Website for dummy's?

[qwerty3656]

Looking for ideas for a CHEAP, simple website host and creator to use with Freenas. I really need a step by step process. I just want to link back to Nextcloud and maybe plex (in the future maybe some sort of email client).

Years ago I was able to create a simple website using wordpress on 1and1.com (tied into a proxmox server) for next to nothing. Things seem to have changed because everywhere I go, it seems that people want a meaningful monthly fee for me to get a website up and working.

 

[sretalla]

Perhaps you want something like Heimdall?

 

[danb35]

Heimdall would give a nice, pretty dashboard for things like this:

Install Heimdall Dashboard in a jail (script) - FreeNAS 11.3

Introduction Heimdall Dashboard is a web application that acts as a dashboard for other web applications. You can use it as a browser home page if desired, or just set a bookmark there to get to your other applications (like, for example, Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, and even FreeNAS itself). Once...

forum.freenas-community.org

Something less involved would be using Skeleton to code a basic landing page; I discuss that in this thread:

Reverse Proxy using Caddy (with optional automatic TLS)

I've thought for a while that it would be nice to set up a reverse proxy in a jail to give easier access to many of the other apps I have installed in jails, without having to remember their port numbers. And it would be nice for the sake of security if it did TLS termination as well...

www.ixsystems.com

Either of these would be running in a jail on your FreeNAS box; there's no reason I can see that you'd need a public website to link to a couple of internal resources.

 

[qwerty3656]

Something less involved would be using Skeleton to code a basic landing page; I discuss that in this thread:

Reverse Proxy using Caddy (with optional automatic TLS)

I've thought for a while that it would be nice to set up a reverse proxy in a jail to give easier access to many of the other apps I have installed in jails, without having to remember their port numbers. And it would be nice for the sake of security if it did TLS termination as well...

www.ixsystems.com

Either of these would be running in a jail on your FreeNAS box; there's no reason I can see that you'd need a public website to link to a couple of internal resources.

I saw the Reverse Proxy using Caddy, but what I was struggling with is how to link it to a website - you say I don't need a website? If say my son (who lives in another state) wants to access my server, doesn't he need a web address? I purchased a domain - I just don't know how to tie it to the reverse proxy

 

[danb35]

You need a web site. That isn't the same as a web site that's open to the public, or a web site that's hosted by someone else. Nextcloud is a web site. If you already have a domain, all you need to do is (1) make the appropriate DNS entries to point that domain to wherever your Nextcloud installation is running, and (2) if necessary (e.g., if Nextcloud is running on your LAN), forward the appropriate ports (80 and 443) to your Nextcloud installation.

If you're doing the reverse proxy thing instead (which would be pretty much required if you're going to be hosting multiple services), you'd instead forward those ports to the reverse proxy jail.

Of course, when you do that, you're opening up your Nextcloud installation to the whole world, so you'll need to make sure you have it adequately secured. You'd certainly want it set up to use HTTPS, and have strong passwords for any users; I'd suggest also becoming familiar with Nextcloud's brute force prevention tools.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Do you have an existing Nextcloud setup? If not, you might like to consider the Scripted installation of Nextcloud 18 in iocage jail 2018-03-23 resource. At least read the Overview and Github instructions for valuable tips.

 

[qwerty3656]

You need a web site. That isn't the same as a web site that's open to the public, or a web site that's hosted by someone else. Nextcloud is a web site. If you already have a domain, all you need to do is (1) make the appropriate DNS entries to point that domain to wherever your Nextcloud installation is running, and (2) if necessary (e.g., if Nextcloud is running on your LAN), forward the appropriate ports (80 and 443) to your Nextcloud installation.

If you're doing the reverse proxy thing instead (which would be pretty much required if you're going to be hosting multiple services), you'd instead forward those ports to the reverse proxy jail.

Of course, when you do that, you're opening up your Nextcloud installation to the whole world, so you'll need to make sure you have it adequately secured. You'd certainly want it set up to use HTTPS, and have strong passwords for any users; I'd suggest also becoming familiar with Nextcloud's brute force prevention tools.

So I'm following your Heimdall install. I have a domain, but I haven't done anything with it - where should the domain point? I set up pi-hole as a dns server on a raspberry pi- do I still need cloudflare? Your heimdall install says not to use port 443? Also you say you use pfsense - should I use pfsense?