I want to set up a lemmy instance as a subreddit alternative for a community I moderate. I would be running the instance on a local machine in my home so I really want to make sure that it can’t be traced to my physical location.

I already subscribe to ExpressVPN for general use, can I just install it on the local machine, press connect, and boom be anonymous? What impact would this have on users?

  • ijustlookatpictures
    1·
    2 years ago

    For all my self hosted stuff I use nginx proxy manager behind a cloudflare tunnel. The tunnel connects to a container on the machine which sends everything to the reverse proxy. no need for vpn or port forwarding

    • lambchop@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years ago

      This is the only correct answer, the other responses about only showing local ip, and hosting something that goes through a VPN are either wrong or don’t result in a working configuration. A domain must resolve to an IP so connecting out via a VPN just won’t work. Proxying your connection through cloudflare using cloudflareD tunnels is the answer. Users will only see the ip of cloudflare.