Simple nginx + react + node + pm2 + mongodb development environment

Get yourself a fresh instance of Ubuntu!
This tutorial is suited for aws instances but may work for other providers too.

STEP 1. Configure nginx

sudo apt install nginx
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/mycircle

Configure your file as mentioned below. By default, instance recieves web requests on port 80, so we want to redirect our frontend (/) to port 3001 (my choosing) and the backend (/api) to port 5000 (also my choosing).

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;
    server_name mycircle.live, www.mycircle.live;

    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot

    # RSA certificate
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/mycircle.live/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mycircle.live/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot

    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot

    # Redirect non-https traffic to https
    if ($scheme != "https") {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot

    location / {
        proxy_pass https://localhost:3001;
    }

    location /api {
        proxy_pass https://localhost:5000;
    }

}

Finalise config as below.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mycircle /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mycircle
sudo service nginx reload

STEP 2. Install node.js (v.18 works for sure)

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
sudo apt install npm

STEP 3. Make a github ssh-key for the repo

sudo su Need to get the root key
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"
cat /home/ubuntu/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Copy key to github

STEP 4. Enable SSH auth for the deploy ssh/github script

vim /etc/ssh/ssh_config

PubkeyAuthentication yes
PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-rsa

vim ~/.ssh/config

Host *
IgnoreUnknown UseKeychain
UseKeychain yes
AddKeysToAgent yes
IdentityFile /root/.ssh/id_ed25519

sudo systemctl restart sshd.service

STEP 5. Clone your repo

cd /var/www/html
git clone [email protected]:[name]/[repo].git

STEP 6. Install mongodb

npm install pm2 -g

wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [ arch=amd64,arm64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/4.2 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y mongodb-org

echo "deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/focal-security.listsudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libssl1.1

sudo apt install -y mongodb-org
sudo systemctl start mongod
sudo systemctl status mongod

STEP 7. SSL Certbot

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com sudo systemctl status certbot.timer sudo certbot renew --dry-run

STEP 8. Done!

Now using the current project structure and deploy script, your app should be running on your next deploy.