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thatcrow Aug 11, 2025

Is it possible to host a website using a VPN and port forwarding?

Is it possible to host a website using a VPN and port forwarding? - The TTRPG network

I’m able to use my VPN to distribute files via Soulseek/Nicotine+. Can I do this with its IP and port forwarding so people can connect to a website hosted on my machine from the internet? I’m imagining they’d be able to connect with the basic IP:port address, but I’m really not even sure if its possible. I’m looking into using NGINX for this. If something else is more appropriate, I’d love to know.

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thatcrow

I figured it out, and it surprisingly is possible.

ChatGPT was able to walk me through it. The big issue I had was that I was trying to connect using my own machine, which does not work. However, trying to connect using my phone did work. I also had to bind my VPN’s local IP (it’s different than the one that displays in the app) for nginx to work.

I could verify my VPN’s local IP with ip -4 addr show. It’s the entry with tun0.

http { server { listen LOCAL_VPN_IP:VPN_PORT; server_name localhost; ...