Caddy is really simple and easy. Just werks and gives you https

Caddy. I started with npm but I realized it was hiding enough stuff that I wasn’t learning anything about managing networking. Caddy is super easy and has lot of sane defaults.

Caddy all the way!

I’ve been using nginx forever. It works, I can do almost everything I want, even if more complex things sometimes require some contortions. I’m not sure I would pick it again if starting from scratch, but I have no problems that are worth switching for.

Traefik is a PITA.

Caddy all the way. If you build it with Docker support (or grab the prebuilt), you can use docker container names to reverse proxy using names instead of any IP addresses or ports. It’s nice because if the IP updates, so does caddy. All automatically.

Here’s what my caddyfile looks like;

{
        acme_dns cloudflare {key}
}

domain.dev {
        encode zstd gzip
        root * /var/www/html/domain.dev/
        php_fastcgi unix//run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock
        tls {
                dns cloudflare {key}
        }
}
*.domain.dev {
        encode zstd gzip
        tls {
                dns cloudflare {key}
        }
        @docker host docker.domain.dev
        handle @docker {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy {portainer}
        }
        @test host test.domain.dev
        handle @test {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:10000
        }
        @images host i.domain.dev
        handle @images {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:9002
        }
        @proxy host proxy.domain.dev
        handle @proxy {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy proxy
        }
        @portal host portal.domain.dev
        handle @portal {
                encode zstd gzip
                reverse_proxy portal
        }
        @ping host ping.domain.dev
        handle @ping {
                encode zstd gzip
                respond "pong!"
        }
}

DNS hosted by cloudflare but because caddy handles ACME certs, all the subdomains automatically get SSL.

If you’re just going to VPN in to your home network, I’ve found caddy to be the simplest.

Nginx from day one. Well documented, it works. If something doesn’t work chances are you are a quick googlefu away from the solution.

I use NPM in a docker container. It could not be easier in my opinion but then again, I did not use any of the alternatives so I might be missing out on something, who knows. I did manage a couple of proxy servers in the past based on Apache and I can tell you that NPM is much easier and logical to me than that.

Just create a compose file and start it. Create DNS records pointing to your NPM IP address/exposed IP and make a host in NPM sending traffic to the right container IP:port. The compose file is super simple, could not be easier. Here’s mine for example:

services:
  nginx-proxy-manager:
    container_name: nginx-proxy-manager
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    restart: always
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '443:443'
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt

I just make sure ports 443 and 80 are exposed on my router so DNS records can point to that IP adrdess. All traffic on port 80 gets re-routed to 443.

I’m probably stating all the obvious things here 😀

i use nginx proxy manager but im barely getting by. Theres zero useful documentation for setting up custom paths so everyone uses subdomains. I ended up buying my own domain just so i didnt feel guilty spamming freedns lmao.