Hosting Static Sites with Traefik and Static Web Server

Traefik is amazing to host complex services like with containers. On the other hand it's harder than you'd think to host a simple static html site. I wanted to share my current approach that is based on Static Web Server Project.

Static Web Server (SWS)

Static Web Server (or SWS abbreviated) is a simple and really fast web server with the goal to serve static web files or assets. The tiny docker image is only 4 MB with a small memory footprint. We can therefore afford to run a container for each static site.

Architecture

On the server we set up all static sites in one folder called static-sites. As we run the SWS with docker-compose we add the docker-compose.yml to this folder too. The following is an example setup with two static sites on seperate domains.

| static-sites
|
| docker-compose.yml
| - domain1.example.org
   | - index.html
| - domain2.example.org
   | - index.html
   | - fonts
      | - Open-Dyslexic.odf

For each domain we add a folder. I like to name them by the domain name but this is not necessary (just remember the volume in the docker-compose.yml too).

With this done we can now fill the appropriate information in the docker-compose.yml. Copy the following and replace domain1.example.org, domain2.example.org, site-one and site-two.

version: "3.3"

services:
  domain1.example.org:
    image: joseluisq/static-web-server:2
    container_name: "domain1.example.org"
    environment:
      # Note: those envs are customizable but also optional
      - SERVER_PORT=8080
      - SERVER_ROOT=/public
      - SERVER_LOG_LEVEL=info
    volumes:
      - ./domain1.example.org:/public
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.docker.network=traefik"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-one.rule=Host(`domain1.example.org`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-one.service=site-one"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-one.entrypoints=web-secure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-one.tls=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-one.tls.certResolver=default"
      - "traefik.http.services.site-one.loadbalancer.server.port=8080"
    networks:
      - traefik

  domain2.example.org:
    image: joseluisq/static-web-server:2
    container_name: "domain2.example.org"
    environment:
      # Note: those envs are customizable but also optional
      - SERVER_PORT=8080
      - SERVER_ROOT=/public
      - SERVER_LOG_LEVEL=info
    volumes:
      - ./domain2.example.org:/public
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.docker.network=traefik"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-two.rule=Host(`domain2.example.org`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-two.service=site-two"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-two.entrypoints=web-secure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-two.tls=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.site-two.tls.certResolver=default"
      - "traefik.http.services.site-two.loadbalancer.server.port=8080"
    networks:
      - traefik

networks:
  traefik:
    name: traefik
    external: true

This assumes traefik runs in a docker-network called traefik. This network must already exist.

As a last step add at least a index.html in the appropriate folder. Then you can start the webserver with docker-compose up. Add -d to run it in the background.

Deploying static sites

Deploying files manually (via Filezilla, scp or rsync) is not something I like to do. I therefore normally set up a CI job to automatically deploy the site when I push a new commit to GitHub, either via GitHub Actions or my Woodpecker CI instance.

I order to do that I

create a new user on the server, specifically for that purpose (one per site). The command is useradd USERNAME -m
create a SSH key without a password ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 100 -C "COMMENT" -f FILENAME
copy the public key that was just created at FILENAME.pub on the server in the textfile /home/USERNAME/.ssh/authorized_keys
Add the private key to the secrets of your CI

A typical CI configuration will look like this with a static site and GitHub Actions

name: Deploy Production Website via SSH

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - name: Deploy to Server
        uses: easingthemes/ssh-deploy@main
        env:
          SSH_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          ARGS: "-rltgoDzvO --delete"
          SOURCE: ""
          REMOTE_HOST: ${{ secrets.REMOTE_HOST }}
          REMOTE_USER: ${{ secrets.REMOTE_USER }}
          TARGET: ${{ secrets.REMOTE_PRODUCTION_TARGET }}
          EXCLUDE: ".github/, .gitignore"

or this, when using HUGO and Woodpecker CI

---

pipeline:
  build:
    image: klakegg/hugo 
    commands:
      - hugo

  deploy:
    image: appleboy/drone-scp
    settings:
      strip_components: 1
      host:
        - example.org
      username: moanos
      target: /home/USERNAME/static-sites/
      source: public/
      key:
        from_secret: ssh_key

not manually put the files on the server

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Hosting Static Sites with Traefik and Static Web Server

Static Web Server (SWS)

Architecture

Deploying static sites

5.5 KiB

Raw Permalink Blame History