Skip to main content
Shipways owns each site’s server block and rewrites it whenever the domains, the web directory, the PHP version or the certificate move. It checks the configuration before reloading, so anything nginx refuses leaves the running config alone. There are three levels of taking it over.

​
Extra directives

A box on the site’s settings for additions to this site’s server block, on top of whatever template it uses:
Emptying it puts the site back to the default. This is the right level for one-off directives on one site.

​
Routing templates

How a kind of site routes requests, written once and shared across sites. A routing template is the location blocks and nothing else. Shipways writes the TLS, the certificate challenge, the password prompt and the redirects around it — the parts a site can be got badly wrong on stay outside a template and are Shipways’ to get right once. Every site starts on the built-in template, which is what a Laravel application needs. Available tokens: Nothing in a template runs. It is text with holes in it, and the tokens are an allow-list.

​
Whole-block templates

The whole file. Use one when you need something the routing half cannot express: another port, extra server blocks, TLS terms of your own. Every managed piece is offered as a token on top of the ones above, so a template that wants the usual TLS or the usual challenge location asks for it rather than copying it and letting the copy go stale: SERVER_NAME, LISTEN, TLS, ACME_CHALLENGE, BASIC_AUTH, MAINTENANCE, REDIRECTS, HTTP_REDIRECT_BLOCK, ACCESS_LOG, ERROR_LOG, CUSTOM_CONFIG.
What a whole-block template leaves out is left out. Drop ACME_CHALLENGE and certificate renewal stops working. Drop MAINTENANCE and maintenance mode does nothing. Drop BASIC_AUTH and the password prompt is gone.Start from the offered starter rather than a blank box; it renders what Shipways would have written, so you are editing something that already works.

​
Removing a template

Sites using it go back to the built-in template and are rewritten. The panel says how many before you confirm.