this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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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.

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We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.

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Why is starting with Self-hosting so daunting? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I’ve been a Software Engineering Student for 2 years now. I understand networks and whatnot at a theoretical level to some degree.

I’ve developed applications and hosted them through docker on Google Cloud for school projects.

I’ve tinkered with my router, port forwarded video game servers and hosted Discord bots for a few years (familiar with Websockets and IP/NAT/WAN and whatnot)

Yet I’ve been trying to improve my setup now that my old laptop has become my homelab and everything I try to do is so daunting.

Reverse proxy, VPN, Cloudfare bullshit, and so many more things get thrown around so much in this sub and other resources, yet I can barely find info on HOW to set up this things. Most blogs and articles I find are about what they are which I already know. And the few that actually explain how to set it up are just throwing so many more concepts at me that I can’t keep up.

Why is self-hosting so daunting? I feel like even though I understand how many of these things work I can’t get anything actually running!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The greatest advice my teachers in university told me was to tackle everything in life with the foundation/philosophy of K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid.

It's more of a code to live by; to which you should ask yourself the question first "why do I need this thing?" What problem is it solving, and is there a simpler method?

Usually, most labbers don't even need 10% of what we think we need. We introduce complexity for the sake of complexity.

Just be comfortable with an ecosystem or make your own that aligns with your values/principles.

Hone your senses by questioning the conceptual integrity of others (everyone has an opinion, don't take their opinion unless they're a trusted person that you respect). If you want to emulate someone based on their own system that matches yours, then do exactly to the letter what they have done and mimic their approach. Most times, you find that once you've concluded your journey you often feel it wasn't worth the journey in the end and you take those hard lessons and sometimes failures and it bridges your understanding further to the truth of a matter.