Hosting
One portal is one brand company on one server. You choose how to run it, from fully outsourced to fully yourself. Below, from simplest to most hands-on.
Three editions of the same portal. They pass the same conformance suite and speak the same API, so you can move from one to another.
The easiest option: a company hosts your portal, keeps it up to date and helps you set it up. Because every portal speaks the same standard, you can later move to another provider or to your own hosting.
Product photography software for fashion and lifestyle. Hosts a brand portal on your own domain and publishes through OBX.
Any hosting company, agency or software vendor can be listed here. The conditions are the same for everyone:
Open a pull request on the website repository with your details in src/data/providers.json. Providers are listed alphabetically. openbrandexchange/website
Your own portal on your own account, without managing a server.
Runs on Cloudflare Workers, with D1 as the database and R2 for the images. Click the button, sign in to Cloudflare and follow the steps. A portal in daily use needs the Workers Paid plan (5 dollars a month); the free plan is only enough to look around. Web versions of your photos are made by your browser and the obx tool.
A script that puts your portal on Google Cloud Run. You need a Google Cloud account and the gcloud tool.
git clone https://github.com/openbrandexchange/node-go
cd node-go
gcloud config set project my-project # once: your Google Cloud project (billing on)
DRY_RUN=1 ./deploy/cloudrun.sh # optional: only show what it would do, change nothing
./deploy/cloudrun.sh # region europe-west4; REGION=… for anotherFor the web hosting package you may already have, with PHP and a database. No commands needed:
On your own server or on any cloud that runs containers. One command:
openssl rand -hex 32 > obx-secret.key # once; keep this file safe, with your backups
docker run -d --name obx --restart unless-stopped \
-p 8080:8080 -v obx-data:/data \
-e OBX_PUBLIC_URL=https://brands.example.com \
-e OBX_SECRET_KEY="$(cat obx-secret.key)" \
ghcr.io/openbrandexchange/node-go
docker logs obx 2>&1 | grep -i "setup code" # the one-time code for the first-run wizardOr with HTTPS included, through Caddy:
# compose.yaml: the node behind Caddy, which gets an HTTPS certificate by itself.
services:
obx:
image: ghcr.io/openbrandexchange/node-go
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
OBX_PUBLIC_URL: https://brands.example.com
OBX_SECRET_KEY: ${OBX_SECRET_KEY} # openssl rand -hex 32, keep it safe
OBX_TRUST_PROXY: "true" # every request comes through Caddy (rate limits per visitor)
volumes:
- obx-data:/data
caddy:
image: caddy:2
restart: unless-stopped
ports: ["80:80", "443:443"]
command: caddy reverse-proxy --from brands.example.com --to obx:8080
volumes:
- caddy-data:/data
volumes:
obx-data:
caddy-data:OBX_PUBLIC_URL | the public address of your portal |
|---|---|
OBX_SECRET_KEY | a long random key (openssl rand -hex 32); keep it safe |
OBX_SETUP_CODE | optional: a setup code you choose in advance |
PORT | port, 8080 by default |
The setup code makes sure nobody else can claim a freshly installed portal.
Use a subdomain such as brands.yourbrand.com or b2b.yourbrand.com. Retailers then see your name, and your address stays the same when you change hosting.
The three editions do the same thing and have the same admin and retailer portal. Choose what fits your hosting; you can switch later. See the implementations.