📣 Marketing & Growth — go live in one command

This stack gives your marketing team an AI app/agent platform: build ad-copy, blog, and SEO agents with RAG, prompts, and knowledge — then put them behind real HTTPS on your domain.

                     ┌──────────── Caddy (auto-HTTPS) ────────────┐
   your team ──────▶ │  https://marketing.yourdomain.com          │
   (content · SEO · agents)              │                        │
                     └─────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                                   ▼
                          Dify (nginx entrypoint)
                                   │
                     web · api · worker · plugin daemon
                                   │
                        Postgres · Redis · vector DB

Replaces: a content marketer + Jasper/Copy.ai (and the glue to run agents)
Time to live: ~30–60 minutes
You need: a server with a public IP, a domain, Docker, and an LLM (a local Ollama endpoint works for a fully private setup)

This guide layers HTTPS + your domain on top of Dify's own deploy. The authoritative app docs are Dify's official docker deployment.

Step 1 — Get a server

An Ubuntu 22.04+ VPS with 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM (more if you run a local LLM). Dify's full stack is heavier than a single container, so 8 GB RAM is comfortable. Install Docker:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh

Open ports 80 and 443 in your provider's firewall.

Step 2 — Point your domain at it

Create a DNS A record for marketing.yourdomain.com → your server's IP. Verify it resolves before continuing (HTTPS issuance depends on it):

dig +short marketing.yourdomain.com   # should print your server IP

Step 3 — Deploy Dify

Dify ships its own multi-service Docker Compose. Start it from the docker/ folder (this is Dify's documented quick-start):

git clone https://github.com/langgenius/dify.git
cd dify/docker
cp .env.example .env

Before launching, edit dify/docker/.env and change the exposed web port so Dify does not grab host port 80 (Caddy needs it):

# in dify/docker/.env
EXPOSE_NGINX_PORT=8080

Then bring Dify up:

docker compose up -d

Dify's nginx service fronts the web UI and API. It's now reachable on the host at http://<server-ip>:8080 — we'll put HTTPS in front of it next.

Step 4 — Add HTTPS with the Caddy overlay

From this folder (departments/marketing/deploy in the ai-workforce repo):

git clone https://github.com/arunrajiah/ai-workforce.git
cd ai-workforce/departments/marketing/deploy
cp .env.example .env      # set DOMAIN=marketing.yourdomain.com and ACME_EMAIL
docker compose --env-file .env -f caddy-compose.yml up -d

Caddy attaches to Dify's Docker network and reverse-proxies your domain to Dify's nginx service, fetching a TLS certificate automatically. In ~1 minute, open https://marketing.yourdomain.com/install to complete Dify's first-run setup.

Network-name caveat (read this): the overlay joins an external Docker network named docker_default. That name comes from Dify's Compose project directory being docker/ — Compose names the default network <dir>_default. If you cloned or started Dify from a differently named folder, the network won't be docker_default; find the real name with docker network ls and update it in caddy-compose.yml. If joining the network is awkward in your setup, an alternative is to drop the networks: block and instead reverse_proxy host.docker.internal:8080 in the Caddyfile, pointing at the host port Dify published in Step 3.

Step 5 — Set your LLM provider

In Dify → Settings → Model Provider, add your LLM. Dify is provider-neutral: point it at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — a local Ollama for a fully private setup, a self-hosted gateway (LiteLLM, vLLM, LocalAI), or a hosted key.

Step 6 — Build your first content agent

In Dify, create an app (chatflow, workflow, or agent) for your use case:

Ad copy / blog drafts — a prompt app with your brand voice as the system prompt.
SEO research — a workflow that summarizes competitor pages and drafts optimized copy.
Campaign ops — expose the app's API and trigger it from Activepieces or your own scripts.

You're live. 🎉

Operate it

Task	Command
Dify logs	`docker compose logs -f` (run in `dify/docker`)
Update Dify	`git pull && docker compose pull && docker compose up -d` (in `dify/docker`)
Back up the database	`docker compose exec db pg_dump -U postgres dify > dify-backup.sql` (in `dify/docker`)
Restart HTTPS overlay	`docker compose -f caddy-compose.yml up -d` (in this folder)
Stop the overlay	`docker compose -f caddy-compose.yml down` (in this folder)

Troubleshooting

No certificate — DNS for marketing. isn't pointing at the server yet, or ports 80/443 are blocked. Check docker compose -f caddy-compose.yml logs caddy.
Caddy can't reach nginx — the external network name must match Dify's Compose project (docker_default when started from dify/docker). Confirm with docker network ls and update caddy-compose.yml.
Port 80 already in use — Dify is still binding it. Set EXPOSE_NGINX_PORT=8080 in dify/docker/.env and docker compose up -d again (in dify/docker).
App-level issues — see Dify's docker deployment docs.

Swap a component

Prefer a different platform or a lighter footprint? Every piece is replaceable — see the Marketing & Growth directory for alternatives (Activepieces).

⚠️ Verification note: Dify's quick-start (git clone, cd dify/docker, cp .env.example .env, docker compose up -d, then /install), its nginx reverse-proxy entrypoint, the EXPOSE_NGINX_PORT host-port variable (default 80), and the docker_default network name (project dir docker/) are taken from Dify's official docker-compose.yaml and README. Dify is licensed under the Dify Open Source License (Apache-2.0-based with additional conditions).