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.
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.
It is only accessible from your local network (if it is there in the first place, you can always selfhost on rented virtual private server), until you make it accessible. There a different ways to achieve that:
- Wireguard tunnel
- cloudflare tunnel
- (reverse) ssh tunnel
- dynDNS
- opening ports on your router
Which is the way for you depends on the circumstances, how your ISP connects you to the internet mainly
Tailscale might also decent be an option for remote access, right?
Might be, I don’t know it 😅
You forgot reverse proxy
A reverse proxy solves another problrm, doesn’t it? In any case it requires one of the solutions I mentioned to make your stuff accessible from outside.
It is a 50% alternative to port forwarding as you still need it. But instead you can host many things on one port and route it instead of 1:1
If you want to host miltiple things with only one ip I woild always recommend a reverse proxy, so it is good that you mention that but since it isn’t strictly necessary, it is no alternative imo.
There’s no guide thats covers everything, because the possibilities are nearly endless.
The first step is to get a server and choose an OS. You can build your own server at home or you can rent a VPS.
If you rent a VPS your services will be accessible from everywhere. If you decide to get a homeserver everything will be only accessible at your local network. You can acces your services from outside through VPN or port forwading.
When your server is ready, you can start to host your services. Just look at the documentation of the project e.g. on github.
