Environment Variables

webhull expands ${VAR:default} placeholders throughout the YAML config at load time. This page lists every variable referenced in the example configs and what it maps to.

Syntax

Syntax	Behaviour
${VAR}	Value of VAR; empty string if unset
${VAR:default}	Value of VAR; falls back to default if unset or empty
$VAR	Value of VAR; empty string if unset (no default possible)

Expansion happens before YAML parsing — the binary never sees raw variable names in production.

Variables reference

Variable	Used in	Default	Description
PORT	server.port	8080	HTTP listen port.
HOST	server.host	0.0.0.0	HTTP listen address.
ENVIRONMENT	server.environment	development	Runtime mode. Set to production in deployed environments.
BASE_URL	site.baseURL	—	Absolute base URL, e.g. https://example.com. No trailing slash.
SMTP_HOST	mail.host	—	SMTP server hostname.
SMTP_PORT	mail.port	587	SMTP port.
SMTP_USERNAME	mail.username	—	SMTP auth username.
SMTP_PASSWORD	mail.password	—	SMTP auth password.
SMTP_FROM	mail.from	—	Sender email address.
GATE_SECRET	gate.cookieSecret	—	HMAC-SHA256 signing key for the site gate. Min 32 chars. Never hardcode.
ARCON_GATE_SECRET	arconGate.cookieSecret	—	HMAC-SHA256 signing key for the arcon gate. Min 32 chars. Never hardcode.
PLAUSIBLE_BASE_URL	analytics.plausible.baseURL	—	Plausible server URL (self-hosted or https://plausible.io).
PLAUSIBLE_DOMAIN	analytics.plausible.domain	—	Plausible site domain for data-domain attribute.
COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT	analytics.collector.endpoint	—	Custom analytics collector HTTP endpoint.

Generating secrets

# Generate a gate secret (32 bytes, base64-encoded)
openssl rand -base64 32

Kubernetes Secret example

kubectl create secret generic webhull-secrets \
  --from-literal=gate-secret="$(openssl rand -base64 32)" \
  --from-literal=smtp-password="changeme" \
  --namespace my-namespace

# Helm values — inject into the container
frontend:
  env:
    - name: GATE_SECRET
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: webhull-secrets
          key: gate-secret
    - name: SMTP_PASSWORD
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: webhull-secrets
          key: smtp-password
    - name: ENVIRONMENT
      value: "production"
    - name: BASE_URL
      value: "https://example.com"