Caddy
It’s three lines of configuration
jellyfin.example.com {
reverse_proxy http://localhost:8083/
}
Automatic https with let’sencrypt, simplicity of a single binary, downgrade is as simple as replace binary & restart service.
this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Nginx Proxy Manager was easy to learn as a beginner. I'd recommend it as a learning tool, if nothing else, and if you want to switch to other solutions later you can.
I use Nginx Proxy Manager running as a docker container. Its a gui that makes administration more straight forward. It points at all my services (docker and otherwise) and handles the SSL for me. Because I don't want to have any ports open I use DNS challenge ACME and NPM has built in support for a number APIs from large public DNS providers to automate that.
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IMO, look into the linuxserver.io fork of NGINX, called SWAG.
It comes preloaded with a bunch of fantastic addons for security.
Quite easy to get set up, if you've got an idea about how it works.
I was new to doing reverse proxy stuff but Nginx Proxy Manager made it really easy. A bit of doc reading, I probably watched a video or two, and it all made sense. Great clean UI and easy to install. (I run it on a Raspberry Pi.)
This may be a controversial approach, but I recently had to set up reverse proxy along with DNS configuration and certificate handling. I pair programmed with an LLM.
My experience was this... I described what I wanted to set up, my objectives (like containerisation, zero touch deployment, idempotence, etc) and it gave me a starting point. It threw a few bad ideas in but I also asked it to help me stress test against the objectives. I think it's all just about working now. I learned a lot about shell, docker, nginx, terraform, VM metadata, data persistence, pulling it all in from a git repo, bootstrapping nginx with self-signed certificates, auto renewal, vscode devcontainers and more. Honestly I'm worried about what a pro would make of my code, but I made huge steps in a relatively short time. Disclaimer: I am a software engineer who was keen to learn this stuff and get moving quickly.
I would definitely consider this approach if you're new to the area.
What is your goal, simplest to configure? industry standard? Secure options set by default? Do you need a gui or are you fine with config files?
Something secure and easy to understand and setup for beginner. The easier the better. I don't mind writing config files if I can understand it.
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A lot of people aren't big fans of Nginx Proxy Manager, which is separate from Nginx. But I like it. It's got a nice gui, and the part I really like is the letsencrypt ssl certs baked in. You can get a new one, for a new service with a click of a button, and it auto renews your certs, so you don't have to worry about it once it's set up.
You'd install one reverse proxy only and make that forward to the individual services. Popular choices include nginx, Caddy and Traefik. I always try to rely on packages from the repository. They're maintained by your distribution and tied into your system. You might want to take a different approach if you use containers, though. I mean if you run everything in Docker, you might want to do the reverse proxy in Docker as well.
That one reverse proxy would get port 443 and 80. All services like Jellyfin, Immich... get random higher ports and your reverse proxy internally connects (and forwards) to those random ports. That's the point of a reverse proxy, to make multiple distinct services available via just one and the same port.
And if i wanted to install nginx from debian repo and make the config file for immich docker instance, bitwarden dcoker instance... how would the config files and ssl certificates for nginx look like?
Maybe have a look at https://nginxproxymanager.com/ as well. I don't know how difficult it is to install since I never used it, but I heard it has a relatively straight-forward graphical interface.
Configuring good old plain nginx isn't super complicated. It depends a bit on your specific setup, though. Generally, you'd put config files into /etc/nginx/sites-available/servicexyz (or put it in the default)
server {
listen 80;
server_name jellyfin.yourdomain.com;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name jellyfin.yourdomain.com;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/your_ssl_certificate.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/your_private_key.key;
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384';
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8096/;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}
access_log /var/log/nginx/jellyfin.yourdomain_access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/jellyfin.yourdomain_error.log;
}
It's a bit tricky to search for tutorials these days... I got that from: https://linuxconfig.org/setting-up-nginx-reverse-proxy-server-on-debian-linux
Jellyfin would then take all requests addressed at jellyfin.yourdomain.com and forward that to your Jellyfin which hopefully runs on port 8096. You'd use a similar file like this for each service, just adapt them to the internal port and domain.
You can also have all of this on a single domain (and not sub-domains). That'd be the difference between "jellyfin.yourdomain.com" and "yourdomain.com/jellyfin". That's accomplished with one file with a single "server" block in it, but make it several "location" blocks within, like location /jellyfin
Alright, now that I wrote it down, it certainly requires some knowledge. If that's too much and all the other people here recommend Caddy, maybe have a look at that as well. It seems to be packaged in Debian, too.
Edit: Oh yes, and you probably want to set up Letsencrypt so you connect securely to your services. The reverse proxy would be responsible for encryption.
Edit2: And many projects have descriptions in their documentation. Jellyfin has documentation on some major reverse proxies: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/networking/advanced/nginx
Omg thank you very much. I'll definitely look it up.
That question is a little bit out of the scope of a forum like this. A question like that would better be answered by the nginx documentation. Sometimes the project documentation might have a blurb about nginx configuration specific for that project. For example, Immich.
For the most part, you only have to reference the nginx documentation. I've never looked at the Immich config above until now, and my Immich server works great.
I've had a reverse proxy for years, but the config files are very foreign to me because I use Nginx-Proxy-Manager. NPM makes nginx usable for dummies like me, at the expense of gaining a deeper understanding of how it works. I'm ok with that, but you might feel differently.
Nginx, caddy and haproxy are 3 choice for reverse proxy. The way a reverse proxy works is it looks on port 80 and 443 for requests to a DNS connection. Like say you want to go to jellyfin you may have a DNS entry for jellyfin.personalsite.tld the reverse proxy will then take that and redirect the connection to the proper port and server behind your firewall. You do not need multiple reverse proxies. In the case of haproxy and nginx (only ones I have experience with) you create a "back end connection" like explained above and it will redirect. In the case of nginx it is very small I installed it natively and setup configs for each of my services for easy maintenance.
Okay and in that case can you please point me in the right direction how should i write the nginx configs for each of my services and also make ssl certificates?
I prefer doing nginx on the host (vs a container), & have different configs for each service. You can have multiple services on the same port, it can be controlled via DNS instead (i.e.: access Jellyfin.domain.com & bitwarden.domain.com, both of 443).
Ive tried Caddy once or twice but couldn’t get it working, so i just stick with nginx & cert or to automatically get certificates from my internal CA
Yeah but when I last tried nginx on my bitwarden host and another on my jellyfin host i could access the one for bitwarden on port 81 of my server but couldn't access the other nginx web page on port 85 even though i have written it in docker compose file and the port 85 was also open on my server.
It looks like jhdeval mentioned this already, but you may need to review your config file. By default, you would likely have nginx listening on ports 80 & 443 for requests to a specific address (i.e.: jellyfin.domain.com) which would be configured in your DNS, & then nginx would direct the jellfin 443 traffic to port 85 to access Jellyfin. Same principle for Bitwarden. If you have your nginx config files, i \ we could take a look & see if we spot any issues.
I'm currently cannot post it here and also since it didn't work the first time I'm using only http for jellyfin and immich but i can later post the docker config for bitwarden.
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