ActivistChecklist.org

Visit the live site: ActivistChecklist.org

ActivistChecklist.org is a comprehensive digital security resource designed specifically for activists and organizers. The site provides practical, accessible security guidance that strikes a balance between oversimplified tips and overwhelming technical details. Our mission is to help activists protect their digital lives with clear, actionable checklists and guides that don't require advanced technical expertise. Whether you're new to digital security or looking to strengthen your practices, we offer step-by-step guidance that's both thorough and approachable.

Install the prerequisites

A Next.js project with file-based MDX content.

If you're new to node and yarn, follow these steps to install the prerequisites:

# Install Homebrew first (if you don't have it already)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Install Node.js, Yarn package manager, ffmpeg, and exiftool using Homebrew
brew install node yarn ffmpeg exiftool

# Enable Corepack (which enables yarn to install packages globally)
corepack enable 

Setup

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/ActivistChecklist/ActivistChecklist.org.git
cd ActivistChecklist.org

1. Install dependencies:

yarn install

1. Copy the .env.template file to .env and set required environment variables.
2. Start the development server:

yarn dev

The Next.js app will be at http://localhost:3000 (API on the port in API_PORT, default 4321).

VS Code extensions

These VS Code / Cursor plugins will help you work with specific configuration of this project.

• Tailwind CSS IntelliSense
• ESLint
• ES7+ React/Redux/React-Native snippets
• JavaScript (ES6) code snippets
• Babel JavaScript
• Babel Colorization
• npm Intellisense
• Path Intellisense
• Search node_modules
• SCSS IntelliSense
• DotENV
• i18n Ally
• Markdown Preview Enhanced
• Markdown Table Formatter
• JavaScript and TypeScript Nightly

Deployment to production server

Node installation

You'll need to get Node running on your server if you intend to use the contact form, stats tracking, or other server side code.

If you're hosting on May First, follow these instructions to get the latest verison of Node.js installed.

cd ~/include/
mkdir .nvm
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/include/.nvm"
# Update this URL to be the latest version of nvm
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.1/install.sh | bash
# Install the latest version of node (or specify your version)
nvm install --lts
npm install --global yarn
yarn config set prefix ~/include/.yarn

You can run the API server with:

yarn api:start

You can test that it's working locally with:

curl http://localhost:4321/api-server/hello

You'll need to configure your server to proxy API requests to the Node server. If you're using Apache, you can add these lines to your Apache configuration:

ProxyPass /api-server http://localhost:4321/api-server
ProxyPassReverse /api-server http://localhost:4321/api-server

This server side API needs to run in production (in our case, a LAMP server).

Separately, we use built-in Next.js API routes for staging deployments on services like Vercel.

Interacting with API server

You can interact with the API server using the following yarn commands:

• yarn api:start - Start the API server using PM2 with auto-restart configuration
• yarn api:stop - Stop the running API server
• yarn api:restart - Restart the API server
• yarn api:status - Check the current status of the API server
• yarn api:delete - Delete the API server process from PM2
• yarn api:logs - View the API server logs

Auto-Restart Features: The API server is configured with PM2's ecosystem config (ecosystem.config.js) for robust production deployment:

• Automatically restarts on crashes or unexpected exits
• Uses exponential backoff to prevent restart storms
• Restarts if memory usage exceeds 500MB
• Survives system reboots (after running pm2 startup and pm2 save)

Auto-start after reboot:

If you can't use sudo but have cron access, you can set up a cron job to auto-restart after reboots and monitor the API. This will check every 5 minutes if the API is running and restart it if needed.

1. Open your crontab:

   crontab -e

2. Add this line (replace with your actual path):

   */5 * * * * cd /your/full/path/to/ActivistChecklist.org && yarn api:status 2>/dev/null | grep -q "online" || yarn api:start

The API server runs on port 4321 by default (configurable via API_PORT environment variable) and is accessible at /api-server/* routes.

Building, uploading, running

yarn build && upload  # upload is a custom alias for rsync

Available Scripts

• yarn dev - Runs the development server with SSL proxy
• yarn build - Builds the application for production
• yarn start - Starts the production server
• yarn serve - Serves the static production build of the site (from the out directory)

Project Directory Structure

ActivistChecklist.org
├── api - API server (Running on fastify at /api-server/ – Separate from Next.js)
├── components - React components  
├── content - Source content (MDX frontmatter + body) tracked in git
├── lib - Core business logic
├── out - Static build output (generated during static export flow)
├── pages - Next.js pages
│   └── api - Next.js API routes
├── public - Public assets (images, fonts, etc.)
│   └── scripts - Public PHP scripts (stats, contact form, etc.)
├── scripts - Build and utility scripts (JS)
├── styles - CSS
└── utils - Utility functions  

Contributing changes to the content

Content lives in this repository under content/, so you can submit content updates directly via pull request.

Typical workflow:

1. Edit/add MDX files under content/.
2. Run the site locally (yarn dev) and validate your changes.
3. Run checks as needed (for example yarn buildstatic / yarn check-links).
4. Open a PR with your content and/or code changes.

Where does the content live?

Primary source of truth is file-based content in this repo:

• content/en/guides
• content/en/checklist-items
• content/en/pages
• content/en/news
• content/en/changelog
• content/en/news-sources

License

This repository uses dual licensing:

• All source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0
• All content, images, and other non-code assets are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license