Posting self hosted software every day until we have communities - Day 3 - Nginx Proxy Manager

Hi, it’s me. Your favorite Digg user. Day 3 brings us Nginx Proxy Manager, the tool that will turn your homelab into a proxy playground without the need to touch a single config file. A reverse proxy is like walking into an office building and talking with the receptionist. You go in and say you’d like to meet with Steve. The receptionist translates that and knows “He’s in office 192.168.0.6:8080.” She then points you down the hall and tells you the office number. So, instead of fumbling with 192.168.0.6:8080 to hit your pihole dashboard you type in human language. pihole.dankone.lan. You then land at your pihole web interface instantly, all thanks to this guy’s magic that handles reverse proxying, load balancing, and redirects like it’s no big deal. As you accumulate more and more services, this is the bridge from chaotic IP management to clean, memorable access for every service on your network. This works with web apps, media servers, monitoring dashboards, and more. You don’t even need your own domain to get rolling, it works great out of the box for local setups using your router’s mDNS or a quick local DNS tweak by proxying HTTP traffic to keep things organized and accessible without exposing raw ports everywhere. That said, do yourself a favor and snag a domain (I like porkbun.com), and it gets dramaticallly better: flip on HTTPS with one-click Let’s Encrypt integration, lock down remote access over the internet without VPN hassles, and route multiple services through a single port with path rules or subdomains. No more mixed HTTP/HTTPS warnings or security blind spots, just encrypted dataflow across the board. Chain Nginx with Uptime Kuma for health checks on your proxies or script custom access logs via its API. Toss in rate limiting for chatty apps. You’ll have the beginnings of a setup that actually scales as you build out your self hosted homelab. GitHub repo here: https://github.com/NginxProxyManager/nginx-proxy-manager