Local development

This page takes you from a fresh clone to a running Gophenberg with demo content and a login.

You need three tools installed: Go (the version pinned in go.mod), Node 26 with pnpm, and Docker (it runs the PostgreSQL database, and nothing else).

1. Clone and configure

git clone https://github.com/gopherium/gophenberg
cd gophenberg
cp .env.example .env

The example file points the server at the development database and needs no editing.

2. Seed the database

make seed

This starts PostgreSQL in Docker, applies the database migrations, and creates a development login plus demo posts. The login is admin@example.com with the password password1234.

Caution

The seeded login is publicly known. It is for development machines only, never for a server anyone can reach.

3. Run the backend and the admin

In two terminals:

make dev

pnpm install && pnpm --filter @gophenberg/frontend dev

The first runs the API on localhost:8081. The second runs the admin on localhost:5174, which forwards /api calls to the first, so the login cookie works without any HTTPS setup.

4. Look around

• Open localhost:5174 and log in with the seeded account. You land in the admin with demo posts to play with.
• Open localhost:8081 for the public site, served by the built-in renderer.

From here, the posts list shows you around the admin, and how theming works explains the public site.