Self-Hosting dotCMS on a VPS: A Complete Production Guide

Deploy Homarr Dashboard (Optional)

Homarr is a lightweight, self-hosted dashboard that gives you a single page to access all services running on your VPS.

This section assumes a domain of home.dotcms.info; please substitute in your actual domain for this.

1. Add DNS Record#

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Add an A record: home.dotcms.info → YOUR_STATIC_IP

2. Deploy via Portainer#

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1. In Portainer, go to Stacks → Add Stack
2. Name it homarr
3. Paste the following Docker Compose:

   services:
     homarr:
       container_name: homarr
       image: ghcr.io/homarr-labs/homarr:latest
       restart: unless-stopped
       volumes:
         - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
         - ./homarr/appdata:/appdata
       environment:
         - SECRET_ENCRYPTION_KEY=xxxxx
       ports:
         - '7575:7575'

4. Deploy the stack

3. Add to Caddy#

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home.dotcms.info {
    reverse_proxy localhost:7575
}

Reload Caddy and open https://home.dotcms.info.

4. Configure Your Dashboard#

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On first load, set a username, password, and theme (dark recommended). Create a board and add app shortcuts:

• dotCMS: URL https://dotcms.info, upload the dotCMS logo
• Portainer: URL https://portainer.dotcms.info
• Docker widget: Search for "docker" in the item browser — displays live container status directly on the dashboard using the Docker socket mounted in the compose file