Dashboards and Incoming Webhooks (Inbound Traffic)

While some bots only use outbound connections, your bot requires inbound network configuration if it includes either of the following features:

A Web Dashboard: A control panel (usually running on Express.js or Flask) where users log in via a browser to configure the bot.
Voting Webhooks: Receiving real-time POST requests from bot list websites (like Top.gg) when a user upvotes your bot.

How to Configure Inbound Traffic

If your bot hosts a web server, you must open inbound ports on your host machine to allow users and webhooks to reach it.

Allow traffic on the port your web server uses (e.g., 8080 or 3000). Linux (UFW):

sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp

Instead of giving users an IP and port (e.g., http://192.168.1.5:8080), install a reverse proxy like Nginx or Apache.

Configure Nginx to listen on standard Port 443 (HTTPS) and route the traffic internally to your bot’s local port (8080).
This allows you to attach a domain name (dashboard.yourbot.com) and an SSL certificate (via Let’s Encrypt) to keep user data secure.