Installation

Requirements, server setup, and getting started.

Why lazysite

Drop .md files in your docroot and they are served as fully rendered HTML pages - no build step, no CMS, no database. Pages are generated on first request and cached as static HTML. Content is portable, version control friendly, and works with any deployment workflow.

For the full motivation behind lazysite, see Motivation.

Web server support

lazysite runs on its own built-in server, or on any standard web server via CGI and error-handler mechanisms.

If you use a front end other than the shipped Apache, nginx or built-in server and you intend to protect static files with ACLs, read Your web server has to co-operate in Authentication. A web server that answers an existing file from disk never reaches lazysite, so a per-file access rule cannot apply - and the failure is silent. Sites that do not use ACLs are unaffected and need nothing.

Requirements

Optional:

HestiaCP is supported with a dedicated installer. For other environments see the manual installation section below.

Installation

You install the package; you provision a site

Two different acts, and lazysite keeps them apart on purpose:

Act What it touches
Installing lazysite on a host the engine payload and the lazysite command. No site tree is touched.
Provisioning a site one domain's docroot and cgi-bin.

So a host with lazysite installed and no sites provisioned is a normal state, and installing a newer lazysite never changes a site by itself.

The site commands

Three verbs, and you say which one you mean. None of them works out your intention from the state of the disk, and each refuses rather than quietly doing one of the others:

lazysite provision --docroot /path/to/public_html --cgibin /path/to/cgi-bin
lazysite upgrade   --docroot /path/to/public_html
lazysite reinstall --docroot /path/to/public_html
Verb Use it when It refuses when
provision the site does not exist yet something is already installed there
upgrade the site should move to this version nothing is installed, or the site is already at this version
reinstall this version's files were edited or lost and should go back to what the release ships the versions differ — that is an upgrade

reinstall leaves content, accounts and configuration alone. It is not repair, which touches no files at all.

Run them as the site's own user, never with sudo: they refuse root, so that nothing in a site tree ends up owned by root. Each verb reads release-manifest.json from the payload and records what it installed at {docroot}/lazysite/.install-state.json.

From an unpacked tarball

There is no lazysite on PATH until the package is installed, so run the command out of the tree you unpacked. It finds its own payload:

tar xf lazysite-<version>.tar.gz
cd lazysite-<version>
perl tools/lazysite-cli.pl provision \
    --docroot /path/to/public_html --cgibin /path/to/cgi-bin

The verbs and their options are identical. A tarball is how the code reaches the host; it is not a different way to install a site.

install.sh in the tarball root installs nothing. It is kept only to point anyone who still types it at the three verbs above.

HestiaCP

lazysite registers itself as a HestiaCP web template, so a domain is set up from the control panel and the engine is deployed on rebuild. Install the lazysite-common and lazysite-hestia packages, copy the templates into Hestia's template directories, then per domain:

  1. Edit your domain
  2. Set the web template to lazysite-cgi (or lazysite-fcgi)
  3. Save and rebuild

The full sequence, including the nginx proxy layer and the per-domain onboarding command, is in installers/hestia/INSTALL-RUNBOOK.md in the release.

Manual Apache installation

For Apache without HestiaCP, install the Perl dependencies and configure the vhost manually:

apt install libtext-multimarkdown-perl libtemplate-perl libwww-perl

Copy lazysite-processor.pl to your cgi-bin/ directory and make it executable:

cp lazysite-processor.pl /var/www/example.com/cgi-bin/
chmod 755 /var/www/example.com/cgi-bin/lazysite-processor.pl

Copy the starter files to your docroot:

mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite/templates/registries
mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite/layouts
mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite-assets
cp starter/lazysite.conf.example   /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite/lazysite.conf
cp starter/lazysite/templates/registries/*.tt  /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite/templates/registries/
mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite/templates/system
cp starter/lazysite/templates/system/*.md  /var/www/example.com/public_html/lazysite/templates/system/
cp starter/index.md                /var/www/example.com/public_html/

Add to your Apache vhost configuration:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm
FallbackResource /cgi-bin/lazysite-processor.pl

<Location /lazysite>
    Require all denied
</Location>

<Directory /var/www/example.com/public_html>
    Options -Indexes +ExecCGI
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>

Ensure the web server user can write to the docroot:

chown ispadmin:www-data /var/www/example.com/public_html
chmod g+ws /var/www/example.com/public_html

The setgid bit (s) ensures new subdirectories created by the processor inherit the www-data group automatically.

Getting started

Local development

Clone the repository and run the built-in development server:

git clone https://github.com/OpenDigitalCC/lazysite.git
cd lazysite
perl tools/lazysite-server.pl

Open http://localhost:8080/ to browse the starter site. No Apache configuration required for local development.

After installing on a server

  1. Install a layout from lazysite-layouts or write your own layout.tt
  2. Install a compatible theme (manager UI or zip upload) and set layout: and theme: in lazysite.conf
  3. Edit public_html/lazysite/nav.conf to define your site navigation
  4. Edit public_html/index.md for your home page content
  5. Add pages by dropping .md files anywhere in the docroot

Pages are available immediately at their extensionless URL:

public_html/about.md            -> https://example.com/about
public_html/services/hosting.md -> https://example.com/services/hosting
public_html/services/index.md   -> https://example.com/services/

Directory index pages are served when a trailing slash URL is requested. Create dirname/index.md for any directory that needs an index page.

Using an AI assistant

Four audience-specific briefings live under starter/docs/:

Feed the relevant briefing to an AI assistant at the start of a session to enable help without needing to explain the system each time. In Claude Projects, save it as a project document. For other AI tools, paste it as context at the start of the conversation.

Upgrading

Install the newer lazysite on the host, then move each site to it:

lazysite upgrade --docroot /path/to/public_html

Seed files you have edited (starter pages, docs) are preserved; code files (processor, extensions, manager UI) are always refreshed. Run it as the site's user — it refuses root.

Inspect the plan before committing to it:

lazysite upgrade --docroot /path/to/public_html --dry-run

--dry-run reports what would change and writes nothing at all. It is a single-site preview and does not combine with --all.

Before applying an upgrade — or a reinstall — lazysite writes a backup tarball to {docroot}/lazysite/backups/. backup_retention in lazysite.conf controls how many are kept (default 3; 0 = keep all).

A whole host at once

sudo lazysite upgrade --all

As root this drops to each site's own user, so no site tree is written as root. Sites whose update_policy is manual (the default) are skipped unless --force is given, and each site's update_channel is then honoured — see Update channel.

After an upgrade, restart anything that holds engine code

An ordinary CGI site reads the engine fresh on every request and needs nothing. A site running the persistent runtime or the FastCGI pool has the previous engine in memory and goes on serving it until the worker restarts. upgrade and reinstall name the units to restart when there are any; upgrade --all, which runs as root, restarts them itself.

If something is wrong and the version is not changing

Two different problems, two different commands:

Symptom Command
engine files were edited or lost; put the shipped ones back lazysite reinstall --docroot D
the files are right but ownership, modes or missing directories are not lazysite repair --docroot D

repair changes no files; reinstall replaces them and leaves content, accounts and configuration alone.

If an upgrade goes wrong

List the backups:

lazysite backups --docroot /path/to/public_html

Put the most recent one back:

lazysite backups --docroot /path/to/public_html --restore

Or a specific one:

lazysite backups --docroot /path/to/public_html --restore \
    --backup /path/to/backup.tar.gz

Restoring does not touch runtime state (auth users, cache, logs) and invalidates the rendered HTML cache afterwards.

Uninstall

There is no uninstall script. Removal is manual, and deliberately so - the installer only ever adds files to a domain's cgi-bin/ and the Hestia template directory, so there is nothing to unwind beyond deleting them.

To remove lazysite from one domain, delete the engine scripts the installer placed in that domain's cgi-bin/ (lazysite-processor.pl, lazysite-auth.pl and the other lazysite-*.pl entry points) and restore the web-server configuration that was in place before.

A domain's content is not touched by any of this. The public_html tree - pages, lazysite/, uploads - is yours and stays exactly where it is. Back it up before removing anything if you intend to move it elsewhere.

File reference

public_html/
  lazysite/
    lazysite.conf         <- site configuration
    nav.conf              <- navigation (YAML)
    layouts/
      LAYOUT/
        layout.tt         <- layout template
        layout.json       <- layout metadata (optional)
        themes/
          THEME/
            theme.json    <- theme manifest
            main.css      <- theme stylesheet
            assets/       <- theme assets
    manager/              <- manager chrome (internal; D013)
      layout.tt
      assets/manager.css
    templates/
      registries/
        llms.txt.tt
        sitemap.xml.tt
        feed.rss.tt
        feed.atom.tt
    auth/
      users               <- built-in auth users
      groups              <- built-in auth groups
    forms/
      handlers.conf       <- the handlers a form or the schedule calls
      schedule.conf       <- what the timer calls
      smtp.conf           <- SMTP connection settings
  assets/
    css/
    img/
    js/
  cgi-bin/
    lazysite-processor.pl
    lazysite-auth.pl
    plugins/form-handler.pl
    plugins/form-smtp.pl
    lazysite-manager-api.pl
  404.md
  index.md

Further reading

Licence

MIT

AI assistance

lazysite was developed interactively with Claude (Anthropic). Architecture, design decisions, security review, and deployment were directed by the author. Claude assisted with code generation, documentation, and iterative refinement throughout development.