Good to hear you figured it out with router settings. I’m also new to this but got all that figured out this week. As other commenters say I went with a reverse proxy and configured it. I choose caddy over nginx for easy of install and config. I documented just about every step of the process. I’m a little scared to share my website on public fourms just yet but PM me ill send you a link if you want to see my infrastructure page where I share the steps and config files.

Pangolin.

Thanks for the input! I do eventually plan on making some scripts and a custom web interface to interact with/expose some local services on my network once I have the basics of HTML covered as part of a portfolio thing so would like to cover my ass early and not have problems later

From what Ive seen in arguments about this, Plex generally is more accessible with QoL and easier to understand interface for non-techie people to share with family/friends. Something thats hard for nerdy people to understand is that average people are perfectly fine paying for digital goods and services. An older well off normie has far more money than sense and will happily pay premiums just to not have to rub two braincells together with setup or for a nicer quality of experience. If you figure out how to make a very useful plug-an-play service that works without the end user of average intelligence/domain knowledge stressing about how to set up, maintain, and navigate confusing layouts, you’ve created digital gold.

This isn’t the fault of open source services you can only expect so much polish from non-profit voulenteer. Its just the nature of consumer laziness/expectation for professional product standards and the path/product of least resistance.