Skip to content

Installation

OpenWard can be installed from a release binary or built directly from source.

This guide covers the source build path so you can compile and run OpenWard on your own machine or server.

Prerequisites

Before building OpenWard, make sure you have:

  • Go installed
  • git installed
  • A Unix-like shell environment, or PowerShell on Windows

If you plan to run OpenWard as a long-lived service, also make sure the target machine can keep the process running and has write access to the directory where OpenWard stores its data.

Build From Source

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/useopenward/openward.git
cd openward

Build the frontend

cd ui
npm install
npm run build
cd ..

Download Go dependencies

go mod download

Build the binary

go build -o openward ./cmd

Create the .env File

Before you run OpenWard, create a .env file in the same directory as the compiled binary.

This file should include your admin credentials and the addresses OpenWard should listen on:

OPENWARD_ADMIN_EMAIL=<your email>
OPENWARD_ADMIN_PASSWORD=<password>
OPENWARD_ADDR=
OPENWARD_ADMIN_ADDR=

We understand the security implications of storing credentials in a local environment file. Because OpenWard is still in its early stages, this setup may change in the future as the project evolves toward a more secure configuration flow.

Run OpenWard

Start OpenWard by running the compiled binary directly:

./openward

If OpenWard starts successfully, you should see output similar to this:

2026/06/28 13:07:13 openward proxy listening on :8080
2026/06/28 13:07:13 openward admin API listening on :9090

When both services are running, open the dashboard in your browser and log in with your admin credentials.