Waiting for some good news.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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It's a huge problem that so many people act like it's super easy and simple. It's incredibly complicated to someone who is not a networking professional.
When I was starting out with selfhosting and stuff, I had tons of issues with networking, reverse proxies, etc. And much of the advice here was not... particularly helpful. I genuinely don't think most people here understand how much they know, and how much comes across as gibberish when they speak to a true newbie. I still see it in this forum all the time for new people. Just the other day someone described themselves as a total newbie, nothing more than Jellyfin running on a Mac locally, and a comment I saw suggested their next step should be running proxmox and setting up VMs and this that and the other service. Like... that's not a good next step.
When I was given a similar suggestion, I asked why I would need proxmox for my project, and I was told something along the lines of, "Don't discount their usefulness if you're trying to do this as a career." I am not trying to do this as a career. I already have one of those. I'm trying to replace subscription services with something more economical and under my control.
I genuinely don't think most people here understand how much they know
That's it, exactly.
This has been my experience with self-hosting too. There are so many different areas of concepts that need to form a cohesive whole. Following a how-to and pasting some commands can lead to something running, but then there are worlds of knowledge to actually understand it. Especially when complexity seems to increase exponentially.
Funny thing is that for every low-level concept I actually learn, the more I appreciate my OpenBSD computer that I mostly play around with otherwise.
@artyom I think part of it is that it *is* easy.... when you're working on your own setup, that you built, and know all the components of, and know all the long term goals of, that was built over years piece-at-a-time...
Get anyone who acts like it's easy to work on someone's setup that isn't their own, and they'll quickly remember how complicated it all is.
It has nothing to do with whose setup it is and everything to do with an immense amount of specialized knowledge that requires, at the very least, months to even begin to understand to the extent that you can deploy your own server.
What are you using as a router? How are you you trying to setup a reverse proxy?
I will be honest, I would do it for free. Money is nice but helping people is more important to me than that. However my understanding is with OpnSense and using Caddy for reverse proxy with the ACME client for Let's Encrypt certificates. Beyond that I am outside of my element.
Hey
That's very kind of you but it'd be nice to give you something.
What I've got installed in NPM, cloudflared and authentik. Just trying to figure out how to use all three or at least 2 to get my apps on the domain. Ive been able to get things moving in the cloudflare dash but I'm aware I don't know alot about what on doing
If you are using Authentik, it will work good, but may be uneccessary if all you want is secure authentication, this is becuase Cloudflare does a "Zero Trust" model in which only approved email addresses, would be able to acess your site which you have to manually approve, otherwise, they get hit with the Cloudflare wall. This is completely free and voluntary!
In terms of Cloudflare, I assume that you have your domain all set up with the DNS servers pointed to Cloudflare from your domain registrar. This is probably the hardest part of it all. Then, it's just a matter of setting up your redirection to your server. I used to use them but haven't been in it for about a year now for my domains. They are a good company and will certainly help with your site's security.
Nginx Proxy Manager is like the reception desk for all traffic, when WWW comes in and asks for site.example.com NPM sees that and matches it up with the IP address/port of your server and sends it on it's merry way. If you are using Cloudflare Tunnels, and after you install their tunnel adaptor, you can skip NPM and just point to the IP and internal port on your server. Pretty straight forward in that area. They have great documentation on how to do this to get you started.
Basically, if you use Cloudflare tunnels, you can skip NPM and free up some resources if you want as it will be redundant. So, then Authentik comes in and can act as a traffic cop and protect all types of pages, ones with log in and those without.
Hey! I sent you a DM about it I was thinking we could have a call on MullvadVPNs jitsi aka https://meet.mulvad.net/ where others could join! If we can find a time that works for both of us we could send it here so others who are interested can join!
Edit:
Me and OP have decided on a time and date and where to have the online meeting feel free to join us at 09:00 AM Central European summer Time the 11th of Jul 2026 on Mullvads jitsi via this link https://meet.mullvad.se/home-lab-feddit
Sounds like a first step for a community meeting focused on 1 topic: helping OP set up reverse proxy. Honestly this sounds fun. I hope it went well!
Hey. Thank you so much. I'll message you now
I'm in France timezone so hopefully we can find a time of the day that works for both of us, but feel free to DM me here or on Matrix (@pcouy:matrix.pierre-couy.fr)
Hey if you don't get it sorted, hit me up, I'm in the Chicago timezone and I can give you my docker file and walk you through how I did exactly the same thing you're looking for.
Happy to help you through it
No need to pay me, I am in UK Timezone if that matters
I have the same request but for vlans in my house. I do have supported hardware. But I just still don't get vlans working
I don't suppose your issue looks anything like my thread from this past weekend in this here community? And as a reminder, tagged ports face networking hardware, while untagged ports face end devices.
And what if I have a router (like your thread, OPNsense), top-of-rack switch (10G ports) and an access-switch (1/2.5G ports). And then the ports that face end-devices are either on the access switch (that makes sense right) as well as top-level rack switch has connections towards my server machines in my rack.
So its bit more hardware then you initially though, and all devices technically support vlans. SO basically I had two questions in one:
- What would be the best VLAN setup for my needs (I expect here some follow-up questions, back and forth)
- How can I configurable the VLANs correctly across my various switches, such that it actually works.. So I don't accidentally lock myself out again and needed a SW reset (lol).
Oof, I feel you OP. I started down this road back in February, and I thought I'd be set up by now, but I'm still learning some of the pieces for a project that's almost exactly the same as yours. If it's any consolation, I have made a ton of progress. The hardest part can often be when you've chosen the pieces you want to use for your project, and then a kind stranger who means well adds extra complexity above and beyond what you want or need on top of their suggestion.