The Lounge VS Nginx Proxy Manager

IRC as a protocol is indeed incredibly simple and easy to get started with. Years ago did discover this when I was able to make [this atrocity](https://github.com/creesch/discordIRCd) bridging IRC and discord where for IRC I effectively did a simple server implementation.

There is a caveat, though. Like many older protocols (ftp) there is a lot that was not initially written down or left up to clients and server implementations. This, does lead to a lot of edge cases you need to be aware of once you want to actually support a wider user group.

Also, as this is apparently is still a discussion. IRC is not simple from a modern user UX perception. Registration can be complex and confusing, though hidden a bit through clients. Managing channels with various flags is a whole other thing. Then there is also the fact that these days people are no longer used to the fact that they can't see messages from periods where they were not connected. Of course, the latter can be easily handled by a BNC or fancy clients like https://thelounge.chat . But, that is only easy for technically inclined folks.

> It’s 2024, people aren’t going to go out of their way to setup “bouncers” to keep up with conversation that happens when they’re not online or leave their computer running 24/7.

You can just set up something like The Lounge [0].

[0] https://thelounge.chat/

Excellent idea! You'll have a mature, open standard protocol under the hood, with no vendor lock-in, excellent extensibility, and great modern frontends like The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/) or Convos (https://convos.chat/) to choose from (and you can choose).

For the other layers one can front-end IRC with TheLounge [1][2] or Convos [3][4]. TheLounge only persists history in private mode meaning that users are created in that front-end and chat messages are in Redis. For small networks or groups of friends this is probably fine.

Notably missing is voice chat. I use the Mumble client [5] with the Murmur or uMurmur [6] server which is light-weight enough to run on ones home router. I use it on Alpine Linux, works great. It's not a shiny and attention grabbing as Discord but probably fine for everyone else. For people to create their own voice channels would require the full-blown Murmur server.

[1] - https://github.com/thelounge

[2] - https://thelounge.chat/

[3] - https://github.com/convos-chat/convos/

[4] - https://convos.chat/

[5] - https://www.mumble.info/

[6] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur/wiki/Configuration

As another self-hosted solution, I quite like TheLounge (https://thelounge.chat)

TheLounge (https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge) - web IRC client that I set to listen on my vpn/mesh. Works great on desktop and mobile, and supports push notifications.

I discovered these 3 amazing projects recently:

Cryptpad, essentially google docs/sheets/forms e2e encrypted. It does include collaboration. https://github.com/cryptpad/cryptpad

Immich, google photos self hostable, with share options https://github.com/immich-app/immich

Nginxproxymanager manages certificates and proxies to self hosted stuff through nginx https://github.com/NginxProxyManager/nginx-proxy-manager

Great self hosting stuff!

Nginx Proxy Manager

Take a look at NginxProxyManager. This would give you the opportunity to put everything in the form of service1.domain.com , service2.domain.com ,etc.

Prime example: Nginx Proxy Manager is often recommended in the sub. The latest minor release came with breaking changes (so already ignoring semver). I bet you many people were running on latest and then had broken stuff: https://github.com/NginxProxyManager/nginx-proxy-manager/releases/tag/v2.10.0

I started looking into how to make add dynamic IPs to NPM access lists. I came across a couple of GitHub issues (1, 2) on the topic. It looks like people have solved the problem, but not in a complete way without modifying the NPM docker image. I did not want to do that, so decided looking into writing a separate script.

Here is the (NPM) GitHub issue where the "fork of a fork" image came into existence (lepresidente/nginx-proxy-manager). It has some interesting discussions about the challenges of having NPM and CrowdSec coexist and cooperate.

Agree with this, myQ is such a dumpster fire. It needs to have an the ability to be managed over the local network instead of requiring the garage door and app connect to their server.

My very first experience with myQ was figuring out that their IP blocklist provider, brightcloud, blocks anything with the word "proxy" - including the default "it works" page for Nginx Proxy Manager [1]. And they have no way of overriding this to actually provide service if someone turns out to be a legitimate customer.

[1]: https://github.com/NginxProxyManager/nginx-proxy-manager/dis...

Edit: If you're using Nginx Proxy Manager there seems to be open PR for support for proxy protocol https://github.com/NginxProxyManager/nginx-proxy-manager/pull/1882 however in the comments there's a name of repository with this PR merged.