I have set up a site for my daughter’s portfolio. She has a simple contact page written in php. How do I get Caddy to execute the php instead of displaying it? Check at taylorstrutton.com/contact.php.
I am running abiosoft’s docker container. Should I add http.cgi or use the php variant of the container…
Any thoughts?
You’ll need a PHP process running, usually FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is the weapon of choice.
You can run FPM in another Docker container quite easily (I use this setup myself - the official php:fpm container), or you can use Abiosoft’s php-tagged container, which is also a good option.
Once you’ve got PHP running, you can use the fastcgi directive (which includes a php preset) to have Caddy process the PHP instead of simply serving the PHP file directly to the client.
If the contact form is the only part of your daughter’s website that requires PHP, you may wish to keep the site entirely static and offload form handling to a third party service such as formspree. Maintaining PHP and keeping up with security updates does require ongoing attention.
Should I add http.cgi…
This is an option for you if you don’t want to use fastcgi and maintain a separate PHP server. An example is shown at the bottom of the page at CGI for Caddy.
I’ll second the recommendation for a service like Formspree.
Using CGI instead of FastCGI for PHP certainly seems like the hard way to go about it 
Can’t say I’ve ever looked into it myself, but I’m impressed you’ve got a writeup on it, heh.
Using CGI instead of FastCGI for PHP certainly seems like the hard way to go about it
It’s definitely a tradeoff. CGI may be more trouble to initially configure on the Caddy side but it doesn’t require a separate PHP service that needs to be monitored.
Just an update:
As with everything else Caddy and Docker, all you really have to do is just try it. The abiosoft/caddy docker container with php just works. I had to mess around getting php mail working but that happens everywhere. After that it just works.
Loving Caddy so far (second site up in a few days with almost no issues). Thanks to the devs and keep up the good work.
When I get this setup all packed up on github I will post a link here for anyone else who stumbles down this path. See this repo for how I solved this.
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