Table of Contents
forte is a self-hosted music platform. You can either connect to a forte server or create your own server for your friends & family. However, it is also very convenient to use forte on your local machine as a stand-alone music player. Follow this guide to learn how to connect and how to build your own forte server.
- Add tracks and albums to your queue
- Mark your favorite tracks, albums, artists, playlists
- Endless listening with radio feature
- Create playlists
- Desktop / Mobile Player
- Listen to TuneIn stations
- Specialized context menus
- Make fuzzy searches
- Add friends
- Playing controls
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Lyrics support
- MediaSession API
- Progressive Web App
- Group Sessions
- Admin dashboard
- User profiles
- Last.fm Scrobbling
- Easy encrypted server via Greenlock
- Click here for the API documentation.
If you know a forte server and just want to connect to use the service, go to https://forte.buzl.uk. The webpage is hosted with GitHub pages and uses the latest forte version. Therefore, this is the recommended way to access forte services.
If you want to use forte on your mobile device, we suggest using the PWA version of the application. You can access the PWA version by going to https://forte.buzl.uk on your mobile device and clicking on the Add to Home Screen button.
However, Forte works best with the Chrome browser on your mobile device.
Once you go to the website, you will be prompted with this dialog:
Here's an explanation for the fields:
Forte server: The public address of the forte server.
Username : The username given to you by the server.
Token : The token given to you by the server.
If you are wondering about how to create accounts, this will be explained in the Creating your own server section.
Here's an example for the authorization:
If you log in successfully, you will see the homepage of the application, where some track recommendations can be found. Now you can use the application and listen to some music.
Once you log in, your authorization parameters will be saved on the local session of your browser. However, if you ever want to reset these information, you can right click on the Profile button on the top right of the screen, you will see an option to Reset. This will clear the local storage along with your session storage.
To build and host your own server you need a decent computer as we will be dealing with multiple users and streaming audio files to them. In the remaining of this section, we will be going over the steps of building the server.
Forte uses docker to build the server. Therefore, you need to have docker installed on your machine. You can find the installation instructions for your operating system here.
To run the docker container, you need to have the docker-compose.yml file. Download the file here:
Before running the file, you need to edit some fields:
app:
environment:
mode: local # local or public, defaults to local
forte_server: <server> # only if mode is public
forte_email: <email> # only if mode is public
POSTGRES_HOST: postgres # hostname/ip of postgres server
POSTGRES_PORT: 5432 # postgres port (default=5432)
POSTGRES_DB: forte # Forte Database name
POSTGRES_USER: forte # Forte postgres username
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: forte # Forte postgres password
volumes:
- <library>:/library # The path to your music library
postgres:
environment:
POSTGRES_DB: forte # Forte Database name
POSTGRES_USER: forte # Forte postgres username
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: forte # Forte postgres password
Here's an example for the docker-compose.yml file:
version: '3'
services:
app:
image: kaangiray26/forte:1.8
ports:
- "80:80"
- "443:443"
- "3000:3000"
depends_on:
- postgres
environment:
mode: public
forte_server: forte.example.com
forte_email: forte@example.com
POSTGRES_HOST: postgres
POSTGRES_PORT: 5432
POSTGRES_DB: forte
POSTGRES_USER: forte
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: forte
volumes:
- /home/forte/library:/library
postgres:
image: postgres
restart: always
environment:
POSTGRES_DB: forte
POSTGRES_USER: forte
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: forte
volumes:
- db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
volumes:
db-data:
If you want to use the server locally, you can edit the docker-compose.yml file and change the mode field to local. Then, you can run the following command to start the server:
sudo docker-compose up -d
If you want to use the server locally, you can edit the docker-compose.yml file and change the mode field to public. Also, you need to set the fields forte_server and forte_email. Then, you can run the following command to start the server:
sudo docker-compose up -d
- Default structure:
/library/Artist/Album/Track
Here's an example:
/library/
└── Antimatter/
├── Leaving Eden/
| ├── 01 - Redemption.flac
| ├── 02 - Another Face in a Window.flac
| ...
| └── cover.jpg # Cover for the album
|
└── cover.jpg # Cover for the artist
Here are two examples for multi-disc albums:
/library/
└── Ayreon/
└── 01011001/
├── 101 - Age Of Shadows_We Are Forever.flac
├── 102 - Comatose.flac
...
├── 201 - The Fifth Extinction.flac
├── 202 - Waking Dreams.flac
...
/library/
└── Ayreon/
└── 01011001/
├── CD1/
| ├── 01 - Age Of Shadows_We Are Forever.flac
│ ├── 02 - Comatose.flac
│ ...
│
└── CD2/
├── 01 - The Fifth Extinction.flac
├── 02 - Waking Dreams.flac
...
- Artist folders under library directory.
- Album folders under Artists.
- Tracks under Albums.
- For each track, follow the format
INDEX - TRACK_TITLE.FORMAT - To set cover for the album, put a
cover.*file inside the album folder. - To set cover for the artist, put a
cover.*file inside the artist folder. - To use multi-disc albums, you can both use CD directories or just tracks with CD indexes.
- Artist folders can be empty.
- Album folders can be empty.
On each restart of the server, artists and albums with no covers will be found and covers for them will be retrieved. If you want to use your own cover file for an artist or an album, just place the cover file as cover.* (cover.jpg, cover.png, etc.) inside the folder respectively.
To use an external resource as a cover for an artist or an album, go to the Forte dashboard, find the item using the search bar, change the URL of the image and update.
You can access the forte dashboard by going to http://localhost:3000. The default login credentials are: forte and alternative.
While in dashboard, don't forget to change the genius_token, lastfm_api_key, lastfm_api_secret fields in the Config tab for genius and lastfm extensions.
Also, please change the default password from the Password tab.
- Audio: mp3, m4a, ogg, flac, wav, aac
- Image: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, bmp, tiff, svg
Distributed under the GPL-3.0 License. See LICENSE for more information.
Kaan Giray Buzluk - @kaangiray26 - kaangiray26 (at) protonmail.com
- Project Link: https://github.com/kaangiray26/forte
- Docker Image: https://hub.docker.com/r/kaangiray26/forte
Check out the following list of resources that I've used to build forte.