Exposing Wings in a Homelab

Let's say you just finished setting up your Calagopus Panel and Wings in your homelab, and you want to access it from the internet. This guide will cover all the ways you can expose your Wings machine to the internet, and the pros and cons of each method.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following:

• A working Calagopus Panel
• A working Calagopus Wings machine (accessible by the Panel)
• A domain name (optional, but recommended for easier access and SSL certificate generation)

Methods

The most common way to expose your Wings machine to the internet is by using a reverse proxy. A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of your Wings machine and forwards requests to it. This is the recommended method for most users, as it allows you to easily manage SSL certificates and provides an additional layer of security.

Pros	Cons
Easy to set up with tools like Nginx or Caddy	Requires additional configuration and maintenance
Allows for easy SSL certificate management	May introduce additional latency
Provides an additional layer of security	Requires a domain name for best results
Can be used to expose multiple services on the same domain	May require additional resources on your server
	No support for SFTP (but you can still use SFTP by connecting to the Wings machine directly on the local network)

For a detailed guide on setting up a reverse proxy, please see our Reverse Proxies documentation.

Whats important to note for Wings is how you configure the reverse proxy, since Wings uses both HTTP and WebSocket connections, you need to make sure to properly configure your reverse proxy to support both types of connections. When entering the URL into the panel, you should make sure you enter the Reverse Proxy URL without a Port (well, usually). For example, if your reverse proxy is accessible at https://wings.example.com, you should enter https://wings.example.com in the panel, and not https://wings.example.com:8080 or any other port.