basically the issue was thaty router doesn't support NAT loopback, and as such when a request for the routers external IP comes from the inside, the router throws it out.
This can be fixed by editing your computer's host file to redirect the domain to the local IP of the server, or by setting up a dnsmasq proxy to make any requests redirect to the internal IP of the server.!!!
http works at all times, (when connecting thru domain) and https ONLY WORKS if i am not on the local network (the sever is an old laptop) i i am using a vpn (or in another building) it works fine, and DNS requests from inside the same network resolve to the public IP, as expected.
I am stumped.
ps: the connection times out when connecting to it on the same network (with domain) and tcpdump and access.log dont pick up anything
Edit: formatting
Edit2: the pinging works from the router (it has a debugging feature), but not from my pc (with https)
Edit3: i had wireshark open while curling the domain, and it pings my home ip (the good one) but receives no reply
Based on your edit about getting the public IP: Most firewall/routers are not configured to do this operation by default (called Hairpinning). If you request your firewall/router's external IP address from the internal network you won't get a response unless Hairpinning is enabled and some devices don't allow you to do that. If you have an internal dns server, you should override the internal dns to return the private ip address so it goes to your nginx reverse proxy instead of the firewall/router.
Most routers have an option to point at a custom DNS first with a fall through for external DNS providers. Best bet is to log into your router and poke around
I had a similar driving me fcking nuts issue - it turned out that even though I had explicitly set the modem to run on a nonstandard port, to reject all http/https requests from the external interface and set it to point all http/https to my web server, every time I ran traffic internally from 192.168.0.1 to mydomain.com it went out, hit the the DNS, came back to my public IP and then for some reason I still cannot work the fuck out the modem then takes it and goes "oh that's someone in my network talking to MEEEEEEEEEEE" and then I'd get a https bad request. Using a VPN negates this as it routes differently.
I've been looking for a photo viewing solution for a nextcloud instance and immich seems really nice. Basically looking for something with similar features as iPhotos (stretch goal)
Have you had any bad experiences with bugs or features not working correctly?