How to setup Wekan using docker-compose in just 3 minutes

First, create a directory for the Wekan files to reside in, e.g.:

mkdir /opt/wekan

Change to that directory:

cd /opt/wekan

Now, we need to create the data directory which needs to be owned by UID 999: in order for Wekan to store uploads:

mkdir -p wekan_data && chown -R 999:999 wekan_data

Now, create docker-compose.yml in that directory

services:
  wekandb:
    restart: always
    image: mongo:5
    command: mongod --logpath /dev/null --oplogSize 128 --quiet
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "mongo", "--quiet", "--eval", "'quit(db.runCommand({ ping: 1 }).ok ? 0 : 2)'"]
      interval: 15s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 10s
    volumes:
      - ./wekan-db:/data/db
      - ./wekan-db-dump:/dump
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro

  wekan:
    image: quay.io/wekan/wekan
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 7972:8080
    environment:
      - MONGO_URL=mongodb://wekandb:27017/wekan
      - ROOT_URL=${URL}
      - MAIL_URL=${EMAIL_URL}
      - MAIL_FROM=${EMAIL_FROM}
      - WITH_API=true
      - WRITABLE_PATH=/data
    volumes:
      - ./wekan_data:/data
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    depends_on:
      - wekandb

After that, create .env in said directory containing some info about your node:

URL=https://wekan.mydomain.com
EMAIL_URL=smtp://noreply%40mydomain.com:[email protected]:25/
EMAIL_FROM='My Wekan <[email protected]>'

Now we’ll use the script from Create a systemd service for your docker-compose project in 10 seconds in order to create a systemd service to automatically run the service:

curl -fsSL https://techoverflow.net/scripts/create-docker-compose-service.sh | sudo bash /dev/stdin

This script will also automatically start the service (i.e. docker-compose up).

Now you can setup your reverse proxy to point your domain - e.g. wekan.techoverflow.net to port 7972 (or change that port in docker-compose.yml). Which reverse proxy you use doesn’t matter all too much, I use both nginx and traefik. I will cover the configuration for these reverse proxies in future posts.

Once you can access Wekan, you can register as a new user. The first user will be an admin and can also disable registration using the Web UI.