Caddy Configuration for Typecho — Revisited • TheUnknownBlog

It seems the very first post on this blog showed how to set up Caddy, but at that time I used someone else’s Docker image which bundled nginx, PHP, and Typecho, and I simply reverse-proxied Caddy to that port.

Now I rented a server on Alibaba Cloud with only 512MB RAM, which is a bit tight. To avoid the extra memory overhead of nginx and Docker, I decided to hand-build the Typecho environment.

Install the world’s best programming language

Add the Sury PPA repository

First, add the PPA that contains the latest PHP packages. You need to install some prerequisite packages.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install lsb-release apt-transport-https ca-certificates software-properties-common -y

bash

After installing the tools, import the Sury GPG key. Sury provides almost every PHP version. Typecho requires PHP > 7.4, so we’ll install 8.2.

sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg

bash

Then add the repository to your sources list.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list'

bash

Update the package list to verify it’s working.

sudo apt update

bash

Install PHP 8.2 packages

Install PHP 8.2 and common extensions.

sudo apt install php8.2 php8.2-cli php8.2-fpm php8.2-mysql php8.2-curl php8.2-gd php8.2-mbstring php8.2-xml php8.2-zip php8.2-opcache php8.2-sqlite3 -y

bash

Install Caddy v2

I found many guides using Caddy v1 plus special rewrite rules, but one important upgrade in Caddy v2 is that you don’t need extra rewrite rules for typical setups — v2 is simply more convenient. Don’t try to force old patterns.

Caddy provides an official script; this is what I recommend:

sudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install caddy

bash

If you need extra plugins (for example, DNS providers), you can use xcaddy to build your own binary, but that’s out of scope for this post.

Configure the Caddyfile

Again: I prefer you learn to use the Caddyfile rather than the JSON config.

The following Caddyfile has been tested — paste and use it as-is:

YOUR WEBSITE {
            encode gzip
            log
            tls YOUR EMAIL
            header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=31536000
            root * /var/www/YOUR WEBSITE
            php_fastcgi unix//run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock
            file_server
}

bash

Do you now appreciate Caddy v2’s convenience? You don’t need to configure php-fpm details or rewrite rules — it’s basically ready out of the box.

Everything is self-explanatory, but remember to replace YOUR WEBSITE and YOUR EMAIL with your actual domain and email address. If you want to read more about Caddyfile options, check the official documentation ↗, “it is amazingly easy to read” (my peer who studies Medical Sciences has said so).

Final step: add your Typecho site files

Download the latest Typecho release with wget:

wget https://github.com/typecho/typecho/releases/latest/download/typecho.zip

bash

Unzip Typecho into /var/www:

Make sure /var/www exists:
```
sudo mkdir -p /var/www
```
bash
Then create your site directory; for example, if your site is 20051110.xyz, create:
```
sudo mkdir /var/www/20051110.xyz
```
bash

Unzip typecho.zip into /var/www/your-site-directory:

sudo cd /var/www/your-site-directory
sudo unzip /root/typecho.zip # remember to replace with the actual download location of Typecho

bash

Final step: change file ownership of /var/www and its subdirectories to the www-data user and group (the user typically used by web servers):

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

bash

You can check that your directory structure looks like this:

/var/www/your-site
├── admin/
├── install/
├── usr/
├── var/
├── index.php
├── install.php
└── ...

bash

If everything is correct, start Caddy:

caddy run --config=Caddyfile # I ran this because my Caddyfile is in the same directory

bash

Caddy will automatically obtain certificates for you. Once that’s done, visit the site and proceed with the Typecho installation (don’t worry — it’s a GUI, just click through).

Thanks for reading! Hope this post helps.