I am completely new to the realm of self hosting. I don’t know a single thing about how I can self host stuff. Regardless, I have the curiousity to learn it by myself but I don’t know where to start. I cannot find any sort of wiki or FAQ articles, nor do I have the ability to ask the forum for every single problem or doubt I encounter during the setup. Can someone direct me to a beginner friendly site that teaches all there is about self hosting and all the questions and misconceptions that come with it?
Additionally, is a self hosted server only accessible inside my home? What about accessing the services outside, like Bitwarden or Nextcloud apps that require syncing and availability of data wherever I am? If it is useless outside, there would be no point for me personally to self host in the first place since I am perfectly fine with using cloud services for now and the convenience that comes with it. Plus, no one else in my family cares about self hosting and I don’t wish to spend the effort to convince them to in vain, so setting up a server for convenience of everyone at home is also out of the question.
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Others have already supplied a bunch of very handy guides and sources, as well as the disclaimer that the possibilities for selfhosting pretty much anything are endless.
That being said, I want to supply my own source, a guide I’ve started writing up to bridge exactly this gap: https://how2host.it. It’s still in development, and I’m working on more and more detailed guides. It’s also most definitely opinionated (the use of Linux as the host, docker as the containerization and nginx as the reverse proxy, as well as a bunch of other things) but it’ll provide you with a solid foundation of knowledge which you should be able to expand from yourself.
I hope it can be of use to you!
Simple, yet better UX than most server-related content. Thanks for sharing
Take a service you enjoy (say movie watching) and researvh something that interests you.
For example jellyfin or plex. Now you get to the question of how to implement that.
No you research that. 10-40 browser tabs later you got most of the neccessary information and implement it.Repeat that cycle.
Now you want to pull it all together (say make it reachable from outside). You research security practices and find, that maybe you want a reverse proxy + 2FA + Fail2Ban.
Now you do it again but with the intention of not one single application but many.
When you get your stack together, you begin the next project like securing your stack, improving it etc.Theres no FAQ on how to start it because everyone begins differently.
Some do media hosting, some want a backup solution centrally managed, some need a document management system, accounting/budgeting, security, development etc.My personal journey was
Raspberry Pi
Linux
OpenMediaVault
Network shares for Windows
Plex
Ditch plex for Jellyfin
Find out docker exists
Dive into torrenting so *arr stack + Jellyfin automation
Get help from a discord on how to get started with traefik
Introducing Authelia
Trying random projectsIf you want a hand holding (no offense. Everyone may need it at some point) guide, take a look at Ibracorp. Both the community as well as this, reddits and other communities have awesome guides on how to configure something.
But at the core of everything is one: What bothers you and how do you intend to change it?landchad.net was useful for me.
Very based
Check out yunohost
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol Plex Brand of media server package SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) nginx Popular HTTP server
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I‘ve recently started using Tailscale for my home setup and I really can‘t recommend it enough. In my opinion it takes a lot of the dangers regarding IT security out of self hosting. Depending on who you ask it is not true self hosting, but I couldn’t care less :)
With Tailscale you can create a VPN for your devices including your phone and even expose services to the outside world with SSL already setup (havent tried that out, yet)
They have guides/tutorials for a lot of stuff (web server, Minecraft).
Like the other commenter mentioned, ChatGPT can be really helpful for these kind of questions. I’m not sure if there’s any “starter guide” since everyone starts with different wants and needs.
I will say, you should look into Tailscale once you’ve got your services up and running on your home network. Tailscale makes it simple and secure to access those services from outside your home network without any port forwarding.
What do you have in terms of available hardware?
Additionally, is a self hosted server only accessible inside my home? What about accessing the services outside, like Bitwarden or Nextcloud apps that require syncing and availability of data wherever I am? If it is useless outside, there would be no point for me personally to self host in the first place since I am perfectly fine with using cloud services for now and the convenience that comes with it. Plus, no one else in my family cares about self hosting and I don’t wish to spend the effort to convince them to in vain, so setting up a server for convenience of everyone at home is also out of the question.
It is only accessible from your local network (if it is there in the first place, you can always selfhost on rented virtual private server), until you make it accessible. There a different ways to achieve that:
- Wireguard tunnel
- cloudflare tunnel
- (reverse) ssh tunnel
- dynDNS
- opening ports on your router
Which is the way for you depends on the circumstances, how your ISP connects you to the internet mainly
You forgot reverse proxy
A reverse proxy solves another problrm, doesn’t it? In any case it requires one of the solutions I mentioned to make your stuff accessible from outside.
It is a 50% alternative to port forwarding as you still need it. But instead you can host many things on one port and route it instead of 1:1
If you want to host miltiple things with only one ip I woild always recommend a reverse proxy, so it is good that you mention that but since it isn’t strictly necessary, it is no alternative imo.
