Deploying a static Astro site on Debian + nginx

This site is a static build. npm run build produces a dist/ folder of plain HTML, CSS and JS — nothing to run, nginx just serves the files. Here’s the full path from a clean Debian box to a live site.

1. Build locally

npm install
npm run build        # outputs to ./dist

2. Copy the build to the server

rsync -avz --delete dist/ deploy@your-server:/var/www/emmanuelmadrid/

--delete keeps the server folder in sync by removing files that no longer exist in the build.

3. nginx server block

Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/emmanuelmadrid:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name emmanuelmadrid.dev www.emmanuelmadrid.dev;

    root /var/www/emmanuelmadrid;
    index index.html;

    # Astro emits /notes/my-note/index.html — serve directory-style URLs.
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ $uri.html =404;
    }

    # Cache fingerprinted assets aggressively.
    location /_astro/ {
        expires 1y;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
    }
}

Enable it and reload:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/emmanuelmadrid /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t          # test the config
sudo systemctl reload nginx

4. HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d emmanuelmadrid.dev -d www.emmanuelmadrid.dev

Certbot rewrites the server block to listen on 443 and sets up auto-renewal via a systemd timer.

Checklist

Step	Command
Build	npm run build
Upload	rsync -avz --delete dist/ …
Test nginx	sudo nginx -t
Reload	sudo systemctl reload nginx
TLS	sudo certbot --nginx -d …

Next time I’ll wire this into a one-command deploy script and, eventually, a CI pipeline that builds and ships on every push.