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Reverse Proxy
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What does a Reverse Proxy do?
A reverse proxy connects an app running locally on your server to a web address through subdomains (my-app.example.com) or subdirectories (example.com/my-app). This keeps your links clean and connections secure, since you no longer need to open server ports for accessing apps.
If you wanted to skip the reverse proxy, you would access your services through links with portnumbers, like example.com:8000. This approach would also be very cumbersome, if not impossible to setup when using Cloudflare.
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Common Mistakes
⚠ Exposing ports of applications in your Docker Compose files: Many official setup guides for apps include a section in their compose file that would open external ports for app access. These sections should always be removed, unless you know exactly what you're doing.
⚠ Not using proper encryption between your server and Cloudflare: When using the Cloudflare proxy, all your traffic is sent from your server to Cloudflare, who pass it on to your users. To make sure that no one can intercept, read or manipulate the datastream between your and Cloudflares server, the data should be encrypted using a CF-generated certificate, and Cloudflare should be set to refuse any connection that is not encrypted with this certificate.
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Which one should I use?
There are a bunch of options, which all vary in how they're set up and used. These are the most common ones.
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Nginx Proxy Manager
A frontend for the popular Nginx proxy, allowing control of your hosts through a slick web interface.
Many guides are currently written with this proxy in mind. While any of the apps will also work with any other proxy, you will require research outside this wiki to make it work.
Beginners should use this for an easy start. Rewriting the guides to be proxy-agnostic is planned.
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Traefik
A proxy designed for servers with many apps, controlled through code right in your Docker Compose files.
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Caddy
Once just a webserver, Caddy has evolved into a fast proxy that has an incredibly easy configuration syntax and uses ridiculously little ressources.
Interested in some tinkering?
Caddy isn't ideal for a server with many apps running in parallel, but there are community efforts to transform it into something that works more like Nginx - a singular instance controlling all traffic and internally redirecting to the correct target.
This project combines the performance and easy configuration of Caddy with the "configuration-in-compose" approach from Traefik. While the How2Host authors have not yet tested this, it may be promising to the adventurous.
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Cloudflare Tunnels
Runs as a daemon on your server and is entirely controlled in the CF Dashboard you already use.