Deployment on Walrus Sites: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

What is Walrus Sites?

Walrus Sites is a decentralized hosting platform on the Sui blockchain that lets you host websites without traditional servers.

Advantages of Deploying on Walrus

• Censorship Resistance: Your site can't be taken down by any central authority
• High Availability: Content remains accessible even if up to 2/3 of storage nodes fail
• True Ownership: You own your site through blockchain-verified ownership
• Cost-Effective Storage: Advanced erasure coding makes storage more efficient than traditional solutions
• Immutable Records: Content integrity is verified and secured by the blockchain
• No Single Point of Failure: Distributed across a network of nodes
• Seamless Integration: Works with the Sui blockchain ecosystem

Prerequisites

Step 1: Install Sui CLI

https://docs.sui.io/guides/developer/getting-started/sui-install

Step 2: Install Walrus CLI

https://docs.wal.app/usage/setup.html

Quick Start Guide

Step 3: Build Your Website

Walrus Sites can host any static website, not just Next.js projects. Prepare your static files:

# For plain HTML/CSS/JS sites
# Just use your files directly - no build step needed!

# For Next.js projects
# First, update next.config.js to include:
# module.exports = { output: 'export', images: { unoptimized: true } }
npm run build
# Output will be in the './out' directory

The key requirement is having a directory of static files (HTML, CSS, JS, images) that can be served directly.

Step 4: Install site-builder

# Download the right version for your system
curl https://storage.googleapis.com/mysten-walrus-binaries/site-builder-mainnet-latest-macos-arm64 -o site-builder
chmod +x site-builder

Step 5: Set Up site-builder Configuration

mkdir -p ~/.config/walrus
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MystenLabs/walrus-sites/refs/heads/mainnet/sites-config.yaml -o ~/.config/walrus/sites-config.yaml

Step 6: Check Your Wallet

You need some wal and sui Check with: sui client gas

Step 8: Deploy Your Site

./site-builder publish ./out --epochs 50

Wait for deployment to complete. You'll get a site object ID like: 0xd155e7f74e033a93a26bc31cb7892945a1406a1f0d672c17ea0ee69d28718a89

Step 9: Link Your SuiNS Domain

1. Go to suins.io/account/my-names
2. Find your domain
3. Click the three dots → "Link To Walrus Site"
4. Paste your site object ID
5. Approve the transaction

Step 10: Visit Your Site

Your site is would be live at:

https://yourdomainname.wal.app 

I.e your domain name with a "wal.app" at the back