# Hosting PlutoSliderServer on Digital Ocean
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449
**Category:** Pluto
**Tags:** pluto
**Created:** [August 7, 2022, 8:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449 "2022-08-07T20:41:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@marcobonici](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/marcobonici)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2022, 8:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449/1 "2022-08-07T20:41:26Z")
Hi there,
I have been using @fonsp 's Pluto for a bit and I am quite satisfied with it.
My next objective is setting up an interactive PlutoSliderServer to show some projects I have been working on.
In order to achieve this goal, I have tried following this [guide](https://cotangent.dev/how-to-publish-pluto-jl-notebooks-online-interactively/) and the ReadMe of the official [repository](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl), failing.
Here are the precise steps I have followed.
1. Created a Droplet on [DigitalOcean](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/), with Ubuntu.
2. Downloaded the following repo, in order to use the template notebook, [GitHub - JuliaPluto/static-export-template: Demo page:](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/static-export-template)
3. Following this [snippet](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#1-initialize), I have created a julia env and installed PlutoSliderServer inside it.
4. Installed [nginx](https://phoenixnap.com/kb/install-nginx-on-ubuntu#htoc-set-up-a-simple-server-block) and enabled it.
5. Updated all packages and installed Julia following this [snippet](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#1-install-julia-run-as-root)
6. Created the [service](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#3-create-a-service) and the [startups](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#4-create-the-startup-script) scripts, then [enabled](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#5-permissions-stuff) and [started](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#6-start--enable) them.
7. Checked if everything is [running](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#7-view-logs). Pluto looks to be running.
Now, I have several questions/problems.
1. In this moment, I haven’t deployed the test notebooks on GitHub Pages. As far as I understand, it is possible to put the static HTML on GH Pages and run the server from a cloud service or host everything in the same place. Which is the recommended approach?
2. After I start the pluto service, if I get disconnected (this maybe due to a poor internet connection) and I try to reconnect to the Droplet, I cannot reconnect: connection timed out.
3. I don’t know understand exactly what I have to do. I don’t even have an error message to show to you. I have no experience with web development and so I do not even know what I should ask to you.
Is there any updated tutorial that I can follow? Btw, if you have suggestion on what I should be doing, I will follow your suggestions.
Thank you for your help,
Marco
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### Author:  [@fonsp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/fonsp)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2022, 10:26am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449/2 "2022-09-06T10:26:48Z")
That’s great to hear @marcobonici !
The [blog post by Connor Burns](https://cotangent.dev/how-to-publish-pluto-jl-notebooks-online-interactively/) is awesome, it gives a good overview of what the different parts are, and how they interact, but the installation instructions are outdated. I would recommend destroying the digitalocean droplet, creating a new one, and following the [“Sample setup” from the PlutoSliderServer README](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl#sample-setup-given-a-repository-start-a-plutosliderserver-to-serve-static-exports-with-live-preview). (Be sure to read the entire readme before you start!) I have recently followed these instructions on a digitalocean droplet and it worked great!
If you get disconnected after starting the service, this might be a sign that your droplet ran out of RAM, and it crashed and rebooted. You can verify this by going to your droplet’s page on [digitalocean.com](http://digitalocean.com) and looking at the memory graph. Do you see the memory spike up to 100%, and then drop down again? That means that you are running out of memory. A [sawtooth wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtooth_wave) pattern means that it is happening on every reboot.
And about question 1: I would start off not using GitHub Pages, and only using your digitalocean server. Later, when you are more comfortable with the setup, you could use a separate github pages setup (or better yet: netlify) to host the HTML pages, which link to your digitalocean server for interactive bond requests (using the `Export_slider_server_url` configuration, [example](https://github.com/mitmath/18S191/blob/348120868dfcb8d774034cb78c394d207e389ce8/pluto-deployment-environment/PlutoDeployment.toml#L5)).
The advantage would be _reduced downtime_ (the website stays online if your digitalocean server crashes), _permanent archival_ (github pages is free, so you can keep the non-interactive notebook online for a long time) and faster _page load times_ (netlify has a fast, global CDN).
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### Author:  [@iabraham](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/iabraham)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2022, 11:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449/3 "2022-12-12T23:43:04Z")
First of all, I want to thank `fonsp` and all the other developers for the very wonderful work they have been doing. I have been very impressed with the Computational Thinking course website at MIT and now I am thinking of doing something similar for a course I will teach in the Spring. I was following the `Sample Setup` instructions with a [Vultr](http://vultr.com/) VM and this [repo](https://github.com/iabraham/vultr-test).
I believe I have been able to successfully run the SliderServer within the VM. Using `run_directory("myfile.jl")`, I am able to ssh tunnel into the VM and confirm that the slider server is indeed functioning as it should.
However, now I am lost on how to connect this server with a [Netlify deployment](https://mriqc-demo.netlify.app). I have spent the better part of a week without any success.
I cannot find any instructions or tutorials on how to use Netlify with the PlutoSliderServer. Can someone point me in the right direction?
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### Author:  [@fonsp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/fonsp)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2023, 11:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449/4 "2023-01-23T23:55:54Z")
Sorry I missed the message @iabraham ! Next time, feel free to tag @fonsp or to reach out some other way! We definitely don’t want you to struggle for a week! Just send us an email, issue, or join our weekly video call 🙂
If you open your netlify app [https://mriqc-demo.netlify.app/mriqc.html](https://mriqc-demo.netlify.app/mriqc.html) with Chrome and press F12, you can see the error in the console: you site is server over `https` (👍), but the PlutoSliderServer is served over `http` (👎). For CORS security, a site on https is not allowed to request a resource over http.
Your PlutoSliderServer is currently directly using an IP address (`http://45.63.65.124/`). The easiest way to get HTTPS is to buy a domain name (you can use [https://njal.la/](https://njal.la/) or other registrars), and set it up with CloudFlare DNS to get their https proxy.
It also looks like the two are out of sync: [http://45.63.65.124/](http://45.63.65.124/) and [https://mriqc-demo.netlify.app/mriqc.html](https://mriqc-demo.netlify.app/mriqc.html) are not listing the same notebooks.
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### Author:  [@fonsp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/fonsp)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2023, 11:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/hosting-plutosliderserver-on-digital-ocean/85449/5 "2023-01-23T23:59:00Z")
Alternatively, you can set up your site without netlify, and just use the PlutoSliderServer as your only server. This setup is simpler, easier to maintain, less error-prone. The netlify setup is better if you want to really optimize page load speeds, and you are expecting large amounts of traffic.
An example of this setup is [GitHub - ClimateMARGO/interactive: Interactive Pluto notebooks about ClimateMARGO.jl](https://github.com/ClimateMARGO/interactive) , which I set up by following the sample setup in [GitHub - JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl: Web server to run just the `@bind` parts of a Pluto.jl notebook](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoSliderServer.jl).