Denali

A simple, fast photoblogging CMS built in Ruby on Rails which features responsive, high-resolution images. You can see it live at All-Encompassing Trip.

Features

• Simple, streamlined entry editor
• Customizable publishing schedule
• Drag-and-drop organization of queued entries
• Cross-posting of entries to Bluesky, Mastodon, Flickr, Instagram, and Threads
• Auto-tagging of entries by location, camera, lens, film, and style
• Automatic generation of blurhashes for image placeholders
• AI-generated alt text for photos using Claude
• Full-text search powered by Elasticsearch
• Web push notifications
• Webhooks
• Automatic EXIF extraction and geotagging of photos
• Location tagging via Google Maps, the National Park Service, and Native Land APIs
• Admin map view powered by Mapbox GL JS
• GraphQL API
• Automated daily database backups to S3
• Dynamic robots.txt via Known Agents
• RSS/Atom feeds, sitemaps, and Open Graph tags
• Did I mention it's fast as heck?

Requirements

• Docker and Docker Compose (for local development)
• An AWS account with an S3 bucket for image storage and a CloudFront distribution
• A Thumbor image processing service
• A Google Cloud project with OAuth 2.0 credentials for admin authentication

See .env.example for all required and optional environment variables.

Installation & setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/gesteves/denali.git
   cd denali
   

2. Copy the example environment file and fill in the required values:

   cp .env.example .env
   

3. Build and start the Docker containers:

   docker compose up -d --build
   

4. Set up the database:

   docker compose run --rm app rails db:setup
   

5. Visit http://localhost:3000.

Common tasks

Local development

The app runs in Docker. All Rails, Ruby, and Node commands must be run inside the container.

Starting the environment

docker compose up -d          # Start all services in background
docker compose down           # Stop all services
docker compose logs -f app    # Follow app logs

Building

docker compose build                    # Build/rebuild containers
docker compose build --no-cache         # Full rebuild (no cache)
docker compose up -d --build            # Rebuild and start

Running commands

docker compose run --rm app rails console                 # Rails console
docker compose run --rm app rails db:migrate              # Run migrations
docker compose run --rm app bundle exec rspec             # Run tests
docker compose run --rm app rake <task>                   # Run rake tasks
docker compose run --rm app bundle install                # Install gems
docker compose run --rm app bash                          # Interactive shell

Running tests

# Ruby/Rails (RSpec)
docker compose run --rm app bundle exec rspec
docker compose run --rm app bundle exec rspec spec/models/entry_spec.rb      # Specific file
docker compose run --rm app bundle exec rspec spec/models/entry_spec.rb:42   # Specific line

# JavaScript (Vitest)
docker compose run --rm app npm run test:run              # Run all tests
docker compose run --rm app npm test                      # Watch mode
docker compose run --rm app npm run test:coverage         # With coverage

Troubleshooting

# Reset the database
docker compose run --rm app rails db:reset

# Clear Rails cache
docker compose run --rm app rails tmp:clear

# Recreate containers from scratch
docker compose down
docker compose up -d --build --force-recreate

# Remove all volumes (deletes local database!)
docker compose down -v

# View container status
docker compose ps

# Check container resource usage
docker compose top

Production

Deploying

fly deploy

Viewing logs

fly logs

SSH into the app

fly ssh console

Rails console

fly ssh console -C "/app/bin/rails console"

Running migrations

Migrations run automatically on deploy, but to run manually:

fly ssh console -C "/app/bin/rails db:migrate"

Running rake tasks

fly ssh console -C "/app/bin/rake <task_name>"

Scaling

# Check current scale
fly scale show

# Scale web & worker machines (count)
fly scale count web=2 worker=2

# Scale machine size
fly scale vm shared-cpu-2x --memory 2048

# Scale worker memory
fly scale memory 2gb -a denali --process-group worker
fly scale memory 1gb -a denali --process-group worker

Backing up the database

The app automatically creates daily database backups and uploads them to S3.

Automated backups:

• Runs daily at 9:00 AM
• Creates PostgreSQL custom format dumps (.dump files)
• Uploads to the S3 bucket specified in DB_BACKUP_BUCKET
• Only runs in production when DB_BACKUP_BUCKET and DATABASE_URL are set

Create a backup manually:

fly ssh console -C "rake database:backup"

Download the most recent backup:

# Locally (downloads to project root, requires DB_BACKUP_BUCKET and AWS credentials)
docker compose run --rm app rake database:download

Restore a backup:

pg_restore -d database_name denali_backup_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.dump

Required environment variables:

• DB_BACKUP_BUCKET - S3 bucket name for backups
• DATABASE_URL - Postgres connection string (automatically set by Fly.io)
• AWS_REGION - AWS region (optional, defaults to us-east-1)
• AWS credentials (via AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID/AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY or IAM roles)