes it easy to run your own branded community. All branding (app name, logos, colors, emails) is configurable through environment variables—no code changes required.

Based on Once Campfire, a Ruby on Rails chat application built by 37signals, with additional features from Small Bets. See smallbets-mods.md for a list of modifications.

This project combines the simplicity of Campfire with optional payment gating, passwordless authentication, and community features. Perfect for running paid memberships, course communities, or private group chats.

If you find a bug or have a feature request, please post an issue. Contributions welcome!

Running in development

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.4.5 (check with ruby --version)
• Redis server
• SQLite3
• Node.js with npm (or bun) for Tailwind CSS builds

Customizing Branding

To run your own branded community, copy .env.sample to .env and configure:

APP_NAME="Your Community Name"
APP_HOST="chat.yourdomain.com"
SUPPORT_EMAIL="[email protected]"
MAILER_FROM_NAME="Your Community"
MAILER_FROM_EMAIL="[email protected]"

See BRANDING.md for complete customization options.

Setup

bin/setup

Start the app in development:

bin/dev

This starts both the Rails server and Vite dev server using Foreman (via Procfile.dev).

The bin/setup script installs Ruby gems and Node packages (via npm install), prepares the database, and configures the application. If you skip bin/setup, install frontend dependencies manually with npm install.

All CSS is managed through Vite. Tailwind processes styles from app/frontend/entrypoints/application.css, which is automatically rebuilt during development.

Running in production

Campfire-CE uses Kamal for deployment. A modern tool that provides zero-downtime deployments with Docker.

Prerequisites

• A Linux server (Ubuntu 20.04+ recommended)
• Docker installed on the server
• A domain name pointing to your server
• Docker Hub account (or another container registry)
• Kamal CLI installed locally (install via gem install kamal)

Initial Server Setup

1. Initialize Kamal (creates .kamal/secrets if missing):

   kamal init

2. Configure environment variables: Edit .kamal/secrets and add your production secrets, for example:

   # Registry
   KAMAL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=your-docker-hub-password
   REGISTRY_USERNAME=your-docker-hub-username
   
   # Server + domain
   SERVER_IP=your-server-ip
   PROXY_HOST=your-domain.com
   
   # Application secrets (generate with: rails secret)
   SECRET_KEY_BASE=your-rails-secret-key
   RESEND_API_KEY=your-resend-api-key
   AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-aws-access-key
   AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-aws-secret-key
   AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
   VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY=your-vapid-public-key
   VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY=your-vapid-private-key
   WEBHOOK_SECRET=your-webhook-secret
   COOKIE_DOMAIN=your-domain.com
   
   # Optional features
   GUMROAD_ON=false

3. Initial deployment:

   kamal setup    # Sets up Docker, builds image, starts services

Subsequent Deployments

kamal deploy   # Zero-downtime deployment

Automated Deployments

This repository includes GitHub Actions for automatic deployment:

1. Set GitHub Secrets in your repository settings:

   • SSH_PRIVATE_KEY - SSH key for server access
   • SERVER_IP - Your production server IP
   • DOMAIN - Your domain name (PROXY_HOST)
   • DOCKER_USERNAME & DOCKER_PASSWORD - Docker Hub credentials
   • SECRET_KEY_BASE - Rails encryption key
   • RESEND_API_KEY - Email delivery service
   • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID & AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY - File storage
   • AWS_DEFAULT_REGION - AWS region (default: us-east-1)
   • VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY & VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY - Push notifications
   • WEBHOOK_SECRET - Webhook security
   • COOKIE_DOMAIN - Your domain for cookies
   • Optional: GUMROAD_ACCESS_TOKEN, GUMROAD_ON, GUMROAD_PRODUCT_IDS

2. Deploy automatically:

   • Push to master branch for automatic deployment
   • Or use "Deploy with Kamal" workflow for manual deployment

Alternative: Manual Docker Deployment

If you prefer not to use Kamal, you can deploy manually with Docker:

# Build and run
docker build -t campfire-ce .
docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e RAILS_ENV=production \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=your-secret-key \
  -v /path/to/storage:/rails/storage \
  campfire-ce

Environment Variables Reference

Variable	Purpose	Required
SECRET_KEY_BASE	Rails encryption key	✅
RESEND_API_KEY	Email delivery via Resend	✅
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID	File storage on AWS	✅
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	File storage on AWS	✅
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION	AWS region (us-east-1)	✅
VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY	Web push notifications	✅
VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY	Web push notifications	✅
WEBHOOK_SECRET	Webhook security	✅
COOKIE_DOMAIN	Session cookies domain	✅
GUMROAD_ACCESS_TOKEN	Payment processing	⚠️
GUMROAD_ON	Enable Gumroad features	⚠️
GUMROAD_PRODUCT_IDS	Gumroad product IDs	⚠️

✅ = Required for production deployment ⚠️ = Optional

Database Backups

IMPORTANT: Campfire-CE does not include automatic database backups out of the box. You must implement your own backup strategy.

Recommended Options:

1. Volume Snapshots - Use your cloud provider's snapshot feature (DigitalOcean, AWS, etc.)

2. Periodic Backups - Schedule cron jobs or scripts to backup the SQLite database:

   # Example: Daily backup at 2 AM
   0 2 * * * tar -czf /backups/campfire-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).tar.gz /disk/campfire/db/production.sqlite3

See DEPLOYMENT.md for detailed backup strategies.