For me, it was PhotoPrism. I used to be an idiot, and used Google Photos as my gallery. I knew that it was terrible for privacy but was too lazy to do anything about it. When Google limited storage for free accounts, I started looking for alternatives. Tried out a lot of stuff, but ended up settling on PhotoPrism.
It does most things that I need, except for multiple user support (it’s there in the sponsored version now). It made me learn a bit about Docker. Eventually, I learned how to access it from outside of my home network over Cloudflare tunnel. I’m happy that I can send pics/albums to folks without sharing it to any third party. It’s as easy as sending a link.
Now I have around a dozen containers on a local mini pc, and a couple on a VPS. I still route most things through Cloudflare tunnels (lower latency), only the high bandwidth stuff like Jellyfin are routed through a wireguard tunnel through the VPS.
Anyway, how did you get into selfhosting? (The question is mostly meant for non-professionals. But if you’re a professional with something interesting to share, you’re welcome as well.)
Honestly? Probably boredom. Computer-related projects are addictive to me.
Haven’t ventured too far, but searxng was my first selfhosted service. It’s very easy, single container, no database.
Probably Apache? I’ve been running web servers since the early 2000’s.
At the beginning of the pandemic I looked into ways to de-Google and found Nextcloud. It wasn’t the easiest thing to start with, especially for a novice, but I had the time and the hardware, and I’m the type to not mind jumping into something difficult if it means solving a specific problem. I then found out about Bitwarden and had a great experience setting that up. After that I was confident enough to try hosting anything I could find. It’s been good times ever since 😀
I also started with nextcloud because of my degoogle journey 😄
A pihole. Given how much I’ve spent over the years on self hosting kit, few ‘cheap’ things have ended up costing me more than that first 30 quid raspberry pi
Having own media library without having to use so many sub based services :)
- Privacy :)
For me it was ages ago (probably 2006), I was starting to learn about virtualization so I got a cheap server on ebay and started with VMWare ESX. I then virtualized Asterisk PBX and self hosted that for about 10 years, and an open source radio automation software named Rivendell Radio Automation, I self hosted 2 Internet radio stations for about 5 years since 2008, and had a small studio at home (before all the podcast kits that became very common a few years later).
I moved to the cloud for a bit while working at a big cloud provider that offered us a lot of free credits, but I’m back to having servers at home and hosting my media collection, some services my family uses and a lot of learning labs.
oh nice. somebody else who’s done internet radio!
Yep, it was my door to working at a terrestrial radio conglomerate as the IT manager and having a small technology segment on-air daily. It was good times!
That’s awesome :)
I started by self-hosting an autoDJ to pipe music into Second Life, later did a weekly show on a tiny internet radio station for maybe 18 months … trying to make a name in order to get a DJ spot on-air at a local community radio station that was indie/alt-rock format at the time. Sadly my life took a turn and the community station changed hands and changed formats, but it was a cool experience nonetheless!
Awesome! Dang, Second Life… we are definitely not so young anymore! 🤣🤣
I like to tinker with things, and I had hardware lying around I wasn’t using. First thing I ever self-hosted was very basic: a Terraria server.
Then a Minecraft server.
And then a fully featured and defederated Matrix server with a fully functional telegram bridge, mostly as a test to see how feasible it was. Ran it for several months before shutting it down, deciding to wait for dendrite, since it’s supposed to be lighter.
Haven’t done anything since, but I’ll be looking to build a few more things in the near future.
Of all the things I have or am self-hosting the Matrix server was the biggest pain in the ass. I seriously hope they streamline that process because as it was it’s too much work for what it does.
A desire to set up a permanent download station that could extremely securely and very automatically keep track of all the Linux distributions (eg I really want to make sure I try every version of Mint Linux and with various arr programs I could ensure that as soon as a new version of Mint shows up, I automatically download it and get it shown in an interface where I can try the new version of Mint Linux. Linux distributions - I just love them!!
