cachethq/cachet

Cachet is an open source system for running a status page. A status page is the website that an online service shows to its customers when something is broken, slow, or under maintenance. It lists the parts of the service, says which ones are working, and gives a timeline of recent incidents. The README presents Cachet as a free replacement for paid services such as StatusPage.io and Status.io, with the difference that anyone can download the code and run it on their own servers. The code is written in PHP and built on top of Laravel, a popular PHP web framework. Because Cachet is self-hosted, the README lists what a server needs in order to run it: PHP 5.5.9 or newer, the Apache or Nginx web server, and Composer for managing PHP libraries. It can store its data in MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite, so operators can pick the database that suits them. The feature list inside the README is short and concrete. Operators can define the components of their service, log incidents against them, and write incident updates using Markdown formatting. The page can be customised with extra CSS. There is a JSON API for talking to Cachet from other programs, a metrics feature, and a subscriber system that emails people when something changes. Two factor authentication is supported through Google Authenticator. The interface has been translated into eleven languages, with translations managed through a Crowdin project. The README also gives guidance for contributors. Non-developers are pointed at translation work, bug reports, and documentation. Designers are told how to set up Node.js, Bower, and Gulp so they can edit the SCSS stylesheets. Developers are given instructions for seeding a demo database with the command php artisan cachet:seed. Useful side notes: the maintainers warn that running the master branch in production is not recommended because it can change at any time, and they suggest using tagged releases instead. Installation guides and Docker instructions live at docs.cachethq.io. A public demo dashboard, reset every half hour, is offered with a test login. The project is released under the BSD-3 license, and the team also offers a paid installation service starting at 99 dollars.