Turn Open WebUI into a real website (Domain + SSL)

Key Takeaways

setting up a domain name and SSL for open web UI that's what we're doing here now open web UI it's amazing it's one of the best ways to self-host your AI and connect it to other AIS like Chad GPT Gemini Gro Claude it gives you control but you know what's not great about open web UI it doesn't have built-in SSL which makes it kind of hard to get your own domain name add an SSL certificate and make it look pretty and secure for everyone that wants to use it in your group your people in this video we're going to tackle that and it's going to be kind of fun because we're going to add some extra flavor to it here's what we're doing by the way I'm Network Chuck welcome to my channel this is my second Channel if you haven't subscribed yet hit that subscribe button please and please make sure you hack the YouTube algorithm hit that like button notification Bell comment subscribe you got to hack YouTube today ethically of course anyways open webui this tutorial assumes that you already have this sucker set up and if you have no idea what I'm talking about go watch this video right here I'll walk you through setting it up and we'll get you to this point and actually you're probably jumping here from that video hi now you'll have open web UI installed on some type of server and you'll access the server by navigating to its IP address for me in my example mine is 18528 22.4 this is a public IP address that I have through my VPS hosting at hosting here now I can access my server just fine going out to 185 28224 Port 880 and boom I'm accessing open web UI not ideal so our goal here is to remove that layer of frustration and have it to where our domain let's just say I love Bernard hackwell docomo web UI server and that's our first step we need to acquire a domain name if you don't already have one step two we want to make sure that when people go to our website it's nice safe and secure and that's going to involve an SSL certificate Cloud flare is no better place to do that and while getting your domain name is going to cost you just a little bit of money Cloud flare is completely free and we'll offer a few more security features that you probably don't care about right now but you'll be happy they're there and finally number three this one's going to be pretty fun we're going to set up what's called enginex proxy manager what is that we'll cover more about that when we get to step just know it's not crazy I'll walk you through every step and it's going to provide some other opportunities that you may not be aware of now asterisk assumption I'm going to be assuming right now that you have a public IP address we can use if you set up an open web UI server in your house on a laptop or something and it has a private IP address like 1921 16814 3 or 10.71 120 this scenario will not work for you that'll have to be another video totally possible but this will not work you need a public IP address probably your situation is going to be hosting a VPS in the cloud which is one of my favorite ways to host my services especially things I'm going to be just kind of testing or providing to my family and friends as a service all right let's work on step one getting a domain now you can buy a domain from many places I you can get one from hosting here the place where I'm hosting my VPS or this is my preferred method we can do it right from cloud flare we're already going to be using Cloud flare for our SSL and our wff or our web application firewall but we can also buy a domain from them which is nice One-Stop shop so go sign up for a cloud flare account just go to cloudflare.com You'll eventually get to a place where it's like hey do you want to add a domain do you want to buy a domain I'm going to add a domain right now for me and actually it's like add an existing domain or register a new domain that's what I want to do right now let's go I'll search for one I love Bernard hackwell decom let's see if it's there got it and tell you what we'll do gosh te is expensive have any cheaper options ah com is fine I'll purchase that and I'm ready I'll click on manage my domain and actually from here I'll click on update DNS configuration because that's what we're going to be messing with right now now real quick if you already had a domain or you bought your domain through another registar like hosting your or GoDaddy or something the process might look like this I'm going open up a new window real quick you would add a domain enter an existing domain like mycool domain.com you would choose the free option the free plan and then if you click on overview they'll give you instructions to set up cloud is your name server on your provider now this is not my domain by the way I just totally ended it randomly and it's owned by GoDaddy so if you would go out to GoDaddy and change your name server to these servers good old Jaden Pablo and what CF flare recognizes that that is your name server now it'll show up here and you'll be able to do everything that we're doing right now so now back to my new domain I need to manage my DNS and look at my DNS records and my goal here is to point this DNS name to my VPS my server the IP address I have so we're going to go to hosting her real quick and locate my IP address which is this guy right here 18528 224 I'll get back to cloudflare and I'm going to add a new DNS record by clicking on ADD record right here this will be an a record leave it there by default now we're actually going to add two DNS records first we're just going to put an at symbol which means when someone goes out to I love Bernard hackwell decom it's going to go to somewhere in this case it's going to go to our VPS IP address that's all we need click on Save at the bottom right then we're going to add one more add record this time for the name we're going to do an asterisk and notice it kind of changes what our domain looks like right here giving giving us an example asterisk do I love Bernard hackwell tocom this enables us to have any subdomains so for example what we might end up doing and we will end up doing is saying like AI do I love Bernard hackwell doc the AI being a subdomain and you can make that whatever you want AI Terry open web UI it's all covered by this asterisk it's a wild card saying whatever subdomain you have it's going to go to the same address that we put in right now which is our VPS server boom right there click on Save and that's all we have to do and the cloud flare part that's done now time for the engine X proxy manager for that we're going to get back to the server that is hosting our open web UI for me this is my VPS that I set up in hostinger you want to log into the terminal you can use your local terminal app just SSH into your server or right here I have a browser terminal I'm going to use that for easy stuff I know why is it like that so I'll click on browser terminal getting me to the CLI my favorite place to be the first thing we'll do is make a new directory with the command mkd and don't worry this is going to be very simple very quick we'll make a new directory and we'll call it npm for an engine X proxy manager boom and it will jump into that directory or change our directories by typing in CD npm just like that now we're in there and now we'll create a new file we'll use the best text editor in uh Linux period it's called Nano Nano it'll create a new new file called docker-compose.yml this command will not only create a new file but it will jump Us in there real quick so we can edit some stuff inside I don't know why I said that weird bam we're inside now what we're going to do is and I'll have a link below on this GitHub page we have some config this Docker compost file yaml code we'll copy this go over to our terminal and paste that right in that's it we'll hit controll x y and enter to save if you type in LS we should see our new file right there and now with just one more command we're going to spin up in gen next proxy manager it's so stinking cool you ready the command will be Docker Das compose up- D Ready Set Don't Blink it's going to be fast go we'll take a little coffee break while it's building our stuff for us and that's it if we type in Docker space PS we can see our running Docker containers and I can see right here there's my inex proxy manager created 5 seconds ago and it is up for 4 seconds it's kind of trailing down there wrapping around so now I've opened up a new tab I can go to my IP address and then the port will be Port 81 so colon 81 enginex proxy manager there will be a default login it's right here admin example.com and the password's change me and once you're logged in it'll prompt you to change that mess which you definitely should all right we're almost there now by the way having engine X proxy manager set up here on your server it's going to unlock so many fun things for you you can spend time learning it or just follow along with what I'm doing and leave it alone it'll still do its job now we're going to do one thing we're going to add a new host so click on host right here and then we'll select proxy host and then we'll add a new proxy host by selecting by selecting this button right here lots of bells and whistles lots of options I'll walk you through the best stuff for you right now the first thing we'll do is give ourselves an easy way to access engine X proxy manager with our domain name just kind of show you what it feels like so here I'm going to type in I love Bernard hackwell docomo name I just bought and set up through cloudflare just select it when you type it in it'll fill in the field right here the scheme will leave it HTTP and then for the forward host name or IP we'll just put in Local Host because we want it to actually point to itself and then we'll say Port 81 because that's where our engine X proxy manager admin interface is running that should be all we need I do like to uh check websocket support just uh just in case and then click on Save now check this out if I go out to a new tab and I type in I love Bernard hackwell decom boom engine X proxy manager just like that it's so quick and then this is our last step I think we're almost done we're going to add one more proxy host so click on ADD proxy Host this time it's going to be our subdomain whatever we want we can make it up right here for me I'm going to say ai. Bernard hackwell or no ai. I Bernard hackwell did before and for the forward host name IP I'm going to grab our public IP address from hosting here here and whatever yours is for your VPS I'll paste that right in there and then we'll put the port that we wanted to access for open webui the default Port is 8080 that's all we need we'll cck click on websocket support and then click on save so now Moment of Truth I'll open up a new tab I'll go to ai. iov Bernard hackwell decom notice I'm not going to specify any ports because engine X proxy manager is taking care of that for us Ready Set Go and it just stinking works if I go up here and verify my site information look at that connection is secure let me get logged in and just like that things are working beautiful nice safe and secure and again if you're wondering Chuck I don't know what open web UI is which I'm very curious why you're watching this entire video if you don't know what it is but I appreciate you go check out my other video where I walk you through setting up open web UI I show you how to do it in a VPS which we covered right here and also I showed you how to do it in a Docker container on Prem right here which is like somewhere on your in your house or on your laptop on a Raspberry Pi and also talk about how you can run local AI models which is a very cool thing you can do one of my favorite things but also open web UI can connect to the big models out there like Chachi BT CLA Gemini Gro via API Keys a ton of benefits from doing that you're not paying for a monthly plan you're doing a pay as you go thing with API Keys oh so cool anyways that's the video I'll catch you guys next time