Written 9 Sep 2026. This is a how-to, not a product card.

A pretty URL can wait

Pi-hole and the house share work on a house number and a port. Caddy, Traefik, and plex.lab wait.

Forums love reverse proxies. You do not need one to finish the weekend path. The admin page is http://192.168.1.50/admin after the first useful thing. The share is a folder, not a hostname.

What a reverse proxy is

One door that sends pihole.lab to one program and chat.lab to another, often with a padlock. Useful later, when you have several house pages and you are tired of ports. It is not HTTPS on the public internet. Don't forward 80 or 443.

Where to write the ugly URL

Put the house name and number in Lab plan → House names. That is write the house name. Tick nothing for a proxy quiz. Photos and movies still wait: not the first service.

What next

First service: house-wide ad block. Share: a file share. NAT: SSH stays inside.

Optional: house number vs a later pretty name as a sandbox in ByteRush — same Labthrift passkey as Plan. Skip if you just want to keep reading.

Skip

Skip Caddy, Traefik, and Nginx Proxy Manager this weekend.
Skip a public hostname.
Skip forwarding 80 or 443.

Sources

First service: the first useful thing. Lessons: ByteRush.

Also on this topic

The first useful thingPi-hole on the leftover box. Photos and movies are not firstImmich and Jellyfin wait. NAT is why SSH stays insideDon't punch a hole for a pretty name.