Presswerk

Keep track of your vinyl preorders. Presswerk (German for "pressing plant", pronounced /ˈpʁɛsˌvɛʁk/) is a small, self-hosted app for one person. No login, no external services - just your records in a local SQLite database.

Features

• Create, edit, and delete preorders with artist, album, shop, order and release dates, links, and notes
• Track statuses: preordered, shipped, received, or cancelled
• View status counts and upcoming releases grouped by month on the dashboard
• Search by artist or album, filter by status, and sort by release date or artist

The UI supports English (default) and German. Switch languages in the footer; your choice is stored in your browser session. Built with Elixir, Phoenix LiveView, and SQLite.

Screenshots

Preorders on desktop	Preorders on mobile

Quick start

Install mise and Git, then run from the project directory:

mise install
mise run setup
mise run dev

Open http://localhost:4000. mise run setup installs dependencies, sets up the database, and builds assets.

Configuration

Presswerk reads an optional JSON config file at startup. Copy the example and adjust it:

cp config/presswerk.example.json config/presswerk.json

{
  "default_locale": "en"
}

Key	Values	Description
default_locale	"en", "de"	Default UI language for new visitors. Users can still switch languages in the footer; their choice is stored in the browser session.

The file path defaults to config/presswerk.json locally and /config/presswerk.json in Docker. It can be changed with the PRESSWERK_CONFIG environment variable. A missing file logs a warning; defaults are used.

Run with Docker

Docker Compose

Generate a secret once with openssl rand -base64 48 and store it in a .env file next to docker-compose.yml:

SECRET_KEY_BASE=<generated secret>

Start the app with docker compose up -d --build and open http://localhost:4000. The SQLite database is stored in the presswerk-data Docker volume; migrations run when the container starts. Keep the same secret across restarts and do not commit the .env file. When deploying behind an HTTPS reverse proxy, set PHX_HOST in .env to the public hostname.

To change the default language, add a config directory mount to your docker-compose.yml:

services:
  presswerk:
    volumes:
      - presswerk-data:/data
      - ./config:/config:ro

Note: Presswerk has no login. The default Docker configuration publishes port 4000, so do not expose an instance with personal data to the internet without access protection.

Published image

The image is built on every push to main (dev) and on version tags (latest and vX.Y.Z) and published to GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) as ghcr.io/pklink/presswerk. Multi-arch images are available for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.

docker run -d --name presswerk \
  -p 4000:4000 \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=<generated secret> \
  -e PHX_HOST=localhost \
  -v presswerk-data:/data \
  ghcr.io/pklink/presswerk:latest

To change the default language, mount the config directory:

docker run -d --name presswerk \
  -p 4000:4000 \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=<generated secret> \
  -e PHX_HOST=localhost \
  -v presswerk-data:/data \
  -v ./config:/config:ro \
  ghcr.io/pklink/presswerk:latest

Pull a specific release by tag, e.g. ghcr.io/pklink/presswerk:v0.1.1. Generate the secret with openssl rand -base64 48.

Development and contributing

To run tests and checks:

mise run check

Bug reports and suggestions are welcome. To contribute code, fork the repository, create a branch, run the checks above, and open a pull request with a short description. Please keep the app simple and single-user, and support both UI languages.

UI strings use Gettext with English source text and German translations in priv/gettext/de/LC_MESSAGES/. After adding strings, run mix gettext.extract --merge and fill in the German translations. Changeset messages are translated through the errors domain when displayed; add new validation messages to priv/gettext/errors.pot.

To prepare a release, run mise run release -- patch (or minor / major) with a clean working tree. The task checks the project, commits and tags the release (e.g. v0.1.1), then commits the next development version (0.1.2-dev). It does not push; push the commits and tag when ready.

AI disclosure: A large part of the code in this project is AI-generated.

License

Presswerk is licensed under the MIT License.