Deploy a Static / React App

Build your React or other static site locally and serve the compiled files from a small NGINX image.
This keeps build-time dependencies off the CapRover host.
The example uses a Vite-style dist directory; replace it with build if that is what your project produces.

Run npm ci && npm run build in your project. Check that dist/index.html exists.

Create a Dockerfile in the project root:

FROM nginx:stable-alpine
COPY dist/ /usr/share/nginx/html/

Create a file named captain-definition alongside it containing {"schemaVersion":2,"dockerfilePath":"./Dockerfile"}.
Package the Dockerfile, definition, and built output from the project root, then deploy the archive:
```
tar -cf deploy.tar captain-definition Dockerfile dist
caprover deploy --tarFile ./deploy.tar
```
Create the CapRover web app first, and select it when the CLI prompts you. You can instead upload deploy.tar from its Deployment tab. Set the container HTTP port to 80.
Visit the app's HTTP address, then enable HTTPS and verify the public domain. Rebuild and repackage the output for each new deployment.

The ordinary CLI Git deployment uses git archive and omits uncommitted or Git-ignored files.
Since compiled output is commonly ignored, use the tar workflow above instead of caprover deploy without --tarFile.

For client-side routes such as /settings, put the following in nginx.conf at the project root so a browser refresh loads the app:

server {
    listen 80;
    root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    index index.html;
    location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }
}

Add COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf to the Dockerfile, then include nginx.conf in the tar -cf command above. Rebuild and redeploy. Do not put private secrets in build-time variables: compiled JavaScript is public. If the app has an API, deploy it separately and point the frontend to its HTTPS URL.