Quick Start

This guide walks you through deploying your SmartCAD instance from purchase to first login. Plan on about 30 minutes for the whole flow.

Don't have SmartCAD yet? Pick a plan on the home page. You'll get a license key emailed within seconds of checkout.

Step 1 — Sign in to your customer portal

After purchase, head to portal.smrtcad.com and sign in with the email you used at checkout. You'll receive a one-time sign-in link.

From the portal you can:

• Download your install bundle (covered below)
• Manage billing (if monthly)
• Re-send your license email
• Change which Discord server your license is bound to

Step 2 — Download your install bundle

On the portal dashboard, click Download under "Install bundle". You'll get three files:

File	Purpose
docker-compose.yml	The full app stack — backend, Caddy web server, Watchtower
.env	Configuration template with your LICENSE_KEY and DISCORD_GUILD_ID already filled in
README.md	This walkthrough, plus your one-line GHCR login command

Put all three in a fresh directory on your server (e.g. ~/smartcad/).

Step 3 — Point your domain

In your DNS provider, create an A record pointing your domain to your server's IP address.

cad.yourcommunity.com  →  A  →  your.server.ip

Note: Caddy (bundled with the app) automatically obtains and renews a TLS certificate via Let's Encrypt. Ports 80 and 443 must be open on your server's firewall.

Step 4 — Set up a Discord application

You'll need a Discord application for OAuth login. See Discord OAuth for the full walkthrough — it takes about 5 minutes.

Step 5 — Fill in your .env

Open the .env from your install bundle and replace every __FILL_IN__ placeholder. The most important:

• BASE_URL — your public HTTPS URL (e.g. https://cad.yourcommunity.com)
• BETTER_AUTH_SECRET — generate with openssl rand -base64 32
• DISCORD_CLIENT_ID + DISCORD_CLIENT_SECRET — from your Discord application
• DISCORD_REQUIRED_ROLE_IDS — at least one role ID required for CAD access

Your LICENSE_KEY and DISCORD_GUILD_ID are already filled in by the portal.

See Environment Variables for the full reference.

Step 6 — Log in to the image registry

The README in your bundle includes a one-line command:

echo "YOUR_GHCR_TOKEN" | docker login ghcr.io -u traditionalism --password-stdin

This authenticates Docker to pull the private SmartCAD images. Run it once per server.

Step 7 — Start your SmartCAD instance

docker compose up -d

This pulls the images and starts the backend, web server, and Watchtower. First startup may take 30–60 seconds while Caddy obtains your TLS certificate.

Visit https://cad.yourcommunity.com — you should see the login page.

Step 8 — First login

1. Log in with Discord using an account that has one of your configured roles
2. You will be prompted to set a password — this is used for in-game FiveM login where Discord OAuth is unavailable

Step 9 — FiveM server configuration

See FiveM Integration for installation and convar setup.

What's next

• Configure roles — map Discord roles to officer / supervisor / command access
• Update SmartCAD — Watchtower handles this automatically
• Manage billing — switch plans, cancel, view invoices