React: How to publish page on server using React-starter-kit - node.js

Question

So, I created a page using repo from:
https://github.com/kriasoft/react-starter-kit
I have my own global ftp server. And now I would like to publish my project on server.
What is the best way to do it. Should I copy all files to ftp server and just exec command 'npm start'? Or maybe I should deploy it?
I'm new in web deployment and not sure how it works.
Thanks for any tips.

Answer 1

It may be a little more complicated than just ftping your project up. Here are the instructions I use to setup a server at digitalocean.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install npm
sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install ufw
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.20.0/install.sh | bash
nvm install stable //may require new ssh session before this
ufw default deny incoming
ufw default allow outgoing
ufw allow ssh
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow out to any port 53
ufw enable
sudo npm install -g forever
sudo npm install -g node-gyp
cd /var
mkdir www
cd www
git clone https://github.com/calitek/palminfo --recursive
npm install
npm ls -depth 0
export PORT=80
node js/server.js
test using ip / when good exit then
forever start js/server.js
set dns
The server will need to support you adding node.js. Then you need to preferably use github to clone the project. You will want to do the npm install on the server to be sure you are using the correct modules. Its a little complicated the first time out, just keep good notes for the next time.

Answer 2

This is a big topic to cover, whatever your linux distribution is, you probably will always need 2 servers - a proxy server, and an app server.
I'd recommend you wrap your compiled sites with a simple Node.js server like Express or Hapi. Then configure nginx to properly route all the requests to the application. Checkout some detailed guides from DigitalOcean
CentOS: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-node-js-application-for-production-on-centos-7
Ubuntu: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-node-js-application-for-production-on-ubuntu-14-04
Minor steps might be slightly different but you get the idea

Answer 3

One approach is to build the app on the server, but you will need something like Heroku which you already decided to go with.
But an alternative to that is to do a paradigm shift. You're app is basicaly just some html, css and javascript, which is compiled and servered to the public. You could compile that yourself with npm run build and then just copy the compiled files to your hosting server which can use what ever server it wants: apache httpd, nginx, etc. This is also cheaper cause you only need basic hosting, not some complex nodejs compiling server.
I created a starter kit http://redux-minimal.js.org/ which helps you create rich real-world apps with the minimum amount of packages and very light configuration setup. If you look at the folder structure you can see that the app uses the index.html from the public folder, and then the css and js file are compiled directly in the public folder. Which makes it easier to just copy the public folder to what ever server you want.