Simple http2 server with caddy for static websites

*Caddyfile.md

Static File Server

Even though you should generally use a CDN for something like this, a very simple setup for smaller static websites on a VPS / VM is fine.

This gist comes with an example Caddyfile that can be used with caddy to serve any sub-folder in the /var/www path as a subdomain.

This reduces the overall effort required to create and register domains if you are going to keep it all on the same server.

The example Caddyfile shows how to set the flow up with the localhost domain but changing it to work with an actual domain should be rather simple and is documented as comments in the file.

Caddyfile

*.localhost {
	# basic error handling for cases where it doesn't find anything
	handle_errors {
		respond "{http.error.status_code} {http.error.status_text}" 404
	}

	root * /var/www/{labels.1}
	#                   ↑ change to labels.2
	#                   if you are using a subdomain like `blog.reaper.is` or labels.3
	#                   if it's even more nested like `blog.internal.reaper.is`

	# try using cleaner paths for `.html` files
	@stripExtensions path_regexp strip (.*)\.(html)
	redir @stripExtensions {re.strip.1} 301

	# tie `/index` to `/index.html`
	# done to make the url cleaner looking (purely aesthetic, can be removed
	file_server {
		index index.html
	}

	# part 2 of trying cleaner paths for `.html` files
	# by checking if a .html exists for the requested path
	try_files {path} {path}/ {path}.html

	header {
		Strict-Transport-Security max-age=31536000;
		X-Content-Type-Options nosniff
		X-Frame-Options DENY
		Referrer-Policy no-referrer-when-downgrade
		X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
	}

	# Basic compression and cache control
	# we remove caching for .html and .css files as they change
	# often when working with static assets
	encode gzip zstd
	header @stripExtensions Cache-Control "no-cache"
	header {
		Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000"
		-Cache-Control "*.html *.css"
	}
}