Setting Up a Website

This guide explains how to configure httpd(8) to serve a website.

Before You Begin

This guide assumes you have already correctly configured OpenHTTPd and set up TLS.

Finding the Document Root

First, put files in your document root. You'll want to check your httpd.conf(5) for the document root. For example, consider this block:

server "example.com" {
	listen on * tls port 443
	tls {
		certificate "/etc/ssl/example.com.crt"
		key "/etc/ssl/private/example.com.key"
	}
	location "/pub/*" {
		directory auto index
	}
	location "/.well-known/acme-challenge/*" {
		root "/acme"
		request strip 2
	}
}

In this example, the only document root declared in the configuration is in line 11, for ACME verification. This is normally not where webpages are served. So, since the document root for webpages is not specified, httpd(8) defaults to using /htdocs. Since OpenHTTPd runs in a chroot by default, this means your files should go in /var/www/htdocs/.

Creating a Webpage

We can create our first webpage by editing /var/www/htdocs/index.html.

Save this page, and make sure it is readable:

# chmod a+r /var/www/htdocs/index.html

Then, load https://example.com/index.html in your web browser to view. Remember to replace example.com with your actual hostname.

Web applications

Here are some sample web applications you can install:

Name	Type
pmwiki	wiki
CVSWeb	CVS Code Hosting
Gotweb	Got code hosting
Fiche	Pastebin
Squirrelmail	Webmail

You can find more web applications in the Almanack.