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Serving Multiple Home Dashboards on Port 80 with Caddy

Notes for serving multiple local Hugo dashboards from one Windows host on port 80 with Caddy and home.arpa DNS entries on an OpenWrt router.

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Home LabNetworkingHugo#caddy#hugo#home-arpa#openwrt#dnsmasq#dashboards

Goal

I wanted multiple local Hugo dashboards to be available on normal HTTP port 80 from the home network:

http://flashcards.home.arpa/
http://mealplanner.home.arpa/

Both names point to the same Windows machine, Hermes, at 192.168.8.172. Caddy listens on port 80 and routes by hostname. Each Hugo site listens only on a private localhost port.

The important pattern is:

Browser -> router DNS -> 192.168.8.172:80 -> Caddy -> Hugo backend

Why home.arpa

Use home.arpa, not home, home.arp, or local.

home.arpa is the special-use domain reserved for residential home networks by RFC 8375: Special-Use Domain ‘home.arpa.’. The RFC says names ending in .home.arpa. are locally significant inside a home network and are not globally unique.

I initially tried names like mealplanner.home and mealplanner.local, but the final working setup uses:

mealplanner.home.arpa
flashcards.home.arpa

Current Setup

Hermes has the static DHCP lease:

Hermes -> 192.168.8.172

The router is:

192.168.8.1

Caddy owns port 80:

0.0.0.0:80 -> caddy.exe

The Hugo backends are private to Hermes:

Flash Cards         -> 127.0.0.1:1313
Family Meal Planner -> 127.0.0.1:1314

The Caddy routing is:

flashcards.home.arpa  -> 127.0.0.1:1313
mealplanner.home.arpa -> 127.0.0.1:1314

Caddyfile

The Caddy config lives here:

C:\GitHub\Caddy\Caddyfile

Current contents:

{
    auto_https off
}

http://flashcards.home.arpa {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:1313
}

http://mealplanner.home.arpa {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:1314
}

auto_https off matters because these are plain HTTP-only home-network names. Without that, Caddy may try to manage certificates for names that only exist inside the house.

Starting the Dashboards

The start script lives here:

C:\GitHub\Caddy\start-dashboards.bat

The useful shape of the script is:

@echo off
setlocal

set "HUGO=C:\Users\Hermes\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WinGet\Packages\Hugo.Hugo.Extended_Microsoft.Winget.Source_8wekyb3d8bbwe\hugo.exe"
set "CADDY=C:\Users\Hermes\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WinGet\Packages\CaddyServer.Caddy_Microsoft.Winget.Source_8wekyb3d8bbwe\caddy.exe"
set "CADDYFILE=C:\GitHub\Caddy\Caddyfile"

echo Stopping existing Hugo/Caddy processes...
taskkill /IM hugo.exe /F >nul 2>nul
taskkill /IM caddy.exe /F >nul 2>nul

echo Starting Flash Cards Hugo backend on 127.0.0.1:1313...
start "Flash Cards Hugo" /D "C:\GitHub\Flash-Cards" "%HUGO%" server --bind 127.0.0.1 --port 1313 --baseURL http://flashcards.home.arpa/ --appendPort=false --disableFastRender --renderToMemory

echo Starting Family Meal Planner Hugo backend on 127.0.0.1:1314...
start "Family Meal Planner Hugo" /D "C:\GitHub\Family-Meal-Planner" "%HUGO%" server --bind 127.0.0.1 --port 1314 --baseURL http://mealplanner.home.arpa/ --appendPort=false --disableFastRender --renderToMemory

echo Starting Caddy reverse proxy on port 80...
start "Caddy Reverse Proxy" /D "C:\GitHub\Caddy" "%CADDY%" run --config "%CADDYFILE%" --adapter caddyfile

echo.
echo Dashboards started:
echo   http://flashcards.home.arpa/
echo   http://mealplanner.home.arpa/
echo.
endlocal

The stop script lives here:

C:\GitHub\Caddy\stop-dashboards.bat

Contents:

@echo off
echo Stopping dashboard Hugo/Caddy processes...
taskkill /IM hugo.exe /F >nul 2>nul
taskkill /IM caddy.exe /F >nul 2>nul
echo Done.

The login startup shim lives here:

C:\Users\Hermes\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\start-dashboards.bat

Contents:

@echo off
call "C:\GitHub\Caddy\start-dashboards.bat"

Router DNS Entries

The router is a GL.iNet/OpenWrt router at 192.168.8.1. SSH in:

ssh root@192.168.8.1

Add each dashboard name as a dnsmasq domain entry pointing to Hermes:

uci add dhcp domain
uci set dhcp.@domain[-1].name='mealplanner.home.arpa'
uci set dhcp.@domain[-1].ip='192.168.8.172'

uci add dhcp domain
uci set dhcp.@domain[-1].name='flashcards.home.arpa'
uci set dhcp.@domain[-1].ip='192.168.8.172'

uci commit dhcp
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

Verify the router config:

uci show dhcp | grep home.arpa

Expected entries:

dhcp.@domain[2].name='mealplanner.home.arpa'
dhcp.@domain[2].ip='192.168.8.172'
dhcp.@domain[3].name='flashcards.home.arpa'
dhcp.@domain[3].ip='192.168.8.172'

Verify DNS resolution through the router:

nslookup mealplanner.home.arpa 192.168.8.1
nslookup flashcards.home.arpa 192.168.8.1

Both should return:

Address: 192.168.8.172

Verifying Caddy Routing

From Hermes, verify that Caddy routes by the Host header:

curl.exe -H "Host: flashcards.home.arpa" http://127.0.0.1/
curl.exe -H "Host: mealplanner.home.arpa" http://127.0.0.1/

The logged verification found:

flashcards.home.arpa  -> <title>Flash Cards
mealplanner.home.arpa -> <title>Family Meal Planner - Family Meal Planner

Also check that Caddy is the only thing listening on public port 80:

netstat -ano | findstr ":80"
tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq caddy.exe"
tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq hugo.exe"

The healthy state is:

caddy.exe -> 0.0.0.0:80
hugo.exe  -> 127.0.0.1:1313
hugo.exe  -> 127.0.0.1:1314

If a Hugo process is listening directly on 0.0.0.0:80, stop everything and restart with C:\GitHub\Caddy\start-dashboards.bat. Caddy should be the only public listener.

Adding Another Dashboard

Use this checklist when adding the next local dashboard.

  1. Clone or place the Hugo site under C:\GitHub.

Example:

git clone https://github.com/trimad/New-Dashboard C:\GitHub\New-Dashboard
  1. Pick the next unused backend port.

Current ports:

1313 -> flashcards
1314 -> mealplanner

So the next one should probably be:

1315 -> newdashboard
  1. Add a new Hugo backend line to C:\GitHub\Caddy\start-dashboards.bat.

Template:

start "New Dashboard Hugo" /D "C:\GitHub\New-Dashboard" "%HUGO%" server --bind 127.0.0.1 --port 1315 --baseURL http://newdashboard.home.arpa/ --appendPort=false --disableFastRender --renderToMemory
  1. Add a new Caddy site block to C:\GitHub\Caddy\Caddyfile.

Template:

http://newdashboard.home.arpa {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:1315
}
  1. Add the router DNS entry.

On the router:

uci add dhcp domain
uci set dhcp.@domain[-1].name='newdashboard.home.arpa'
uci set dhcp.@domain[-1].ip='192.168.8.172'
uci commit dhcp
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
  1. Restart the dashboard stack.

On Hermes:

C:\GitHub\Caddy\stop-dashboards.bat
C:\GitHub\Caddy\start-dashboards.bat
  1. Verify DNS and routing.
nslookup newdashboard.home.arpa 192.168.8.1
curl.exe -H "Host: newdashboard.home.arpa" http://127.0.0.1/

Then test from another device on Wi-Fi:

http://newdashboard.home.arpa/

Troubleshooting Notes

  • If nslookup fails, fix the router DNS entry first. Caddy cannot route a name that the client cannot resolve.
  • If nslookup works but the page is wrong, check the Caddyfile host block and the Hugo backend port.
  • If the page loads but links include :1313, :1314, or another backend port, make sure the Hugo command includes --baseURL http://name.home.arpa/ --appendPort=false.
  • If port 80 is already in use, run netstat -ano | findstr ":80" and stop the process that owns it before starting Caddy.
  • Avoid .local for this setup. .local is commonly handled by mDNS, which is not the same thing as the router’s normal DNS host entries.

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