self-hosted

Self-hosting | Flame Dashboard

Flame is a self-hosted Startpage, with a lot of nice features that I find valuable and time-saving, like Docker integration ..

Jukka

May 14, 2022 • 4 min read

Background

I used to be a huge fan of Heimdall dashboard, well I still am, but the number of links and services that I was testing and running started to overcrowd the dashboard with the relatively big visual elements that it has. I still love the look of Heimdall and the fact that you can actually integrate and show additional information from the services is really nice, and I am still using Heimdall for this.

In early 2021 I first started testing this SUI startpage to fit more into one visible page, it looks nice, but that's pretty much it. BUT then I found the Flame, it was still quite an early version, had the looks of SUI, but had so much more promise.

I still use Heimdall for the app dashboard which can be integrated into Heimdall to show additional information, but I have moved my start page to Flame.

Features

The reason I like Flame so much is that you can fit a lot more into one page and it has Docker integration, yes it can automatically pick and add apps based on the labels, which makes it really easy to maintain.

Additionally, you can add bookmarks, and create categories for bookmarks and it has a nice GUI to maintain all these. With the latest versions, you can customize the search engines, and customize the theme using the built-in theme builder, lots of additional features have been added since I first tried it.

Docker

While is fully possible to use Flame without this, this is the feature I like the most, with the docker integration, you can automatically pin apps through labels that you are running. You can also automatically unpin apps that are stopped.

Search

The search is this is huge for me, when you have a lot of items on the dashboard it's sometimes hard to find the exact item you are looking for. Flame allows you to define two search providers e.g. local first and then secondary engine. There are 11 predefined web search providers, but you can also define your own search engine if you have one.

Authentication

With the Basic password authentication, you can set the visibility per app or bookmark, to require authentication.

I have this setup, but I have to admit that I have totally forgotten it after the setup.

Themes

You can customize the themes or create one on your own

Other settings

there are plenty of other settings, generic and interface related that you can tweak, like the order of the items, time-based header messages, where the links open, etc.

If you are looking for a nice Startpage/dashboard, this is worth checking out.

Setup

Flame is really easy to set up in Docker. Below is my setup with Traefik reverse proxy (and Keycloak).

  flame:
    image: pawelmalak/flame:latest
    container_name: flame
    volumes:
      - /docker/flame:/app/data
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    ports:
      - 5005:5005
    networks:
      - traefik
    environment:
       - PASSWORD=*******************
    restart: unless-stopped
    labels:
      - traefik.enable=true
      - traefik.docker.network=traefik
      - traefik.http.routers.flame.entrypoints=websecure
      - traefik.http.routers.flame.rule=Host(`flame.domain.com`)
      - traefik.http.routers.flame.tls=true
      - traefik.http.routers.flame.middlewares=keycloak

Adding apps to Flame through labels (the Docker API must be enabled for this)

labels:
  - flame.type=application
  - flame.name=App
  - flame.icon=custom
# - flame.icon=icon-name

Check the official documentation for more.