A lot of people say port forwarding is dangerous, and it can be, but you just have to be careful. As long as port 22 stays closed, it should be fine. In order to do so, you need to go back to your router login from the first part of this guide. Every router is different. For mine, look for a tab that says firewall, then look under it for a tab that says security, then look for a tab that says port forwarding. Click new, and it will ask for a device or IP address. Just do the IP as it's easier than searching for your server. Just like everything, it's the LAN IP for your server; the 192.168.xxx.xxx. Then it will ask you for a port start and end. This is for if you need, you can have a range of ports open but for this, just put the same number in both. The number you put in should be whatever port you want public. for Jellyfin put 8096 and for Nextcloud put 81. It'll ask you for TCP, UDP, or TCP/UDP. Just do TCP. Most stuff does TCP anyways. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that is UDP is Minecraft Bedrock Edition. But with Playit.gg, you won't have to worry about that. It will then prompt you for a WAN port start and end and just put 8096 or whatever it is you want. Click apply and that's done. While we're here, also do the same steps but for ports 80 and 443. Even if you aren't doing HTTPS, I'd still recommend you open them. Once the port number is open, go back to that status page from earlier and see the public ipv4 address. Like I said, make sure it matches the IP shown at whatsmyip.com or now that the server is set up, you could also just do curl -4 ifconfig.me. Copy that IP, and go to the browser. Input the public IP followed by the port number. Example for Jellyfin should be YOUR.PUBLIC.IP:8096. Even if you are on the same network, it will only go through if all the config was set up correctly. If so, you should see the same Jellyfin as the LAN IP. Now giving your friends and family the public IP for your server is a little sketchy. If you are not going to set up HTTPS and don't really care, use a website called NO-IP. They provide a free host name that you can assign to your public IP. But you can only have one on your account with the free version. And with it, you need to input the host name. Before I purchased sizablesplash.com, I had mine on NO-IP as sizablesplash.servebeer.com. Just know that even with it, people can still find your IP address via that. But if you do want a more custom domain or do HTTPS, buy a domain name on Cloudflare. I pay $10.46 a year for mine. Either way, once you assign it to the IP address, all people have to do is go to whatever the host name is on NO-IP or your domain depending on what you went with followed by the port number. But having people still input the port number is a little clunky and inconvenient. That's where HTTPS comes in.
Any issues with this guide, shoot me an email "[email protected]"
Date created: August 7th, 2026
Last modified: August 26th, 2026