How I Set Up a Self-Hosted Poll Tool for Cevi Wetzikon

For Cevi Wetzikon, I was looking for an open-source tool to create polls and meeting date finders, ideally something I could host myself under a custom domain. After testing various solutions, I discovered Framadate – and it ticked all the boxes:

• ✅ Public polls without registration
• ✅ Simple Doodle-style date coordination
• ✅ Self-hosting support

The official installation guide describes a manual setup on a Linux server. That works, but I wanted something more maintainable. So I decided to go with Docker, using Portainer for easy management – including automatic image updates via webhook.

Dockerfile

To containerize Framadate, I created the following Dockerfile from scratch:

FROM php:7.4-apache

RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y git libicu-dev libxml2-dev zip unzip zlib1g-dev g++ mariadb-client jq pandoc && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_mysql intl && \
    a2enmod rewrite

# Framadate Folder
RUN mkdir -p /var/www/framadate
RUN git clone https://framagit.org/framasoft/framadate/framadate.git /var/www/framadate

# Apache Configuration
COPY ./framadate/apache.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
COPY ./framadate/framadate-admin-htaccess.txt /var/www/framadate/admin/.htaccess
COPY ./framadate/framadate-htaccess.txt /var/www/framadate/.htaccess

WORKDIR /var/www/framadate

# Composer
RUN php -r "readfile('https://getcomposer.org/installer');" | php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer && \
    composer install

EXPOSE 80
CMD ["apache2-foreground"]

Customizing Framadate

Since I wasn’t a big fan of some of the default Framadate UI and logic, I decided to customize parts of the application. I created my own versions of certain files and overwrote them directly via Dockerfile. This gives me full control and helps me keep track of what I’ve changed.

Examples:

COPY ./framadate/php-create_classic_poll.php /var/www/framadate/create_classic_poll.php
COPY ./framadate/./docs /var/www/framadate/docs
COPY ./framadate/script-mdtodocspage.sh /var/www/framadate/docs/script-mdtodocspage.sh
RUN chmod +x /var/www/framadate/docs/script-mdtodocspage.sh
RUN /var/www/framadate/docs/script-mdtodocspage.sh

This way, my Framadate instance runs the way I want it – and I understand what’s happening under the hood.

Deployment Workflow

I set up a GitHub Action to automatically build and push the Docker image to the GitHub Container Registry whenever I push changes. This image is then deployed to my server via Tailscale VPN and a Portainer Webhook – fully automated.

Docker Compose in Portainer

The following docker-compose.yml is used in Portainer on my Docker Ubuntu server. The Framadate image is re-pulled automatically whenever a new version is pushed:

version: '3'
services:
  framadate:
    image: ghcr.io/surmatik/framadate-ceviwetzikon:latest
    ports:
      - "8081:80"
    depends_on:
      - mysql
    volumes:
      - /opt/docker/framadate-ceviwetzikon/framadate-config.php:/var/www/framadate/app/inc/config.php
  mysql:
    image: mysql:5.7
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=${MYSQL_DATABASE}
      - MYSQL_USER=${MYSQL_USER}
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - mysql_data:/var/lib/mysql
    command: --bind-address=0.0.0.0

volumes:
  mysql_data:

Environment variables:

• MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
• MYSQL_DATABASE
• MYSQL_USER
• MYSQL_PASSWORD

Hosting and Access

The setup runs on my Docker-based Ubuntu server, fully managed with Portainer and secured through Tailscale. Everything stays up to date via webhook – and it just works.

You can check it out live at:
pool.cevi-wetzikon.ch