Life with 🐘 🐳 🐧 💻

I’ve been looking for a simple yet complete way to create and share Kanban boards.

I’m used to tools like Jira, GitLab, and OpenProject. These are all great, but they tend to be either too expensive, incomplete, or too resource-hungry.

After some research, I came across Kanboard. At first, it looked a bit "plain," but diving into the source code showed it to be well maintained, fully open source (no paid tiers), and built with Docker, PHP, and even some Symfony libraries.

Status

Looking at the Kanboard GitHub, the first commit dates back more than 12 years! And as of writing, the latest release, 1.2.48, was published just two weeks ago.

It’s great to see that Kanboard remains actively maintained and uses modern libraries and Docker images.

On top of that, there are many plugins. Even older ones are still mostly compatible with the latest Kanboard version, adding plenty of useful features.

Requirements

We’ll deploy Kanboard through Dokploy, which will handle pulling the image from the Kanboard Docker registry.

You can see how I set up Dokploy here

Database

If no specific configuration is provided, Kanboard defaults to using sqlite as its database. While it works, it often leads to file lock issues and makes backups a bit awkward. So we’ll configure a real database — MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL. Since I already use PostgreSQL for several other projects, I’ll reuse that instance for Kanboard.

I have a database project in my Dokploy setup, running PostgreSQL version 18 (the latest at the time of writing). In Dokploy, create a new Project, maybe called infrastructure, and add a new database service:

Call it psql18-db and set the version to postgres:18. This will create a default setup for our database.

By default, Dokploy mounts it to a volume. However, with PostgreSQL 18, it needs to be mounted to a slightly different internal path. Under Advanced > Volumes, you’ll see the mount path /var/lib/postgresql/data. Change it to /var/lib/postgresql.

Once that’s done, go back to the General tab and click Deploy to start the database. When it’s up and running, open a terminal inside the container to create a new schema.

If you didn’t change the username during setup, you can connect using:

psql -Upostgres

Then create a new schema:

Once that’s done, copy the internal connection URL — you’ll need it later.

It should look something like this:

postgresql://postgres:grtwushjdkbiyuPasb1d@infrastructure-psql18db-6r8dvv:5432/postgres

The database is now ready and accessible for our Kanboard project (or any other project on the same VPS). Depending on your setup, you might want to create a dedicated user and schema per project.

Setting Up Kanboard

With the database ready, let’s deploy Kanboard. Create a new project on the same VPS as your database.

Add a new application to this project, and under Docker Image, set:

ghcr.io/kanboard/kanboard

and Registry URL to:

ghcr.io

Now click Deploy. You can assign a random domain and test it by clicking the dice icon and setting it to port 80. When you open the link, you should see the Kanboard login page. The default credentials are admin:admin.

However, we’re not yet connected to our PostgreSQL database — it’s still using a temporary SQLite file that resets on each deployment.

To fix that, go to the Environment tab of your Kanboard application in Dokploy.

Here, we’ll define a few environment variables. Remember the connection string from earlier? We’ll break it down into components:

DB_DRIVER=postgres
DB_USERNAME=postgres
DB_PASSWORD=thepassfromearlieron
DB_HOSTNAME=theautogeneratedhostname
DB_NAME=kanboard

After saving these variables, click Deploy again. Kanboard will now connect to your PostgreSQL database.

Using Kanboard

The first thing you should do is change the admin password. Click your avatar in the top-right corner, select My profile, and update your password.

Conclusion

That’s the first step in setting up Kanboard with Dokploy. From here, you can explore more advanced topics, like managing users, configuring SMTP for notifications, or adding OAuth for easier authentication. You can also extend your setup with plugins that integrate time tracking, Gantt charts, or even automation scripts.

Would you like me to go further into how Kanboard works in daily use organizing projects, automating tasks, and collaborating effectively as a small team?
If so, let me know in the comments or reach out. I’d be happy to dive into practical workflows and plugin recommendations.

Dennis de Best