Quick start

Try Memship on your machine in about a minute — no cloning required. This uses pre-built images and is meant for evaluation, not production. For a real deployment, see Installation.

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose

1. Make a folder for it

Everything below runs from one directory, which ends up holding the single file this needs. Compose takes its project name from that directory’s name, and the quick-start stack keeps its data in Docker volumes named after that project — so run every docker compose command in this guide from inside this folder. From anywhere else Compose looks for a different project and will not find your containers or your data.

mkdir -p "$HOME/memship-quickstart"
cd "$HOME/memship-quickstart"

2. Download the quick-start compose file and start

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marcandreuf/memship/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
docker compose pull          # fetch the latest published images
PORT=8081 docker compose up -d

Change PORT=8081 to any port you prefer (default is 80).

3. Run the setup

The same command sets Memship up on every environment. It is interactive, and asks three independent questions:

docker compose exec -it demo-memship-api python -m app.cli.seed

1. Super admin — you choose the address and password. Nothing is preset, and no credentials are published anywhere.
2. Club data — offered only when there is some, so on a fresh install it is a no-op.
3. Club setup — enter your organization’s real details, or generate a demo club.

The three questions also have flags, for scripting an evaluation or running it where there is no terminal to answer prompts:

# same three steps, unattended
docker compose exec -T -e MEMSHIP_ADMIN_PASSWORD='...' demo-memship-api \
  python -m app.cli.seed --admin-email you@example.org
docker compose exec -T demo-memship-api python -m app.cli.seed --demo

Note -T instead of -it, and that the password goes through docker compose exec -e: the container does not inherit your shell’s environment, and passing it as an argument would leave it in your shell history and in ps. --reset-club-data drives the third question. See python -m app.cli.seed --help.

Answer 2) demo club to look around with realistic data: ~60 members across all statuses, activities, receipts in every state, SEPA mandates and dashboard reminders. Ideal for evaluating the finance dashboard and annual summary. Safe to re-run (idempotent).

The demo club also creates logins for a club admin and two members, with generated passwords. They are printed once, at the end of the run:

  Accounts:

    super admin  you@example.org             (the password you chose)
    club admin   admin@mediterrani.example   4hVqTmXeb9PkscYRt2Nu
    member       demo0@mediterrani.example   pQ7yKdRfw3TgLmXaB6ns
    member       demo1@mediterrani.example   Zj5rWnEcx8VbHtPqM4dy

Keep that output — the passwords are stored only as hashes and cannot be shown again.

4. Open the app

Go to http://localhost:8081 and log in as the super admin you created.

The quick-start stack is for evaluation, not for running a club. Its compose file ships a fixed database password and keeps data in throwaway Docker volumes. Follow Installation and the Configuration reference before putting Memship on a network or entering real member data.

5. Try a member joining

The stack ships with a test inbox at http://localhost:8025. Every email the instance sends — address verification, registration approval, receipts, payment reminders — lands there instead of being delivered, whatever address it was sent to. This is the flow to try first:

1. In a private window, open http://localhost:8081/register and sign up with any address, real or not.
2. Open the test inbox, find the verification email and follow its link.
3. Back in your admin session, open Pending registrations in the sidebar. The new sign-up is listed there — alongside a few the demo club seeds — so click Approve on its row and confirm.
4. The approval email arrives in the test inbox, and the member can now log in.

The inbox is local to your machine — it is published on 127.0.0.1 only — and holds nothing real. Set MAILPIT_PORT alongside PORT if 8025 is taken.

It stays in effect only while Settings → Mailing has never been saved. Configure a real provider there and that provider sends from then on, which is the intended precedence and not a fault — see Which one is in effect.

Moving from evaluation to real use

Do not carry the quick-start stack into production — install it properly with Installation, which generates real secrets and puts your data somewhere you can back up.

If you only want to clear the demo club out of an instance you are keeping, re-run the setup and answer yes to the club-data question. It deletes the demo club while keeping your super admin, the system roles and any payment providers you configured — see First-time setup.

Stop everything

Run these from the folder you created in step 1 — Compose identifies the stack by the directory it is run from.

docker compose stop          # pause it; containers and data stay put
docker compose start         # ... and pick up where you left off

docker compose down          # stop and remove the containers and the network; data kept
docker compose down -v       # ... and delete the data volumes with them

down keeps your database and uploads, so docker compose up -d afterwards brings back the same club. down -v is the one that leaves nothing behind — the demo club, the super admin you created and every receipt go with it, and there is no undo.

To get the disk space back as well, remove the images once the stack is down:

docker image rm ghcr.io/marcandreuf/memship-backend:latest \
                ghcr.io/marcandreuf/memship-frontend:latest \
                axllent/mailpit:v1.29

Leave caddy, postgres and redis alone unless you are sure nothing else on the machine uses them — they are ordinary public images and something else may well.

If you are not in that folder any more

The quick-start containers have fixed names, so you can always stop them by name from anywhere — useful if you deleted the directory, or cannot remember where you put it:

docker rm -f demo-memship-caddy demo-memship-frontend demo-memship-api \
             demo-memship-celery-worker demo-memship-celery-beat \
             demo-memship-redis demo-memship-db demo-memship-mailpit

That removes the containers but not the data. The volumes are named after the Compose project, which is the folder name — docker volume ls | grep demo-memship finds them, and docker volume rm <name> deletes one.