root

Sets the root path of the site, used by various matchers and directives that access the file system. If unset, the default site root is the current working directory.

Specifically, this directive sets the {http.vars.root} placeholder. It is mutually exclusive to other root directives in the same block, so it is safe to define multiple roots with matchers that intersect: they will not cascade and overwrite each other.

This directive does not automatically enable serving static files, so it is often used in conjunction with the file_server directive or the php_fastcgi directive.

Syntax

root [<matcher>] <path>

• <path> is the path to use for the site root.

Prior to v2.8.0, the <path> argument could be confused by the parser for a matcher token if it began with /, so it was necessary to specify a wildcard matcher token (*).

Examples

Set the site root to /home/bob/public_html (assumes Caddy is running as the user bob):

root * /home/bob/public_html

Set the site root to public_html (relative to current working directory) for all requests:

root public_html

Change the site root only for requests in /foo/*:

root /foo/* /home/user/public_html/foo

The root directive is commonly paired with file_server to serve static files and/or with php_fastcgi to serve a PHP site:

example.com {
	root * /srv
	file_server
}