Exposing your services using subdomains with a dynamic ip

Prerequisites

• This guide assumes that you using Docker and Docker compose to manage your self hosted services, Caddy can be installed without Docker but ddns-updater have to be replaced with another service.

How will this work?

• I'm glad you asked, we will use two containerized tools. The first is ddns-updater which will update your A records (subdomains) when your ip has changed, so your domains will always point to your server.
• The second is Caddy a reverse proxy which will forward a request for a subdomain to a port on your machine and it will give you automatic HTTPS.

Why do i need a reverse proxy?

• You may ask why do you need a reverse proxy if you know the port of your service and have a domain from which you can access it?
• Due to the automatic HTTPS your traffic will be encrypted, without SSL (HTTPS) everyone on your WIFI network and your ISP can read your traffic.
• You only need to open two ports on your router 443 (HTTPS), 80 (HTTP).
• You can do a lot of additional things between the client sending a requests for a site and and sending a response using a middleware for example, you can do additional authentication for an unprotected site with a caddy plugin.

Setting up the domain and subdomains

• First you have to get a domain, you can get a free domain on Freenom but I don't recommend it. Many people reported on Reddit that they domain's were removed.
• You can get a free sub domain with DuckDNS, in this case you can setup your sub domains in a form of "sub sub domain", for example if you clam the mydomain.duckdns.org subdomain, your service would be located at service.mydomain.duckdns.org, but i haven't tried this option but people on Reddit reported success with it.

Manage domain with Dynamic DNS service

• This service can manage your domain, your domain provider will provide you with an API key or token which ddns-updater can use to update the domain.
• Please check if your provider is on the supported list for ddns-updater.
• It also provides a web UI from you can see the status of you domains.

Setting up ddns-updater

• Docker compose setup:

Dynamic-dns:  
   image: qmcgaw/ddns-updater  
   container_name: dynamic-dns  
   restart: unless-stopped  
   privileged: true  
   volumes:  
     - /your/path/:/updater/data  
   ports:  
     - 8000:8000

• The configuration stored in the config.json in the specified data folder.
• Every subdomain has an entry in the settings list with the domain provider, the domain, the sub domain and the api key.

{
"settings":[
      {
         "provider":"namecheap",
         "domain":"domain.cc",
         "host":"sub",
         "password":"apikey",
         "provider_ip":true
      }
    ]
}

SAetting up Caddy

• Docker compose setup:

caddy:  
   container_name: caddy  
   image: caddy:latest  
   restart: always  
   ports:  
     - 443:443/tcp  
     - 80:80/tcp  
   volumes:  
     - /your/path/caddy_config:/config:rw  
     - /your/path/site:/srv:rw  
     - /your/path/caddy_data:/data:rw  
     - /your/path/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile:rw

• Configuration stored in the Caddyfile, for every subdomain you need to define a reverse_proxy ip:port, you can write comments with hashtags:

sub.example.cc {  
       encode gzip  # forward header
               log {  
                   output file /data/monitor.log {  
                       roll true # Rotate logs, enabled by default  
                       roll_size_mb 5 # Set max size 5 MB  
                       roll_gzip true# Whether to compress rolled files  
                       roll_local_time true # Use localhost time  
                       roll_keep 2 # Keep at most 2 log files  
                       roll_keep_days 7 # Keep log files for 7 days  
                       }  
               }  
   reverse_proxy ip:port  
}

Example with Namecheap domain provider

• if you want to create a self hosted netflix with the Jellyfin thats on the 8096 port with a domain from Namecheap
• Create an A record for the subdomain for the service, for example jellyfin.mydomain.com on your domain providers dashboard, in Namecheap navigate to Account->Dashboard->Domain List->Manage->Advanced DNS. The "Type" enter 'A + Dynamic DNS Record' for "Host" enter the sub domain-> 'jellyfin', and Value is the your ip, set the TTL (update interval for the record) to Automatic
• Add an entry to the settings list in the config.json for the ddns updater:

      {
         "provider":"namecheap",
         "domain":"mydomain.com",
         "host":"jellyfin",
         "password":"apikey",
         "provider_ip":true
      }

1. Add an entry in the Caddyfile:

jellyfin.mydomain.com {  
       encode gzip  # forward header
               log {  
                   output file /data/jellyfin.log {  
                       roll true # Rotate logs, enabled by default  
                       roll_size_mb 5 # Set max size 5 MB  
                       roll_gzip true# Whether to compress rolled files  
                       roll_local_time true # Use localhost time  
                       roll_keep 2 # Keep at most 2 log files  
                       roll_keep_days 7 # Keep log files for 7 days  
                       }  
               }  
   reverse_proxy 192.168.0.101:8096
}

1. Enjoy!