HTTPManifold Initial Release

This is the initial release of HTTPManifold which is essentially a reverse proxy HTTP server. It also has logging functionality that is useful for debugging web services. At this point there is a very basic web interface for viewing logs. This tool is intended to be reasonably lightweight and easy to install and configure.

HTTPManifold was started because of the problem of making multiple web servers running on separate physical machines available through port 80 of a single IP address. While some web servers allow such a configuration, it is generally not obvious and often not simple to configure. HTTPManifold was made with the single purpose of allowing home and small business users to have a simple and easy way to allow multiple servers to be accessible over a single internet connection.

A secondary purpose is to allow HTTP traffic to be monitored and debugged by providing optional logging of HTTP traffic and an interface to view the raw content of such requests.

A simple proof-of-concept implementation known as HTTPForward was created for this purpose in 2005. HTTPManifold is a descendant of that project and is a far cleaner and richer implementation. Its primary features are:

* Ability to service HTTP request on any port.
* Allow SSL connections and therefore provide HTTPS to server that otherwise don't support it.
* Forward HTTP requests to any IP address on any port using HTTP or HTTPS.
* Rewrite HTTP headers and body during forward translation.
* Log raw HTTP request and response bytes for debugging purposes.
* Serve static HTML pages.
* Provide web interface to HTTPManifold configuration options.

It has proven very useful in multiple existing installations and I expect others would find it useful, which is why I'm releasing it as open source. At this point, the majority of the stated features have already been implemented, but there is still some work to be done. I welcome any comments or questions.