sharadgana / caddy

Fast, cross-platform HTTP/2 web server with automatic HTTPS

Caddy is a lightweight, general-purpose web server for Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and Android. It is a capable alternative to other popular and easy to use web servers. (@caddyserver on Twitter)

The most notable features are HTTP/2, Let's Encrypt support, Virtual Hosts, TLS + SNI, and easy configuration with a Caddyfile. In development, you usually put one Caddyfile with each site. In production, Caddy serves HTTPS by default and manages all cryptographic assets for you.

Download · User Guide

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• Getting Caddy
• Quick Start
• Running from Source
• Contributing
• About the Project

Getting Caddy

Caddy binaries have no dependencies and are available for nearly every platform.

Latest release

Quick Start

The website has full documentation but this will get you started in about 30 seconds:

Place a file named "Caddyfile" with your site. Paste this into it and save:

localhost

gzip
browse
ext .html
websocket /echo cat
log ../access.log
header /api Access-Control-Allow-Origin *

Run caddy from that directory, and it will automatically use that Caddyfile to configure itself.

That simple file enables compression, allows directory browsing (for folders without an index file), serves clean URLs, hosts a WebSocket echo server at /echo, logs requests to access.log, and adds the coveted Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header for all responses from some API.

Wow! Caddy can do a lot with just a few lines.

Defining multiple sites

You can run multiple sites from the same Caddyfile, too:

site1.com {
	# ...
}

site2.com, sub.site2.com {
	# ...
}

Note that all these sites will automatically be served over HTTPS using Let's Encrypt as the CA. Caddy will manage the certificates (including renewals) for you. You don't even have to think about it.

For more documentation, please view the website. You may also be interested in the [developer guide] (https://github.com/mholt/caddy/wiki) on this project's GitHub wiki.

Running from Source

Note: You will need Go 1.6 or newer (required for transparent automatic HTTP/2 support and to take advantage of performance improvements in the TLS and crypto libraries).

1. $ go get github.com/mholt/caddy/caddy
2. cd into your website's directory
3. Run caddy (assumes $GOPATH/bin is in your $PATH)

If you're tinkering, you can also use ./build.bash && ./ecaddy.

By default, Caddy serves the current directory at localhost:2015. You can place a Caddyfile to configure Caddy for serving your site.

Caddy accepts some flags from the command line. Run caddy -h to view the help for flags or see the CLI documentation.

Running as root: We advise against this; use setcap instead, like so: setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep ./caddy This will allow you to listen on ports < 1024 like 80 and 443.

Docker Container

Caddy is available as a Docker container from any of these sources:

• abiosoft/caddy
• darron/caddy
• joshix/caddy
• jumanjiman/caddy
• zenithar/nano-caddy
• zzrot/alpine-caddy

3rd-party dependencies

Although Caddy's binaries are completely static, Caddy relies on some excellent libraries. Godoc.org shows the packages that each Caddy package imports.

Contributing

Join our community where you can chat with other Caddy users and developers!

Please see our contributing guidelines.

We use GitHub issues and pull requests only for bug reports and discussing specific changes to Caddy. We welcome all other topics on the forum!

Thanks for making Caddy -- and the Web -- better!

Special thanks to for hosting the Caddy project.

About the project

Caddy was born out of the need for a "batteries-included" web server that runs anywhere and doesn't have to take its configuration with it. Caddy took inspiration from spark, nginx, lighttpd, Websocketd and Vagrant, which provides a pleasant mixture of features from each of them.

Twitter: @mholt6