Suppose you have a directory named ~/www/default.website that contains all the files to implement a website. These can be static files or CGI if the execute bit is set. You can run Althttpd to serve that website as follows:
althttpd -root ~/www -port 8080
The "root ~/www" tells althttpd where to go to find the files for the website. The "-port 8080" option is what tells althttpd to run in stand-alone mode, listening on port 8080.
Stand-alone with HTTPS
If althttpd is built with TLS support then it can be told to operate in HTTPS mode with one of the following options:
althttpd -root ~/www --port 8043 --cert unsafe-builtin
this option uses a compiled-in self-signed SSL certificate which is wildly insecure and is intended for testing purposes only. Use the --cert option to specify your own PEM-format SSL certificate. The argument to --cert can be the concatenation of the SSL private key (often named "privkey.pem") and the certificate chain (often named "fullchain.pem"). Alternatively, the --cert can point to just the fullchain.pem file and the separate --pkey option can point to the privkey.pem file. Or, more conveniently, you can use the --certdir option to specify the name of a directory that contains both the "fullchange.pem" and "privkey.pem" files.
If you are setting up a new website and you do not have a cert yet, but hope to get one using Let's Encrypt or similar, you can launch your website as follows:
althttpd -root ~/www -port 80 -tls-port 443 \ -certdir /etc/letsencrypt/live/main
Because you do not yet have a cert, this will initially only launch althttpd listening on port 80. But after you get a cert, you can relaunch exactly the same command and then it will listen on both 80 (unencrypted) and on port 443 (encrypted).
The command above assumes that your cert files will eventually be placed in the directory called "/etc/letsencrypt/live/main". You can achieve this by including the option "--cert-name main" when you run certbot to get your cert.
Getting A Cert From Let's Encrypt
Suppose you have a domain name "mynewproject.com" and you have set up DNS so that this name points to your server. Further suppose that you have launched althttpd to listen on both ports 80 and 443 as shown in the previous example. Then to get a cert for that website, you would run a command like this:
certbot --cert-name main --webroot \ -w ~/www/mynewproject_com.website -d mynewproject.com
The previous assumes that the files for your website are in "~/www/mynewproject_com.website". If you instead put them in "~/www/default.website" then set the argument of the -w option to "~/www/default.website".
If you have multiple domain names that you want to serve, simply add additional -w and -d options for each domain. The -w for the domain should come first, followed immediately by the -d option. For example:
certbox --cert-name main --webroot \ -w ~/www/mynewproject_com.website -d mynewproject.com \ -w ~/www/secondproject_com.website -d secondproject.com \ -w ~/www/thirdproject_com.website -d thirdproject.com
When certbox runs successfully, it will create a new cert file for you in the /etc/letsencrypt/live/main directory. Then you simply stop and restart althttpd, using exactly the same command as shown previously, but now you can visit your site using "https://" URLs.
Automatic Renewal Of Certs
To automatically renew certs, set up a cron job to run a command like the following weekly, or even daily:
certbot renew
You will need to stop and restart the althttpd webserver whenever the cert updates. You can cause this to open automatically by putting a script in your /etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks/post directory that kills off the old copy of althttpd and starts up a new one.
Stand-alone mode for website development and testing
If you have in a directory the various HTML, Javascript, CSS, and other resource files that together comprise a website and you want to test those files easily, you can type a command like:
althttpd --page index.html
In the above, "index.html" is the name of the initial HTML page. This
command starts althttpd in stand-alone mode, listening on the first
available port it can find, and bound to the loopback IP address
(127.0.0.1). It also automatically brings up a new tab in your web-browser
and points it to the "index.html" page.
If you are developing the website on a remote system, you can start up as follows:
althttpd --popup
The "--popup" option works similarly to "--page" except that it does not restrict the IP address to loopback and it does not attempt to start up a new web browser tab.