What I Self-host and Why

I’ve tried to write this blog post so. Many. Times. It’s the most I’ve struggled with writing in a long time. The problem I’m having is there are so many things I could write about, but that doesn’t mean I should for the purposes of this blog. I’ve tried making it a tutorial (which I’m not qualified to make), an opinion piece on why to self-host in an anti-privacy world, or a confusing mixture of the two. I’ve decided to go at this from a personal perspective – what I’ve done and why. If you’re interested in the other angles, let me know!

What I have

I had an old 16GB RAM 1TB storage tower PC that was too old to run proper games on and was gathering dust in the corner of my workspace. I researched what I could do with it that wasn’t just throwing it away or recycling it for parts, and self-hosting came up. Self-hosting is a low-cost way of accessing your own, highly customizable toolset from anywhere to support your daily life. At least, that’s what I think everyone should use it for.

I tend to overestimate what I can do with no prior experience, but with an afternoon to spare I gave self-hosting a go anyway. It took way more than one afternoon  - at least 12 hours total, if you include research – but I had finally set it up. Hopefully this post will shorten that time for you to just a few hours, if you don’t get lost in the research rabbit hole like I did.

I went with a Ubuntu Server running CasaOS on top. This is one of the most straightforward setups you can go for, in my opinion. If you can use a flash drive and follow simple instructions for both those pieces of software, you’ll be able to get it up and running in no time too. It’s also a great stepping stone for doing more advanced things (e.g. Docker, Nginx) if you really enjoy it. But, for those who have no idea what I’m talking about, you probably want to know what I can do with it.

I’m most proud of having my own content streaming service. If I have a home movie that I want to stream to multiple devices, all I have to do is pop it on my server, log into Jellyfin and it’s waiting for me already. The same goes for photos and Immich, or recipes and Mealie.

The beauty is I’m in complete control of what goes where and who gets access, without paying for a single thing apart from a VPN. My most used apps are:

• Jellyfin – for all the legally obtained content I want to watch
• Copyparty – a document cloud just like Dropbox
• Ghost – how I host this very website!
• Umami – stats for this very website
• FoundryVTT – for running my tabletop games

There are so many more things I could do with the server. Just look at this super long list of apps that are self-hostable. I’ve still got a lot of other things I’d like to self-host one day, like a budget management app or a notetaking app that meets my needs. With what I know now, I’d also like to support my community in some way but I’m stuck for ideas right now – it’s scary going up to strangers in any community group and just asking what they need. I’ll build up the confidence one day.

Why I bother

I’ve spent many hours in front of a screen tinkering about with the server, mostly for my and my partner’s benefit. I do this because a) it’s fun, b) it saves me money and c) I own all my data. All the apps I listed above could easily be done with a paid service, but that comes not just with a monetary cost but an ownership and accessibility one too. As an example, if you have Dropbox – what happens if their company goes bust, or has a flood in their server rooms? While you might trust them enough to have solid contingency plans in place, what if they don’t? Or, what if they change their plans and policies in a year’s time? Could you do anything to stop it?

It's those questions that have been running around in my head over the last couple of years. Ultimately, I don’t trust the giants like Google and Microsoft to steward my data in a way that keeps me safe and in control. I haven’t totally de-coupled from those kinds of services just yet, but I’ve made a great step in that direction and it feels like just the beginning.

I’d love to hear if anyone else has given self-hosting a go, and what you’ve self-hosted. If you’ve also got ideas on what a community might need to access online (portals, repositories, anything really) please do also let me know – it might be the makings of another project one day.