Deploying nextjs app on IIS can seem challenging at first but once you get the hang of it, it’s a breeze.
To deploy a nextjs app on windows, you use a reverse proxy. In simple terms, a reverse proxy is a gateway that forwards a clients requests from on server to another. In this case we will set it up to accept traffic trhough an ip address and forward the traffic to our local instance of nextjs app.
Installations
- Make sure you have IIS 7 or above
- Download and Install URL Rewrite
- Download and Install Application Request Routing(ARR) Module
- Install nodejs
- Non Sucking Service Manager(NSSM)
Configure reverse proxy
Ensure you’ve installed URL Rewrite module and Application Request Routing(ARR) module.
After installation, you’ll need to enable proxy settings.
On IIS navigation pane, select the host and the select Application Request Routing option as shown below.
Under actions on the right side, select Server proxy settings
Check Enable proxy option and uncheck Reverse rewrite host in response headers option
Add IIS website
Under IIS right click on sites and add a website. Chose an appropriate physical path
Select the website created and select URL Rewrite option on the center pane.
Go to Add Rule(s) > Reverse Proxy
Under inbound rules specify the local url to route traffic to.
Now trafic to mynextjsapp on IIS will be routed to http://localhost:3000
Let’s now setup http://localhost:3000
Get the source code and build it
Since nextjs sucks when it comes to distribution, unless you’re on vercel, you’ll have to get build the source code on your server.
Upload the source on the server.
I usually use github so, git clone is as trivial as it gets.
Build the source code
npm run build
Set up a windows service
Install Non Sucking Service Manager(NSSM) and add the nssm.exe path to the env path
Start a cmd prompt start nssm to install your windows service
nssm install MyAppWindowsService
This will launch nssm configuration window as shown below.
Specify application path as path to npm npm.cmd.
To get this path, open a cmd prompt and run the command where npm
For my case the output was H:\programs\nodejs\npm.cmd
Specify startup directory as the directory of the source code.
For arguments option specify,
npm run start -- --port=3000
Under details tab, fill in a display name and description. This is what whil appear under services.msc
Once done click on install.
Start the service
Open service manager, Start > Services.msc start your service.
You should now have your IIS website routing to your localhost app.