Deploying CultureMesh FFB

How it works now

We have been using Heroku to deploy CultureMesh FFB for developing and testing – the site can be accessed at https://culturemesh-ffb.herokuapp.com/. If you’d like to deploy the application as well, you can just make your own Heroku account, download the CLI tools, and follow one of the myriad tutorials online. Don’t forget to set the required Environment Variables on Heroku as well, or your deploy won’t work.

Deploying to FFB is as easy as submitting the URL of CultureMesh FFB via the Facebook Free Basics website and making sure that you meet the requirements of the platform.

How it should probably work in the future

In the near future, CultureMesh FFB should be available at https://lite.culturemesh.com and run on the same serving infrastructure as the CultureMesh API and CultureMesh for web. Currently, this is Bluehost. Once this is the case, the client in CultureMesh FFB class could point to the localhost even directly speak to the database – this will greatly reduce latency in API calls.

It would also be a good idea to look into AWS hosting in the future. We also suggest Dockerizing the website, the FFB site, and the API.