Installing SilverBullet as a (local) web server is pretty straightforward.
The idea is simple: you run the web server (instructions below), point your browser at it, and _go, go, go_! You can access the URL via your desktop browser but also a mobile one. You could even go _full-on YOLO_ (that’s a technical term), and install it on a public cloud server somewhere and access it that way (be sure to at least enable authentication and put SSL on top of it, though).
You have two options to install and run SilverBullet as a server:
1. Installation via Deno on your host system
2. Running it with Docker
In either case, check the notes [[@tls|on using TLS]].
This will give you (and when you use `silverbullet upgrade`) the latest stable release. If you prefer to live on the bleeding edge, you can install using the following command instead:
This will install `silverbullet` into your `~/.deno/bin` folder (which should already be in your `$PATH` if you followed the Deno install instructions).
To run SilverBullet, create a folder for your pages (it can be empty or be an existing folder with `.md` files) and run the following command in your terminal:
```shell
silverbullet <pages-path>
```
By default, SilverBullet will bind to port `3000`; to use a different port, use the `-p` flag.
For security reasons, by default, SilverBullet only allows connections via `localhost` (or `127.0.0.1`). To also allow connections from the network, pass a `-L 0.0.0.0` flag (0.0.0.0 for all connections, or insert a specific address to limit the host), ideally combined with `--user username:password` to add BasicAuth password protection.
The `zefhemel/silverbullet` image will give you the latest released version. This is equivalent to `zefhemel/silverbullet:latest`. If you prefer, you can also pin to a specific release, e.g. `zefhemel/silverbullet:0.3.7`. If you prefer to live on the bleeding edge, you can use the `zefhemel/silverbullet:edge` image, which is updated on every commit to the `main` brain.
For SilverBullet to be offline capable (loadable without a network connection) it needs to be accessed either via `localhost` or via TLS (a `https://`) URL. The most straightforward way to do this is by using [Caddy](https://caddyserver.com/). Caddy can automatically provision an SSL certificate for you.
When you’re deploying on a public server accessible to the Internet, you can do this as follows:
If you’re deploying on a local network and access your server via a VPN, this is a bit more tricky. The recommended setup here is to use [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com/) which now [supports TLS certificates for your VPN servers](https://tailscale.com/kb/1153/enabling-https/). Once you have this enabled, get a certificate via:
```shell
$ tailscale cert yourserver.yourtsdomain.ts.net
```
Caddy can automatically find these certificates once provisioned, so you can just run: