In some senses, self-hosting ecosystems seem to grow in “phases”. Maybe the first phase is learning how to host local services and forward ports. Having a git server, file hosting, media streaming, backups, and the like are all really convenient . After that, it seems that learning how to route traffic through a VPN server in order to encrypt remote connections would be the second most important inclusion. I was stuck here for a while. For a long time, I could spin up a new service, and be tinkering with its specific configuration in minutes. After a while I discovered Authentik. I decided it would be a great addition for convenience and security to this environment, but it has some requirements. The biggest requirement, or the third phase of self-hosting to me, is enabling https connections for your local services.