so in socker compose external tetwork is a network created outside of that compose file, for example on setup I have traefik running in a container which defines the traefik network, in another compose file you can reference that network by name and mark it as external to connect containers to it
I’ve not set up a pixelfed instance before so I can’t help with the folder perms but I’d think they would work themselves out
there are 3 main steps depending on what OS is being run, but it basically goes like this
port forward some port to a maching on your home network,
create a wireguard config through network manager if you’re using that or the wg-quick command, make sure it auto connects
3 mess with the firewall so that your devices on the wireguard network can see your home network
there are tons of easy to follow guides out there, this is the one I followed
no no internal: true mans the network is isolated from the outside and is irrelevant to needing port mapping or not, poet mapping is only needed to bring traffic into the docker virtual network
for my setup I have only one container with port mapping running traefik reverse proxying to my other sevices which use the external:true network because it is managed by the traefik docker compose file, in the traefik compose I do not say external: or internal: