Caddy cheatsheet

Command	Description
`systemctl status caddy`	Service status
`systemctl reload caddy`	Reload config (graceful)
`caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile`	Test config syntax
`caddy fmt --overwrite /etc/caddy/Caddyfile`	Format Caddyfile
`caddy run --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile`	Run in foreground (debug)
`caddy reload --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile`	Reload without systemd

Command / path	Description
`ls /var/lib/caddy/.local/share/caddy/certificates/`	Stored ACME certs (default data dir)
`openssl s_client -connect example.com:443`	Inspect TLS cert from client
`dig +short example.com`	Confirm DNS points to server

api.example.com {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8000
    encode gzip
}

example.com {
    root * /var/www/example

    route /api/* {
        reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8000
    }

    file_server
}

http://internal.local {
    tls internal
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:3000
}

Always caddy validate before reload — bad config can stop the server
Test upstreams directly with curl before blaming Caddy for 502 errors
Automatic HTTPS needs public DNS — use http:// or tls internal for local dev
Use caddy fmt to catch indentation and brace errors early

Practice scenarios

Hands-on Caddy scenarios on live Linux VMs: caddy