Porting Xenforo .htaccess file over to Caddy

[angx1ty]

1. Caddy version (caddy version):

v2.2.1 h1:Q62GWHMtztnvyRU+KPOpw6fNfeCD3SkwH7SfT1Tgt2c=

2. How I run Caddy:

Caddy run on a server in the cloud behind cloudflare serving xenforo forums software

a. System environment:

Ubuntu Server 20.04

b. Command:

sudo systemctl start caddy

c. Service/unit/compose file:

N/A

d. My complete Caddyfile or JSON config:

{
        experimental_http3
}
www.example.com, example.com {
    file_server
    root * /var/www/example.com/html/
    import /etc/caddy/caddy_security.conf
    log {
        output file /var/log/caddy/example.com.access.log {
                roll_size 3MiB
                roll_keep 5
                roll_keep_for 48h
        }
        format console
    }
    encode gzip zstd
    php_fastcgi unix//run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock
    tls /etc/caddy/ssl/certs/certificate.pem /etc/caddy/ssl/private/key.pem {
        protocols tls1.2 tls1.3
        client_auth {
            mode require_and_verify
            trusted_ca_cert_file /etc/caddy/ssl/certs/origin-pull-ca.pem
        }
    }
}

3. The problem I’m having:

I’m trying to convert a .htaccess file provided by Xenforo that allows for “friendly URL’s”, i.e. doesn’t display the index.php file, but rather the path to the folder containing it.

4. .htaccess file details:

#       Mod_security can interfere with uploading of content such as attachments. If you
#       cannot attach files, remove the "#" from the lines below.
#<IfModule mod_security.c>
#       SecFilterEngine Off
#       SecFilterScanPOST Off
#</IfModule>

ErrorDocument 401 default
ErrorDocument 403 default
ErrorDocument 404 default
ErrorDocument 405 default
ErrorDocument 406 default
ErrorDocument 500 default
ErrorDocument 501 default
ErrorDocument 503 default

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine On

        #       If you are having problems with the rewrite rules, remove the "#" from the
        #       line that begins "RewriteBase" below. You will also have to change the path
        #       of the rewrite to reflect the path to your XenForo installation.
        #RewriteBase /xenforo

        #       This line may be needed to workaround HTTP Basic auth issues when using PHP as a CGI.
        #RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
        RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
        RewriteRule ^(data/|js/|styles/|install/|favicon\.ico|crossdomain\.xml|robots\.txt) - [NC,L]
        RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]
</IfModule>

5. Error messages and/or full log output:

No error messages to report, just need some assistance converting the .htaccess file

6. What I already tried:

Tried to port it myself to no avail. I appreciate any assistance anyone can provide here.

7. Links to relevant resources:

N/A

[francislavoie]

Caddy’s php_fastcgi directive comes with try_files logic, so it should work out of the box without an extra rewrite.

php_fastcgi (Caddyfile directive) - Caddy Documentation

What’s typically easier is looking at an nginx config for the app you’re trying to run. Caddy config is closer to nginx than apache. Looking at this example, I think you might not have used the right root, I think you might need to set it to the /xenforo directory.

[angx1ty]

Thank you, @francislavoie

Since this may be useful to future visitors, I’m detailing the steps I took to address this, and to get friendly URL’s working without any additional rewrite directives.

This set me down the right path to fixing this problem I was having. When I had originally installed the forum software, I put it into a folder named “forums”, rather than the root html folder within “/var/www/sitename.com/html/forums/”. To rectify the above, I moved the xenforo installation files to the root of the html folder, changed the root in Caddy to point at “/var/www/sitename.com/html”.

Within Xenforo, under Setup->Options->Basic Options I changed the Board URL to:

https://sitename.com 

Under Index page route: I removed forums/ and blanked out the field

I then checked Use full friendly URLs and now all is working as expected.