Hi! I need to test local WP websites with a stable domain, so I’m looking for a self-hostable alternative to ngrok. I was using LocalTunnel but sometimes is down or is too slow.
Since I’ve my own domain and server I’ve been researching a lot for an open alternative and I found many…too many…options. The closest to my needs (less stress/config possible) seems to be: https://boringproxy.io/ I haven’t test it because I’ve already some services on my machine.
Maybe the problem is just in my mind, but since I know very little of linux, I prefer to ask first because I really don’t want to mess up my YunoHost server.
I love YunoHost, it’s very very simple to host a lot of services, and I was looking for a way to install boringproxy or something similar directly from the GUI, but I haven’t found it and it’s not clear to me which other app can solve my needs.
@RebelCode I’ll echo the questions. Would need to understand your setup better before we can offer much in the way of advice. Generally speaking running boringproxy client won’t interfere with anything else going on in your network. Trying to run the server can, because it needs to bind ports 80/443. But typically the server runs on the VPS. The whole point of using boringproxy is letting a computer with a public IP address share the IP address with other computers that don’t have public IPs.
Local computer: here I do WordPress website development and I need to install a (client) application to use a tunnel service in order to get a “static subdomain” (not always different like with ngrok) for each website (ex. wp1.mydomain.com, wp2.mydomain.com…).
YunoHost VPS: here I already have a static IP and a domain (ex. mydomain.com) with some services installed in subdomains of my choice, and I would like to add a service (server) able to create a tunnel for my local computer, in order to give access to the local WP websites from subdomains of my choice (ex. wp1.mydomain.com, wp2.mydomain.com…)
This is what you can do with a service like ngrok: basically I want to have “my own ngrok server” (an open source alternative of course) installed on the VPS, in order to avoid depending from a third party closed/paid service.
In the meanwhile I found a free solution buying a new domain and using CloudfFlare tunnel service:
This is working and offers me the flexibility that I need: use a domain I own, create infinite “static” subdomains, no monthly fee. But I still depend from a 3rd party service (CloudFlare) and I don’t like it. Since I’ve YunoHost in a remote VPS I expected to be able to install an app there and get my self-hosted tunnel service (server). It seems that you confirm my fears: that installing Boringproxy or similars outside YunoHost could mess-up its configuration, which is something I really want to avoid.
There’s a good chance you can run YunoHost and boringproxy on the same VPS, but unless you’re comfortable with all the moving pieces there’s a decent chance you can mess up your setup. Basically what you would do is either us boringproxy as the reverse proxy for YunoHost, or put both of them behind another reverse proxy like nginx, Caddy, Traefik, etc. Note that over time I have added some features to support running boringproxy behind another reverse proxy, but it’s not something I personally do and may not work correctly.
If you really want to self-host, I would recommend just getting another cheap VPS dedicated for boringproxy (or another tunneling solution like frp). You can probably use the cheapest tier for boringproxy.
