Installing Buoy on Sandstorm Oasis

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This guide walks you through installing Buoy on a new Sandstorm grain hosted by Oasis. Sandstorm Oasis is a free service that makes it very easy to run "self-hosted" versions of free software (like Buoy).

This guide is perfect for users who want to try Buoy or offer Buoy's capabilities to a small-to-medium sized community group, but who do not already have a WordPress website of their own.

Difficulty	Financial cost	Privacy	Software freedom
Easy	Free	Moderate	Mostly free

⚠️ BETA SOFTWARE

Sandstorm itself is still in early beta. How well Buoy and Sandstorm play together is still largely untested. Please do not rely on this configuration for anything critical at least until you have tested that all the specific Buoy features you need work reliably inside a Sandstorm grain!

Overview

1. Create an account with Sandstorm Oasis
2. Install WordPress
3. Install plugin dependencies
4. Install Buoy
5. Next steps

View screenshots album for this guide.

Create an account with Sandstorm Oasis

Go to Oasis.Sandstorm.io:

Under "Create Account," enter your email address and click the "Send login email" button (or click the "with GitHub" or "with Google" buttons if you have a GitHub account or Google account, respectively).

Sandstorm Oasis will send you an email that includes a login link. (Be sure to check your spam folder!) The email will read something like this:

To confirm this email address on oasis.sandstorm.io, click on the following link:

https://oasis.sandstorm.io/_emailLogin/YOUR_EMAIL/LOGIN_CODE

Alternatively, enter the following one-time authentication code into the log-in form:

LOGIN_CODE

Click the login link (in your email, not the example one quoted above), or copy-and-paste the login code into the login box on Sandstorm Oasis's website:

Confirm your profile with Sandstorm Oasis by filling in your name, choosing a handle, an avatar, and a gender pronoun. Also click the checkbox to agree to Sandstorm's terms and conditions. Then click "Continue."

Install WordPress

Now that you have a free Sandstorm Oasis account, you can install apps (called "grains"). For Buoy, the app you need to install is WordPress.

Click the "Install…from App Market" button:

Clicking "Install…from App Market" will open a new tab or window in your browser and present you with many different apps to install. Search the page until you find WordPress (it's near the bottom). Then click the "Install" button under the WordPress app icon:

You will be presented with a confirmation screen for the Sandstorm-packaged WordPress app. Click "Install WordPress" to confirm you want to install a new WordPress site in your free Sandstorm Oasis server account.

Now that WordPress is added to your account, you will be asked to create a new WordPress-powered website. Click the "Create new site" button:

You now have a "self-hosted," publicly available WordPress-powered website. The website address will be something like https://y232lodgwyt21g0hzx8s.oasis.sandstorm.io (it will be different for you). You will be presented with some additional information about your site in the WordPress Dashboard that appears. It will look something like this:

Install plugin dependencies

ℹ️ This step is only required when installing Buoy inside Sandstorm Oasis. When Buoy is installed into other, less restrictive server environments, Buoy will automatically detect missing dependencies and install them itself.

ℹ️ This step is temporary and will no longer be needed when Buoy's plugin dependencies are merged into WordPress core.

Click on "Plugins" at the left-hand side of the WordPress Dashboard Menu. When you hover over this menu item, a fly-out will appear with options including "Installed plugins."

This will take you to the WordPress Admin Plugins screen. On a new Sandstorm Oasis install, your WordPress Plugins screen will look like this:

Click on the "Add New" button from either the top header or the left-hand Dashboard Menu:

Sandstorm Oasis's WordPress app will ask you to upload a plugin file:

Click here to download the latest version of the WP REST API plugin. When you've finished downloading the WP REST API plugin and saved its .zip file to your computer's hard disk drive, click on the "Browse" button (on some computers, this button will be labeled "Choose File" instead).

Locate the WP REST API .zip file you downloaded from the file chooser. Here's what it looks like on my computer:

After selecting the file from the File Upload chooser window, click the "Install Now" button on the Sandstorm Oasis WordPress Plugin installer screen:

WordPress will receive, unzip, and install the plugin. If everything goes okay, you will see this success message:

Install Buoy

The next step is to install the Buoy plugin to add Buoy's crisis response features to your new website.

Click on "Plugins" at the left-hand side of the WordPress Dashboard Menu. When you hover over this menu item, a fly-out will appear with options including "Installed plugins."

This will take you to the WordPress Admin Plugins screen. On a new Sandstorm Oasis install, your WordPress Plugins screen will look like this:

Click on the "Add New" button from either the top header or the left-hand Dashboard Menu:

Sandstorm Oasis's WordPress app will ask you to upload a plugin file:

Click here to download the latest stable release of Buoy as a ZIP file. When you've finished downloading Buoy and saved the Buoy .zip file to your computer's hard disk drive, click on the "Browse…" button.

Locate the Buoy ZIP file you downloaded from the file chooser. Here's what it looks like on my computer:

After selecting the file from the File Upload chooser window, click the "Install Now" button on the Sandstorm Oasis WordPress Plugin installer screen:

WordPress will receive, unzip, and install the plugin. If everything goes okay, you will see this success message:

Click the "Activate Plugin" link to enable Buoy.

If Buoy was activated successfully, you will be greeted with a "Plugin activated" notice and your Sandstorm Oasis WordPress Plugins screen will look like this:

Next steps

You have successfully installed Buoy to a new WordPress site on Sandstorm Oasis. What next?

1. Configure Buoy
2. Invite your community
3. Set up crisis response teams

If you're also new to Sandstorm in addition to Buoy, consider also reading the Sandstorm Documentation.