Selfhosted

Some things, or points, to consider.

1. Do you want whatever you’re hosting to be internet accessible? Or local network only? As it being able to access from anywhere
2. If its something you want to be able to use full time, youll eventually want a dedicated machine. I have an *arr stack etc, which I share with a private group. Eventually downtime was an actual consideration and interrupted my normal usage of my main machine. I picked up a secondhand elitedesk mini Pc for £150 and its doing really well.
3. Potentially make use of tools like Zerotier for private networking (others hopefully will chime in with alternatives, but I have had good success with zerotier.
4. How do you want to host it, and are you willing to learn? Get a bit of knowledge on docker or podman but this is hardmode as most examples will be docker specific. Using containers will make things simpler. The most complicated part IMO is networking but even then its more docker networking stuff than general TCP/IP - (like you mentioned in your post)
5. OS - you mentioned using Linux? I personally use Ubuntu just out of defaulting to what i’ve previously used. But Im currently using Manjaro on my non host PC, which I am liking
6. Keep things secure - the more you expose to the internet, the more risk. Keep exposure as small as possible, use letsencrypt or alternatives for anything you want to access over the internet etc

good luck have fun!

I see a number of comments to use a virtual server host, but I have not seen any mention of the main reason WHY this is advisable... If you want to host something from your home, people need a way to reach you. There are two options for this -- use a DDNS service (generally frowned upon for permanent installations), or get a static IP address from your provider.

DDNS means you have to monitor whenever your local IP address changes, send out updated records, and wait for those changes to propagate across the internet. This generally will mean several minutes or more of down time where nobody can reach your server, and can happen at completely random times.

A static IP is reliable, but they cost money, and some providers won't even give you the option unless you get a business-class connection, which costs even more money. However this cost is usually already rolled into the price of a virtual machine.

Keep in mind also that when hosting at home, simply using a laptop to stay online 24/7 is not enough, you also need a battery backup for your network equipment. You will want to learn about setting up a firewall and some kind of IDS to protect the front end of your services, but for starting out you can host this on the same machine as your other services. And if you really want to be safe, set up a second internal machine that you can perform regular backups to, so when your machine gets hacked you have a way to restore the information.

My first server was online for two whole weeks before someone blew it up. Learn security first, everything after that will be easy.

Welcome to the cult!

We all started as beginners, but before you start, take my advice and avoid hosting anything open to the internet until you've gained more experience in OS/network hardening and risk assessment.

First off, I think you're starting on a good footing. Having TCP/IP knowlege is good, but you don't need it from the beginning - it will be relevant once you get into network segmentation and setting up reverse proxies.

I'd say the first thing is to actually choose a rather simple (but useful) application that you can host on Docker and get some experience from OCI-containers and disaster recovery. A lemmy instance (even non federated) might be too much to begin with. Have you considered paperless-ngx, fresh-rss or even syncthing instead? Or begin with formulating what problem you want solved in your daily life.

I'd say, start by watching this video series to gain a better understanding of Docker (I've so far assumed that you won't do baremetal installs, right?!??). There's also a pretty good online-lab for you to play around in. Remember, you'll propably realise that your first deployments could be better, and keep yourself mentally prepared to redo and rebuild eventually.

Feel free to message me if you want guidance going forward!

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.

[Thread #548 for this sub, first seen 26th Feb 2024, 18:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Seems people are already making great recommentations.

Personally I also use docker-compose, a WireGuard VPN and an Nginx-Server to proxy/ssl-terminate all my services to my VPN or the Internet.

Just host whatever you like/need. Something like Nextcloud is probably a solid start.

Btw, I have not seen it mentioned here, but awesome-Lists are a thing on github where people collect various gems for certain categories. Here is the one for self-hosting which I have used extensively and really like: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

Also, when you start hosting more than 2-3 services, keeping them up-to-date might become a hassle which you can forget. For docker-based hosting I'd recommend you setup watchtower, which can keep your servives up-to-date for you.

Don’t make anything accessible via the internet if you’re new and starting out. The last thing you want is to accidentally leave a port open, leave an admin page with a default guessable password, or a piece of vulnerable software running and have someone gain access to your local network.

Start locally and learn the basics following the excellent advice of others here, and slowly build your knowledge until you understand the various moving and connecting pieces.

I reccommend debian headless and docker compose. Set up ssh but i would only open ssh to the internet if your using certificate authenticarion. Chatgpt will be able to help you with most of this except installing docker just copy paste install commands from the docker docs

I'd say start with getting Lemmy going inside your home network (not accessible to the outside world). That'll give you a chance to play around with Docker if you want to go the Docker route. I like to make Portainer the first docker container I install (I install it with Docker Compose), and then I manage all other docker containers/etc. through Portainer. Just a quick heads up on Portainer... what Docker calls "docker compose", Portainer calls a "Stack", because it can have a "stack" of different stuff running under it.

Anyway, from there I'd figure out a reverse proxy. I use Nginx Proxy Manager, which is nginx under the hood, with a web interface to manage things. I've never tried Caddy, but people like that one, too.

The reverse proxy is what controls security, basically. Someone from outside your network types in lemmy.superspruce.org, and you've told Dynadot to forward that to your home IP address. You open port 80 and 443 on your router, and forward them to the machine running Nginx-Proxy-Manager. So NPM gets everything that's pointed at your house on those ports. It see's the request is for lemmy.superspruce.org, and you've told NPM where to look for that, and it handles it from there.

Just doing these things will open up all sorts of learning challenges that you'll have to figure out through Googling.

It took me years to finally decide to figure out a reverse proxy, and once I wrapped my head around it it makes so much sense. I wish I had learned it sooner.

https://skillsforall.com/course/networking-basics?courseLang=en-US

https://www.coursera.org/learn/computer-networking

Here's some links to some online courses to get you started. I think you might have to pay for the second one, but the first one, from Cisco, is free. (You'll need to create a Cisco account, however.)

It's absolutely great experience, and I could write a whole screed about what to look up, or I could point you to sources that are better organized than me, so I'm going with the latter.

Here's a link with many different free Cisco courses:

https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_sg/partners/cisco-networking-academy/index.html

If you want to expose some service to Internet, first of all learn how to install and correctly use a VPN server (I use Wireguard which I find pretty easy), otherwise keep everything in LAN until you'll be confident enough to be exposed.

I knew nothing about hosting a service to the public. Cloudflare tunnels helped simplify it for me. It looks more complicated than it is.

Everyone else is telling you to stay local, which is great advice, as far as it goes. But you said you want to host your website publicly available, so i'd recommend getting a cheap vps and starting there. It's not on your network, so if you screw up with security, worst case is you start again from scratch. I'd recommend the cheapest virmach VM you can get, with Debian or Ubuntu, if you like snaps.

First things first, set up ssh with key based logins, with a passphrase on a non standard port (doesn't provide security, but it will keep your logs from getting innundated immediately). Install UFW, and block all incoming traffic, allow all outgoing traffic, and limit traffic to your ssh port. Install docker and add your user to the docker group. Start learning how to use docker, compose, and as your first container, set up duplicati to back up your docker directory (including all your volumes, which I would store as folders inside your docker directory) somewhere else. I'd set it up to run every evening after you go to bed, and i'd also set a cron script to bring down all your containers before you back up, then bring them back up. Just in case.