Please bear with me as I don’t know where else to ask.
I want to start to self host but do not know where to start. I would like to start small. Just something that might not be beneficial but to get my feet wet. It does not even have to be practical.
I am not tech illiterate and have my fair share of technology around me hut self hosting has always been a daunting task.
I am scared to start.
I am already using a PiHole at home but that was kind of plug and play and just worked.
I would be incredibly grateful if someone could guide me to some resource or tell me what an easy first step would be.
An FAQ or self hosting for dummies.
Most resources I found assumed some previous knowledge.
Hello, I am also new at self hosting semi recently. There is a bit of a learning curve, but once your over the hump, it gets a lot better.
First, 100% use docker desktop if your using windows. Most github projects have a docker file you can use. This will take out 90% of the setup required and you don’t have to worry about applications not working on your computer. Thats the point of docker, to remove the “doesn’t work on my computer” problem.
Here are some independent github projects that I found useful for me and were simple to setup.
- excalidraw - digital whiteboard. You don’t need to self host this, but its a fun little project. You can just go to excalidraw.com and have 100% of the same features (it is all saved in your browser’s cache).
- mealie - I cook a lot so this is a nice ‘permanent’ cook book to have.
- warracker - I always forget what I have warranties on, so this will be helpful for me.
- Arr projects like sonarr, radarr, Jellyfin - sonarr and radarr is a good project to sink your teeth into (do not recommend using docker for this, I had issues with my docker container connecting to my external drives because I have Windows Home edition). This ecosystem is usually everyone’s first project along with pihole since its so useful. Sonarr and radarr will probably take you a week or weekend, Jellyfin will take like 5 min.
A lot of people recommend Docker, but I will go further and say to specifically use Docker compose.
That way all the configuration is in a file that you can backup/restore. Updating is really easy, and you will never forget one of the random flags you need to set.
- PiHole - you can use the custom DNS to route domain names to you npm
- npm (Nginx proxy manager) - allows easy access to all your services hosted on one box
The easiest way to get started is using Docker. You can self-host most software using Docker straight from their Github with one command or copy-paste config.
Do NOT expose (Port forward/NAT) your services to the internet if you don’t know what you’re doing. Use it locally using IP:port. If you want to use your services remotely, use a VPN tunnel like Wireguard (Available on Android and iOS too). Modern routers already support it out of the box. Tailscale is also an option.
Later down the road when you start exposing services, I can recommend NPM as your proxy for easy host and certificate management. Expose as little as possible! For added security when exposing applications to the internet, expose your port using a VPS or Cloudflare and tunnel to your home using Tailscale or Wireguard.
To not get overwhelmed you should start small and improve as you go. You don’t need to start with a datacenter in your garage right away. The most important thing is that you have fun along the way :)
Great projects to get started:
Docker seems the way to go for me now! Thank you for the nice write up.
I definitely do not now what I am doing so the word of caution is greatly appreciated!
The whole thing about remotely accessing is probably something I put on my ToDo list as soon as I get a service up and running. Nevertheless reading it and just knowing about Wireguard and Tailscale is a huge benefit to me.
Is there a personal recommendation which of your listed projects to get started with?
Here are a few of my favorites, some of which are exposed, some are not:
- Mealie - Recipe management. Import recipes by URL is my favorite feature, then I tweak and try it out (I have to be gluten free, so this makes it easy to track what worked for us).
- Homepage - a homepage to put quick links to all of my stuff, neat and clean.
- Grafana - for visualization of current data of my systems, paired with Prometheus.
- Technitium DNS - for all of my DNS needs.
- Jellyfin - for all my media, let’s me pick out what my kids can see/watch without me having to look over their shoulder, along with being a great looking solution for me.
- Immich - photo and video management
All of these (and more, this is just a dsmple of favorites) run on Proxmox. I mostly use LXC over docker, personal preference.
Home Assistant is probably the single most useful for me, already mentioned, just about everything at home is automated/controlled through there.