Forwarding Shiny App to A Custom Domain (Squarespace)

[ahays]

Hi all. I have a Shiny app hosted on Shiny server through my a virtual machine at my university. I purchased a domain on Squarespace and would like to forward the virtual machine URL to that domain. I am looking for a tutorial on how to do this, if one exists, or someone who has done this successfully before and can help get me started, please. Thanks!

[pcall]

1. You'll need to install a web server software onto the server where you're running the Shiny app (nginx and Apache are probably the two most common)
2. Configure the nginx/Apache file to serve the Shiny app from whatever port it is running on locally to the web address over port 443 (for HTTPS). I would recommend making it so that the port argument of shiny::runApp(), or whatever equivalent you use, has a static port number stored in a script so that restarts/redeployments of the app always go to the same port because your nginx/Apache config will be expecting the site to be served from this port always.
3. Go to Squarespace, and configure either an A name or CNAME for the IP address of your web server.

These are the basic steps, and I think ChatGPT or similar could fill you in on the details specific to the system on your server. One hurdle, however, is that you'll probably have to check with your university IT about the permissions on your virtual machine and whether or not you can actually use it as a web server.

Note that you'll probably also want to install and use a firewall software for the server like ufw which is configured only for HTTP(80)/HTTPS(443), SSH(22), and possibly other ports.