Nginx Proxy Manager

Using Nginx Proxy Manager to assign domain names to Docker ports, so you don't have to hand-write yet another layer of Nginx.

1 min read

On this page

Nginx Proxy Manager is a handy reverse proxy tool. What does that mean? It's a web management panel that can assign a domain name to any service running on a port on your machine. Visiting the domain is the same as visiting the service on that port.

Nginx Proxy Manager is often abbreviated to NPM. It's especially useful for Docker projects, and we'll be using it many times.

#Prerequisites

A VPS

Docker preinstalled: docker version > /dev/null || curl -fsSL get.docker.com | bash

Docker Compose preinstalled: apt install docker-compose

A bit of basic Linux knowledge (your brain can't run install commands on its own)

#Installation

Create a docker-compose.yml file in any directory and fill in the following:

version: '3.8'
services:
  app:
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '81:81'
      - '443:443'
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt

Then run the install command:

docker-compose up -d

# If using docker-compose-plugin
docker compose up -d

Then visit the address: http://127.0.0.1:81/

Once inside, change the account and password. The default account / password is:

Email:    [email protected]
Password: changeme