The following instructions are specific to Digital Ocean and are used as an example. Element does not endorse only Digital Ocean and its services. There are several VPS providers available and the following is just one example of how that setup would function. Follow along with our video tutorial.
- Navigate to Digital Ocean and create an account including setting up your payment information.
- Click HERE to deploy Digital Ocean.
- If you did not complete the account setup in step 1, you will be prompted to create one and to enter your payment information and begin again on step 2.
- Click the Edit Plan button.
- Select Basic (Best for Prototypes) plan.
- Open the drop-down menu under the Size section and change this to $5.00/mo – Basic plan and then select the Back button at the bottom of the screen.
- Click the Next button.
- Click the blue Edit option for the “element-node-worker” environmental variables.
- In the first Keys text box enter in all caps: NODE_EMAIL
- In the Values text box enter the email address you use to log into your Element account and click the + (plus sign) button.
- In the second Keys text box enter in all caps: NODE_PASSWORD
- In the second Values text box enter the password you use to log into your Element account.
- Make sure to fill the check box next to Encrypt for your password.
- Click the Save button.
- Click the Next button.
- Click the Next button again.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Create Resources button.
- Wait for the VPS to be deployed. It will say Building… under the Status section.
- Once complete, the status will update to say Deployed Successfully.
- Scroll up and select Runtime Logs from the tabs displayed.
- Within the black text box, you should see: Element configuration complete!
Important: 1 Digital Ocean server can only support up to 100 Lite Nodes or 1 Smart Node
You will need to complete these steps, starting at Step 3, for each Element Smart Node and one time for each set of 100 Element Lite Nodes.