this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
50 points (96.3% liked)

Selfhosted

40728 readers
383 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hello All,

I am really new to selfhosting, trying to learn the basics. I have a raspi 5 with docker installed and a domain. My question is, as I collect all my knowledge from all over the internet, is there a selfhosting guide for dummies? IT would be cool to have some guidance at hand to rfer to when i do dumb shit.

Thanks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Unfortunately not as self hosting is really just an amalgamation of a number of different technologies, concepts, groups of best practices, and there are nine and a half viable ways to do any given thing you’ll want to do. For my day job I manage several public systems that serve millions of requests a day and even I can’t really give you a “One definitive way of doing things”, but I have my preferences.

I think if you wanted a rough plan of what would be the most valuable things to learn in which order it would be

  1. Docker, especially persisting your storage and also how its network works. Use containerized services only on your local network at first to get a feel for things, and give yourself the ability to screw things ip without putting yourself in any danger.

  2. VPNs and how they work. You can start with a direct stupid simple VPN like WireGuard, or Tailscale if you want a mesh-VPN. This will allow you to reach your services remotely without having to worry too much about security and the micromanagement that can sometimes come with it.

  3. Reverse proxies for things you’d like to expose to the public. At this point you want to learn as well about things like server hardening, have a system in place to automate software updates etc. there’s a common misconception that using a reverse proxy is innately much safer than port forwarding directly to your services. It can help by obscuring your home IP, and if you pair it with a WAF of some kind that’ll help you with much of the chaff attacks that get tossed your way, but at the end of the day in both cases you’re exposing the web services on your local network to the internet at large, so you have to understand the risk and reward of doing this.