Okay so ideally it wouldnt be local but i'm behind a carrier grade NAT and my isp isnt very cooperative but monopolies gonna monopoly so here i am.

What i want is basically beeper. I want to use element on my phone with bridges so i dont need half a dozen different messaging apps.

Note that i know what i am doing is probably horrible in terms of security.

I setup matrix by following the ansible playbook docs. I skipped all the dns stuff. I set to a random made up domain. And changed my hosts file to point

matrix.made-up-domain.com

element.made-up-domain.com

to my server internal ip address.

I disabled ssl in

inventory/host_vars/matrix.made-up-domain.com/vars.yaml

Using

devture_traefik_config_entrypoint_web_secure_enabled: false

In inventory/hosts i also used my made up domain.

I hit go and eventually i got it to work. Even got a couple of bridges working. The issue is it only works on my desktop not on my phone. Both of them are on the local network. I think it has to do with the element app on my phone not liking that ssl is disabled.

I dont really know what the best option is at this point. Should i try self signed certificates? Or maybe something like ngrok or pagekite? Its okay if it is only local. I can play around with zerotier or something similar so i can still access it outside the network.

Note that im not able to pay for anything either which makes things more complicated. Cant buy a domin name or pay for a vps or any of the things that would make this easier.

Update: I got it working. The key was the self-signed certificates I think. That simplified a lot of stuff. Well, it made it so I could follow the playbook more closely, so I was able to use the work that other people put into that instead of having to tweak a bunch of stuff.

I also setup pi-hole to use the local DNS stuff on my made up domain. I think i was right that Zero tier gives me access to everything from outside the network using pi-hole for the DNS. I don't get cell service where I live though, so testing that will be a process.