1# 🐟 Flounder
 2
 3A lightweight platform to help users build simple Gemini sites over http(s) and
 4serve those sites over http(s) and Gemini
 5
 6Flounder is in ALPHA -- development and features are changing frequently,
 7especially as the Gemini spec and ecosystem remains relatively unstable.
 8
 9See the flagship instance at https://flounder.online and
10[gemini://flounder.online](gemini://flounder.online)
11
12## Building and running locally Requirements:
13* go >= 1.15
14* sqlite dev libraries
15
16To run locally, copy example-config.toml to flounder.toml, then run:
17
18`mkdir files` `go run . serve`
19
20Add the following to `/etc/hosts` (include any other users you want to create):
21
22``` 127.0.0.1 flounder.local admin.flounder.local proxy.flounder.local ```
23
24Then open `flounder.local:8165` in your browser. The default login/password is
25admin/admin
26
27## TLS Certs and Reverse Proxy
28
29Gemini TLS certs are handled for you. For HTTP, when deploying your site,
30you'll need a reverse proxy that does the following for you:
31
321. Cert for yourdomain.whatever
331. Wildcard cert for \*.yourdomain.whatever
342. On Demand cert for custom user domains
35
36If you have a very small deployment of say, <100 users, for example, you can
37use on demand certificates for all domains, and you can skip step 2.
38
39However, for a larger deployment, you'll have to set up a wildcard cert.
40Wildcard certs are a bit of a pain and difficult to do automatically, depending
41on your DNS provider. For information on doing this via Caddy, you can follow
42this guide:
43https://caddy.community/t/how-to-use-dns-provider-modules-in-caddy-2/8148. 
44
45For information on using certbot to manage wildcard certs, see this guide:
46https://letsencrypt.org/docs/challenge-types/#dns-01-challenge
47
48An example simple Caddyfile using on-demand certs is available in
49Caddyfile.example
50
51If you want to host using a server other than Caddy, there's no reason you
52can't, but it may be more cumbersome to setup the http certs.
53
54## Administration
55
56Flounder is designed to be small, easy to host, and easy to administer. Signups
57require manual admin approval.
58
59## Development
60
61Open a PR, or use one of the mailing lists on https://github.com/alexwennerberg