How to Install Caddy on Ubuntu 20.04

In this article, we'll explain you how to install Caddy on Ubuntu 20.04. This article will guide you with the installation process and host a website.

The Caddy web server is an open-source web server written in Go. It is designed around simplicity and security that comes with a number of features that are useful for hosting websites. Caddy is both a flexible, efficient static file server and a powerful, scalable reverse proxy.

Prerequisites

A Ubuntu install dedicated server or KVM VPS.
A root user access or normal user with administrative privileges.

Install Caddy on Ubuntu 20.04

1. Keep the server up to date

# apt update -y && apt upgrade -y

2. Install Caddy

Following command will install and automatically starts and runs Caddy for you as a systemd service named caddy using our official caddy.service unit file.

First, add GPG key using following command:

# curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo apt-key add -

Next, add repository and update it:

# curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list

# apt update

Finally, install Caddy using following command:

# apt install caddy

Now, navigate to your browser and enter your server IP or domain name:

http://Server-IP

OR

http://example.com

3. Configure Domain with Caddy

Before moving following, first set up domain's A/AAAA  DNS record at your registrar or control panel.

Note: Replace hostnextra.com with your domain name

Create a directory for your website files

# mkdir -p /var/www/html/hostnextra.com

Next, if you are using SELinux than you need to change the file security context for web content. (Optional)

# chcon -t httpd_sys_content_t /var/www/html/hostnextra.com -R
# chcon -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html/hostnextra.com -R

Now, open Caddy's configuration file and add your domain name and change website's root directory.

# vi /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Replace :80 with your domain name and change the site root to /var/www/html/hostnextra.com as

Once you done with the changes reload the caddy.service to reflect the changes.

# systemctl reload caddy

Now, create a index.html file in /var/www/html/hostnextra.com using following command:

# vi /var/www/html/hostnextra.com/index.html

Add HTML code.

Finally, refresh the page in your browser and you will see our newly created index.html.

In this article, we have seen how to install Caddy on Ubuntu 20.04.