Trying to set up my own polis system - super confused about the correct structure?

[MaltheBlichfeldt]

Hello!

I'm trying to set up polis using Heroku and S3 + Cloudfront and Auth0 so we can run our own non-profit discussions about green initiatives in the city in Danish (yes, the language).

I have managed to log in to the panel and create new conversations on our server/site but im having trouble "distributing" conversations and get a 403 since I'm very confused to weather Heroku or S3 should serve the static files.

I guess the main question is:

How is the Polis system meant to run - what is the structure?

I would die for a concrete answer like:

• Frontend/static files: S3
• Backend/API: Heroku
• authentication: Auth0 (although this one is working already)

Thank you fellow nerdy enthusiasts!

[colinmegill]

Heroku was finally deprecated after far too long. pol.is now uses AWS CDK, and you can see those files. Much better support for data regions in a real cloud rather than Salesforce feifdom!

[colinmegill]

Right on 🙂 Heroku has very limited support for multiple math workers. You could turn a laptop into a math worker first, since they work on polling intervals, laptops can run docker desktop... Then decide about the micro service arch later. Especially for one Convo for pilot. No need to over optimize if you don't need to, math microservices do not need millisecond response times - tens of seconds or minutes are acceptable, though hours are not ideal.

[MaltheBlichfeldt]

Good idea yeah - might look in to that later, got everything to work on Heroku alone now having the math worker memory at :jvm-opts ["-Xmx800m"] (1/5 of the original pol.is). That way I can keep the cost down which is pretty important for a non-profit 😂

For future users i can confirm that you can run the whole polis setup on just Heroku hosting both API, Math worker, static files and the whole shebang. As far as i can tell you only need the postgresql add-on but not the Redis - delete that (it comes pre installed but costs 5$/md). If you are trying to do the same to minimize complexity, feel free to reach out.

Thank you for the help @colinmegill! 🌞

[colinmegill]

If your conversation is small, that could work for a while 🙂 do expect it to fall over, and you can temporarily increase worker size on Heroku.

[MaltheBlichfeldt]

Yep, thats the plan :) Thanks again!

[MaltheBlichfeldt]

OH! @colinmegill while i have you - what are the policies about using the polis Logo. It's on the site I cloned and for now i have actually changed the colors to a purple instead of blue for the entire site (just to give a unik visual look for the Danish site) but your Logo obviously also turned purple. Do you want it blue or would you rather is was removed. I would like to pay tribute to the original Pol.is but I also dont want to step on anyones toes. Fine line you know. So whatever the policy is, we will fall in line :)

[colinmegill]

Auth0 is a fine choice, but any OIDC, including OSS alternatives, is ready to go. Auth0 might be too much for your needs if your istance is not serving lots of others, and we'd be excited to see what you implement if you go with an OSS alternative

[MaltheBlichfeldt]

ent with Auth0 just beacuse i know it, works like a charm an is easy to set up :)