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Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

caddyserver.com

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#11
$25 a month is quite pricey for the edge case of someone starting up sites that will be commercial but unsure as to profitability yet. I guess I will build and donate $25 for the year. probably building is the smart thing to do anyway for a server you're getting for its security capabilities.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#13
Has there been a shift in the recent times regarding developer teams paying for software? Yes, ease-of-use is great benefit. It takes a while to become accustomed to nginx configuration. But, $25/instance/month for a web server when nginx can do almost everything (and arguably much better than a server that was only launched two years ago)? It doesn't sit with me well.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#14

Has there been a shift in the recent times regarding developer teams paying for software? Yes, ease-of-use is great benefit. It takes a while to become accustomed to nginx configuration. But, $25/instance/month for a web server when nginx can do almost everything (and arguably much better than a server that was only launched two years ago)? It doesn't sit with me well.

What shift do you mean? Paying for (dev) software is very common.

> arguably much better

That's very arguable because Caddy is great at what it does. I think you should try it out before assuming it can't come close to nginx. Also older software also tends to be stuck with legacy cruft so project age isn't such a simple signal.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#15

Has there been a shift in the recent times regarding developer teams paying for software? Yes, ease-of-use is great benefit. It takes a while to become accustomed to nginx configuration. But, $25/instance/month for a web server when nginx can do almost everything (and arguably much better than a server that was only launched two years ago)? It doesn't sit with me well.

It's open source, right? Just compile it yourself?

To your lager point, I think paying for software is and has been the norm in many places. So nothing new.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#16

What's interesting is that it's the first web server not focused on speed or performance but on the user experience. I love nginx, but I had huge headaches configuring it when migrating php apps with huge htaccess rules to nginx. The terms of the license do not seem super clear though.

I'm not sure it's the first one to focus on that. I remember Cherokee being really user friendly. It can't do nearly as much as Nginx, though, and there hasn't been a new release in four years so it might be dead.

On the Windows side of the world, I've found IIS to be decently user friendly to set up and administer.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#17
post #7

When Caddy was first released I tried, and failed, to get Caddy to serve an https site locally . Is that possible now? The docs[1] hint that it could be if I add an entry to my hosts file pointing an IP address of, say, a Docker container, as that wouldn't technically be localhost or an IP address. It doesn't explicitly say it's possible though. Adding something to the tutorials would be immensely helpful if it does…

What do you mean by locally? If you want HTTPS automatically then the site must be publically available so that LetsEncrypt can verify the domain and grant the certificate. If that's not possible then you'll have to use the DNS challenge and setup a provider plugin.

It doesn't matter where the backend points and you can use it to serve a docker container if you want, but that's different from the the host/frontend address you use.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#18

$25 a month is quite pricey for the edge case of someone starting up sites that will be commercial but unsure as to profitability yet. I guess I will build and donate $25 for the year. probably building is the smart thing to do anyway for a server you're getting for its security capabilities.

Agree. The $25/month stops me using it for side projects that generate small but non-zero revenue. Love the concept but not sure when I'll get to play time on something genuinely personal.

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#19
post #18

$25 a month is quite pricey for the edge case of someone starting up sites that will be commercial but unsure as to profitability yet. I guess I will build and donate $25 for the year. probably building is the smart thing to do anyway for a server you're getting for its security capabilities.

Agree. The $25/month stops me using it for side projects that generate small but non-zero revenue. Love the concept but not sure when I'll get to play time on something genuinely personal.

Can't you build it from source?

Re: Caddy – The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

#20
And it still doesn't obey the DNS specs.

Specifically, the DNS RFCs define that, given no search domain, a relative hostname (e.g. google.com) is equivalent to its absolute hostname form (e.g. google.com.).

This is used in SSL validation as well, a certificate valid for one is valid for the other, and in reverse.

Every webserver SHOULD respond to both names identically, or redirect from one to the other.

Let's try that. https://news.ycombinator.com./ yup, works. https://www.nginx.com./ as well. In fact, nginx, Apache2, IIS, the Google Cloud load balancers, AWS's load balancers, every major site supports this.

The only http servers breaking the RFC for absolutely no reason are Caddy and Traefik.

And the issue has been closed as WONTFIX months ago.

Do you really want to use an http server that doesn't even consider following the RFCs? And pay for that?

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