How to setup caddy web server and deploy a website

For simplicity, we use a caddy web server deployed on ubuntu. For external access to a domain name, you will need to register a domain name and obtain an SSL certificate.

Summary

1. Install and start caddy web server.

   apt-get install --yes debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
   curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
   curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
   apt-get update
   apt-get install --yes caddy
   systemctl enable caddy
   systemctl start caddy
   

2. Confgiure caddy by editing the /etc/caddy/Caddyfile to serve website at /var/www/html to your ip address or domain name, and add a default web page.

   HOST_NAME=`hostname`
   perl -pi -e "s|^:80|${HOST_NAME}|" /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
   perl -pi -e "s|/usr/share/caddy|/var/www/html|" /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
   mkdir -p /var/www/html
   echo "Server Deployed $(date)" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html
   systemctl reload caddy
   

3. Test externally accessible on that domain or ip address.

$ curl https://[HOST_NAME]
Server Deployed Thu  6 Apr 2023 02:27:03 AEST

Procedure

Install and start caddy web server

apt-get install --yes debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
apt-get update
apt-get install --yes caddy
systemctl enable caddy
systemctl start caddy
systemctl status caddy

Configure caddy

Confgiure caddy by editing the /etc/caddy/Caddyfile to serve content to the hostname (ip address or domain name) of your server.

HOST_NAME=`hostname`
perl -pi -e "s|^:80|${HOST_NAME}|" /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Define website location as /var/www/html and create a default webpage to test webserver. Note caddy has to be reloaded to implement changes to the Caddyfile.

perl -pi -e "s|/usr/share/caddy|/var/www/html|" /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
mkdir -p /var/www/html
echo "Server Deployed $(date)" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html
systemctl reload caddy

Test local access

Test web service localling by adding a second block for serving /var/www/html/ as localhost

http:// {
        # Set this path to your site's directory.
        root * /var/www/html

        # Enable the static file server.
        file_server

        # Another common task is to set up a reverse proxy:
        # reverse_proxy localhost:80

        # Or serve a PHP site through php-fpm:
        # php_fastcgi localhost:9000
}

Restart web server and download index.html with curl

systemctl reload caddy
curl http://localhost

You should see

Server Deployed Thu  6 Apr 2023 02:27:03 AEST

Test wwww aaccessible

Now from another machine, test the web server is working and that a valid SSL certificate for your domain is installed on your server. Here [HOST_NAME] would be replaced with the domain name of your server.

$ curl https://[HOST_NAME]
Server Deployed Thu  6 Apr 2023 02:27:03 AEST

For details of certificate use:

curl -vv https://[HOST_NAME]
* Server certificate:
*  subject: CN=[HOST_NAME]
*  start date: Jun  4 14:27:31 2023 GMT
*  expire date: Sep  2 14:27:30 2023 GMT
*  subjectAltName: host "[HOST_NAME]" matched cert's "[HOST_NAME]"
*  issuer: C=US; O=Let's Encrypt; CN=R3
*  SSL certificate verify ok.

This confirms that your web site is accessible from across the world wide web. Edit your Caddyfile to remove the http access to your website to limit it to your domain only. It should look like below, where [HOST_NAME] is the domain name of your server.

[HOST_NAME] {
        # Set this path to your site's directory.
        root * /var/www/html

        # Enable the static file server.
        file_server

        # Another common task is to set up a reverse proxy:
        # reverse_proxy localhost:80

        # Or serve a PHP site through php-fpm:
        # php_fastcgi localhost:9000
}

systemctl reload caddy
systemctl status caddy

You are now ready to deploy your website to /var/www/html by installing your website or web app repo on the server, building your website/webapp, and rsyncing it to var/www/html

References

Refer to the Caddy docs for more information:

https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile