Cookbook: static site

Serve a directory of files with automatic HTTPS from Let's Encrypt, HTTP→HTTPS redirects, compression and browser caching.

rws serves the directory it runs in. With a domain pointed at the server, this is the whole configuration:

# /var/www/example/rws.config.toml — run rws in /var/www/example
port = 443
http_redirect_port = 80          # redirects to HTTPS and answers the ACME challenge

[acme]
domains = ["example.com", "www.example.com"]
email   = "ops@example.com"

What you get without more settings: a Let's Encrypt certificate ordered at startup and renewed before it expires, HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, gzip / Brotli / zstd for text files (precompressed .br/.gz siblings are used when present), ETag and Last-Modified with 304s, index.html for directories, and dot-files (.git/, .env) never served.

Long-lived caching for fingerprinted assets, a custom 404 page and no directory listings:

port = 443
http_redirect_port = 80
directory_listing = false        # 404 instead of listing a directory without index.html

[acme]
domains = ["example.com"]
email   = "ops@example.com"

[[route]]
name = "assets"
[route.match]
path = "/assets/*"
[route.action]
type = "static"
root = "/var/www/example"
[route.middleware]
early_hints = ["</assets/app.css>; rel=preload; as=style"]

Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Eleventy and other generators: build into a directory and run rws there (cd public && rws). With the packages put the files in /var/www/rws and the configuration in /etc/rws/rws.config.toml.