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.
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?
