Posts on The Self-Hosting Blog

📰Issue #21 • We're back

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It's been a while! Hope that you had an awesome holiday period and new year 🎉

Apologies for our lack of newsletters! I'm afraid that we've been quite busy with other commitments.

📚 Some light reading

We've been keeping an eye on a few blogs that we like and we think you should check them out! Take a look:

💰 Want to support The Self-Hosting Blog?

You may have noticed that we do not run ads on The Self-Hosting Blog, this is because we want to protect your privacy. If you're feeling super generous and you love what we do, why not support us by buying us a coffee?

Issue #20 • Competition time & Fun with Ansible!

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Happy Friday! What a crazy month it's been as well, we've been looking into a lot of ansible stuff these past few weeks in preparation for some new features coming to the blog, so watch this space!! We're also preparing some tutorials for getting started with Ansible and some nice tips and tricks we've found along the way.

🎉Competition time!

As we head into Spooptober things are starting to get cold here in the UK, which means it's a perfect opportunity to buy that new home lab and start warming up the place!

Issue #19 • Production Wordpress migrations

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #19

What's new?

Been fighting with Wordpress recently, I've had to migrate 5-6 production sites over to a new VPS. Previously running in dedicated Wordpress hosting, now running inside Docker containers. I'll probably do a write-up just to share my experience of fighting with DNS, Certificates, Duplication Tools, Self hosted email servers and container management.

You can stay up to date and interact with us in our Matrix and Discord channel, feel free to join us in the conversation!

Issue #18 • Blog expansion over to Forem

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #18

What's new?

We've been playing around with Forem the backend that powers dev.to. We've been thinking about bringing the community into The Self-Hosting Blog more and allowing you to create community tutorials all under one roof. It's early days at the moment, but we'll let you know more about it as we go along!

You can stay up to date and interact with us in our Matrix and Discord channel, feel free to join us in the conversation!

Self hosting Stringer, the anti-social RSS reader

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What is Stringer?

If you're like me, I just want to consume my RSS. I don't want to see any adverts, any fancy recommendations or have a subscription fee.

I also want an RSS reader that is pleasant to use. I have dabbled with TinyTinyRSS and FreshRSS.

But for me, the UI isn't that great. I keep coming back to Stringer, and I think it deserves some more love.

Setting up Stringer

I'm going to talk through how to set up Stringer on either bare metal or Docker. You can choose your own adventure by selecting one of the links below!

Self hosting your own Matrix server on a Raspberry Pi (Updated 2022)

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What is Matrix?

"Matrix is an open source project that publishes the Matrix open standard for secure, decentralised, real-time communication, and its Apache licensed reference implementations. Maintained by the non-profit Matrix.org Foundation, we aim to create an open platform which is as independent, vibrant and evolving as the Web itself... but for communication. As of June 2019, Matrix is out of beta, and the protocol is fully suitable for production usage." ~ matrix.org

Disclaimer: Although it is entirely possible to host a Synapse server on a Raspberry Pi, Synapse is a huge resource hog and will struggle with connecting to multiple federated servers. If however, you are looking to use Matrix bridging, or running your own self-hosted chat between friends and family, the Raspberry Pi will do just fine!

Issue #17 • New Horizons

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #17

Things have been quiet here, both of us have had far too many distractions this past month! Having said that, here is our first monthly dose of all things self hosting!

Because of how busy we've been we haven't been able to publish any new articles, but we do have some things in the works so watch this space! we're doing a write up on how to set up a Matrix server on a Raspberry Pi and we're also hoping to do some weird things with Docker...

Issue #16 • We're moving to monthly

Mon, 31 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #16

Happy Monday! I have some news, I don't feel like I am producing quality when I write-up the Weekly Newsletter. Therefore, James and I have decided to run the Newsletter on a Monthly basis. Hopefully you don't mind.

Anyway, this'll be the last weekly newsletter. There should also be some main posts coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for understanding

Issue #15 • Tell me when I suck

Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #15

Happy Monday! Here's your weekly dose of self-hosting goodies!

Thanks!

🎯 Top posts from our favourite blogs

Conflating Privacy & Anonymity: A Layperson’s Perspective | Nicholas Danes

Nicholas Danes

Tell me when I suck, you don’t have to choose your words carefully | Marko Zivanovic

I wrote this so I can share it with all the people I’ll be working with in the future.

Marko ZivanovicMarko Saric

Prevent Windows from Sleeping

I have a few processes on my Windows gaming PC that are critical but sometimes get impacted over night as Windows tells my beloved machine to tone it down. My machine has the necessary cooling so I’m happy to let the processes do their work. There is a setting in the UI which allows you …

David Walsh BlogDavid Walsh

Is Windows Unstable? Here Are My Thoughts - Kev Quirk

I hear lots of people in the Linux community say that Windows is really unstable, but how unstable is Windows really? I share my thoughts.

Kev Quirk

Completely Self-Hosting Bitwarden Password Manager (Updated 2021)

This article will cover setting up your own self-hosted Bitwarden instance with Docker and configuring ngnix to allow for public exposure for cross device access to your vault.

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

Setting up a Valheim server using Docker

I’m going to talk through how to host a Valheim server on a docker image. This will enable you to set up a permanent server for all your friends to enjoy, 24/7.

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

Setting up Focalboard - A self-hosted alternative to Trello and Notion

Focalboard is a self-hosted alternative to tools such as Notion or Trello which you can run on your own instance. Focalboard helps with tracking and organising your own work, as well as across a team.

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

How to completely self-host Standard Notes (Updated 2021)

This is a tutorial on how to self-host Standard Notes, for security, privacy and control of data

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

💰 Want to support The Self-Hosting Blog?

Issue #14 • Are your services running?

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #14

Happy Monday! Here's your weekly dose of self-hosting goodies!

Have you ever thought about being notified when or if your services go down? Shukuri Adams has... They have developed a low resource app which allows you to be notified via Email or Slack (more coming soon) when any of your services are having some trouble.

arewedown is a simple up-time monitoring system and dashboard. It is intended for the self-hosting user (who runs multiple services/networked devices internally) who doesn't want the hassle of setting up a complex enterprise-level monitoring system. Written in NodeJS.

Issue #13 • Switching to iPhone from Android

Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #13

Happy Monday! Here's your weekly dose of self-hosting goodies!

It's been quite a slow week in the self-hosting world, so I don't have that much for you. However, have you checked out our previous posts? They're all available here.

There's a post down in our 'top posts' section which talks about the pro's and con's of switching to iPhone from Android. I had a similar experience a couple of years ago which I wrote about here.

Issue #12 • Save time by using the Raspberry Pi Imager's hidden feature

Mon, 03 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #12

Happy Monday! Here's your weekly dose of self-hosting goodies!

First up, let me tell you about a huge time saver that I have recently found out about. We all know and love the Raspberry Pi Imager.

We can quickly download a multitude of images direct from the application, without having to dig through the internet for the latest version of Ubuntu Server.

It's pretty awesome. Now, what's this time saver?

Issue #11 • Free tunnels from Cloudflare

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #11

Happy Monday! Here's your weekly dose of self-hosting goodies!

🎯 Top posts from our favourite bloggers

A Boring Announcement: Free Tunnels for Everyone

Argo Tunnel has been priced based on bandwidth consumption as part of Argo Smart Routing, Cloudflare’s traffic acceleration feature. Starting today, we’re excited to announce that any organization can use the secure, outbound-only connection feature of the product at no cost.

The Cloudflare BlogAbe Carryl

gravitl/netmaker

Netmaker makes networks. Netmaker makes networking easy, fast, and secure across all environments. - gravitl/netmaker

GitHubgravitl

Autorestic | autorestic

autorestic

Completely Self-Hosting Bitwarden Password Manager (Updated 2021)

This article will cover setting up your own self-hosted Bitwarden instance with Docker and configuring ngnix to allow for public exposure for cross device access to your vault.

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

Setting up a Valheim server using Docker

I’m going to talk through how to host a Valheim server on a docker image. This will enable you to set up a permanent server for all your friends to enjoy, 24/7.

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

Setting up Focalboard - A self-hosted alternative to Trello and Notion

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

How to completely self-host Standard Notes (Updated 2021)

This is a tutorial on how to self-host Standard Notes, for security, privacy and control of data

The Self-Hosting BlogEd Leeman

💰 Want to support The Self-Hosting Blog?

Issue #10 • IP Masquerading and server notifications

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #10

Happy Monday!

There's not a lot to report on this week, make sure to check out the posts from our favourite bloggers though! The top post from Inlets raises an interesting way of having a public static IP address without needing to pay your ISP for the pleasure. This can also be achieved for free using IP Masquerading, which I'm going to have a look into for my personal setup.

Issue #9 • Obfuscate your online identity with an email alias

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #9

Happy Monday!

In this weeks' issue, I'm going to talk a little about setting up SimpleLogin, we'll be doing a full tutorial post in the future but this is more to make you aware of the service and how it can protect you.

SimpleLogin allows you to protect your privacy by acting as an anonymising middleman between a service and your inbox. Using SimpleLogin allows you to defend yourself against spam, phishing and data breaches.

Issue #8 • De-Google! Beat the YouTube algorithm, follow your subscriptions with RSS.

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #8

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend!

I'm going to talk to you about adding your YouTube subscriptions as RSS feeds. You may have noticed while viewing your favourite YouTube content creators, that they ask you to "subscribe and click the bell icon" to be notified when they upload.

This is because YouTube is in control of whether their content gets shown to you. Have you ever missed an upload because you didn't know that it existed?

Issue #7 • Don't underestimate the power of a Raspberry Pi 4

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #7

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend!

This week, we learned that we should never underestimate the power of a Raspberry Pi 4. u/Swamp7hing over at r/selfhosted has shown us their Homer Dashboard displaying all their services running on their Raspberry Pi 4.

Find out more below!

Finally done setting up my RPi4 Homer server dashboard! from selfhosted

Self-hosting Papercups.io - Open-source live customer chat with Slack integration!

Papercups is an opensource self-hosted chat window that you can add to your site to interact with your visitors instantly. Papercups gives you the ability to reply directly from Slack or using their built-in messenger.

Self-hosting Papercups.io - Open-source live customer chat with Slack integration!

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sponsored Post

Papercups.io

Papercups is an opensource self-hosted chat window that you can add to your site to interact with your visitors instantly. Papercups gives you the ability to reply directly from Slack or using their built-in messenger.

Papercups gives you the freedom to customise your chat windows to fit your branding, show whether you have representatives online to help your customers. A feature-rich dashboard with all the analytics data you'll need. Papercups even has screen sharing built-in, for when it's just easier to show something that isn't working. It's super easy to install, as you'll see in just a minute.

Issue #6 • The self-hosted alternative to Trello and Notion

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #6

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend!

Focalboard has taken the internet by storm this week, introducing itself as an open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana. We have written a post about how you can set up your own instance to have a play around and see what all the fuss is about.

It's very early days for Focalboard, but what they have so far looks really promising.

Setting up Focalboard - A self-hosted alternative to Trello and Notion

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Focalboard

Focalboard is a self-hosted open-source alternative to tools such as Notion or Trello which you can run on your own instance. Focalboard helps with tracking and organising your own work, as well as across a team.

Focalboard is currently in early-access beta, so this post may change over time. We'll try out best to update our tutorial as the project becomes more mature.

You can read more on Focalboard on their site https://www.focalboard.com.

In this tutorial, we're going to be setting up the Focalboard Personal Server, which can be installed on a Ubuntu server to be used within a team either locally, or exposed as a public endpoint using Nginx.

Host your static blog for free with the Digital Ocean App Platform

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sponsored Post

Digital Ocean

What is Digital Ocean's App Platform?

Digital Ocean has introduced a new product called App Platform which allows developers to quickly and easily build, deploy and scale apps. Digital Ocean will manage the solution for you, which means that the infrastructure, HTTPS, CDN and DNS routing is all done for you. This is awesome as it makes deploying apps simple.

With Digital Ocean's App Platform, there is also the offer to host 3 static sites for free using their Starter pricing structure.

Issue #5 • Secure, decentralized communication

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #5

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend!

We've joined Matrix! An open network for secure, decentralized communication.

Join our official Self-Hosting Blog chat room to stay up to date with the latest in Self-Hosting! Find us here

We're also on Discord! Find us here

We're now Portainer community leaders!

Good news! We're now Portainer community leaders, we're super excited to be a part of the community and we can't wait to show you all the latest features from Portainer as well as how to utilise the current toolset to the fullest extent.

Completely Self-Hosting Plausible.io. A privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sponsored Post

What is Plausible?

Plausible is a lightweight, ethical, open-source and privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics collects more data than the average site owner needs to analyse their business, meaning that there is a lot of data being sent to the site owner that is unnecessary and will never be used. Plausible focuses only on the important web analytics data required for a business to get what it needs.

Issue #4 • Modern usability of the web

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #4

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend. We've had a very busy week so we've got tons of updates to share with you!

We came across https://grumpy.website/ this week, which has some very entertaining posts around the modern usability of the web.

There was one post that stuck out to me.

Many videogames use “click and hold” gesture instead of just “click” for dangerous/destructive operations. I wonder why it never made it to desktop UIs? Would be a great alternative to annoying “Are you sure” dialogs.

https://grumpy.website/post/0V0iwbQ31

Setting up a Kubernetes cluster (K3s) using Raspberry Pi's and Portainer

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“If bridge building were like programming, halfway through we’d find out that the far bank was now 50 meters farther out, that it was actually mud rather than granite, and that rather than building a footbridge we were instead building a road bridge.”

- Sam Newman, Building Microservices

The way we build software is changing. Instead of following a rigid specification we now build applications in a much more agile way which means we need to apply this mindset into our infrastructure and deployment process. Because of this almost all of the applications I build are containerised and sometimes split into modular parts. I work on most of my projects on my own which means having the ability to throw applications onto a server quickly with minimal set up is a huge plus for me.

We don't care who you are

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

At The Self-Hosting Blog, we are huge advocates for online privacy. We believe that you should never have to compromise your own privacy, just to use the internet.

Today, in an age where giving up your personal details to randomers on the web is way too common, we want to make a change and give you back your rights.

This is why we've decided that we can make better choices with this blog.

Issue #3 • We should be back to normal soon

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #3

Ed here at The Self-Hosting Blog. Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend. If you're in the UK, we've had some good news that everything should be back to normal by the 21st of June!

Where are you in the world? how are you finding the pandemic?

This week, Valheim hit 4 million players! which is absolutely nuts. There's been a huge visit increase in our Valheim server setup post. Have you tried out Valheim yet?

Setting up Portainer. Docker Container management made easy

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What is Portainer?

Portainer is a lightweight management UI that allows you to easily manage your Docker host or Kubernetes Clusters. Portainer is as simple to deploy as it is to use.

It allows anyone to deploy and manage containers without the need to write code.

Portainer can be used to set up and manage an environment, deploy applications, monitor application performance, and spot problems easily.

Portainer showing Docker container logs

Portainer, as a whole, is a self-hostable, open-source, container management system. Giving you complete visual control over your Docker instances. With Image management, restart policies and usage logs.

Setting up a Valheim server using Docker

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

If you haven't heard of Valheim, where have you been!

VALHEIM

3 million players in a matter of weeks.
Over 60,000 ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ reviews.
Officially entered the Steam’s Top 250 best-reviewed games of all time.
Currently 7th most streamed game on twitch, surpassing CS:GO, Dota 2, Minecraft and Rust
Over 20 million hours of gameplay already watched.

With Valheim rising, people are playing on servers with their friends. The problem is, someone needs to host their world.

Issue #2 • RIP LastPass...

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog

Ed here at The Self-Hosting Blog. I hope you're having a great week!

This week, LastPass announced that they are feature-locking their free tier. Forcing users to choose whether they want their passwords synced to their computer, or their mobile. Not both.

Since this announcement, there has been a boom in users switching over to open-source alternatives. Bitwarden has seen a huge increase.

Below is a post that I made in August 2020 on how to set up a self-hosted version of Bitwarden Password Manager.

Issue #1 • Self-Hosting, why?

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Self-Hosting Blog

Ed here at The Self-Hosting Blog. I hope you're having a great week!

Thanks so much for choosing to subscribe to our mailing list. I really hope we can provide you with some useful information.

I'm new to this, so I would love to hear any feedback that you have!

Feel free to get in touch, I'd love to chat with my subscribers. You can find my details on our contact page.

Why should you should spend the time, effort (and money) on self-hosting?

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Self-hosting. Why? What's the point? Everything you could use is already available online. Why should you spend the time and effort (and money) on self-hosting projects?

A question that I have asked myself many times.

Why should I spend the time setting up my own servers, complicating already seamless services, re-inventing the wheel?

I can just use Dropbox to host my files. Maybe Google Photos to automatically save all my pictures instantly when I capture them. How about my password manager? I can just use LastPass, it does everything for me. I don't even need to think about it.

Don't be alarmed!

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

bowlerdesign.tech is no more

I started this blog around 6 months ago as a place to share problems that I encountered whilst setting up my server in the loft.

I often found, on my quest for digital freedom, problems that were rather niche. I struggled to find solutions on Google.

Then began to see a theme, which made this blog gradually turn into a "self-hosting tutorial" blog.

Therefore..

theselfhostingblog.com is born

Thanks for sticking with me.

How to self-host PiHole, an internet advertising black hole

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This article will cover setting up your own self-hosted PiHole instance. Allowing you to run an internal DNS and block internet advertisements from reaching your machine.

What is PiHole?

PiHole offers Network-wide protection for internet advertisements. PiHole saves you from needing to install an Ad-blocker on each device that you own. PiHole even blocks in-app advertisements, so no longer, are your free-to-play games interrupted by those annoying adverts.

Home

1. Install a supported operating systemYou can run Pi-hole in a container, or deploy it directly to a supported operating system via our automated installer.D

Pi-hole logotelekrmor

PiHole can also improve your network performance, as advertisements are no longer being downloaded, every time you load up a new website.

10 of the BEST Self-hosting Subreddits To Follow (In 2021)

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Reddit is a wonderful place. It's full of like-minded people who share common interests. Rarely, a Subreddit does not exist.

I've been using Reddit for many years now, and I have curated a list of Subreddits that I believe cover all the countless issues I have encountered during my journey of self-hosting.

Here is what I believe is the best self-hosting Subreddits to join in 2021.

Archiving ProtonMail Emails on a headless Ubuntu instance

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I wanted to be able to store all of my ProtonMail emails locally for archival purposes, with the intention of running a local content search whenever I needed something retrieving.

Secure email: ProtonMail is free encrypted email.

ProtonMail is the world’s largest secure email service, developed by CERN and MIT scientists. We are open source and protected by Swiss privacy law

ProtonMail

I'm going to talk through my steps. There's plenty of tutorials out there for email services such as; Gmail, Hotmail etc. But not much around ProtonMail, especially using a headless instance.

Schiit Modi 2 - Fixing Windows not recognizing USB device

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry for the off-topic post, but this has been bugging me for months

Having recently purchased a Schiit Modi 2 from eBay, just to try out before commiting to something a little more expensive (and reliable).

The Modi 2 has some real issues with Windows 10, I belive the Modi 3 solves all of these issues.

There's an error message when plugging the Modi into Windows which is something like "USB device not recognized, the last USB device you connected to this computer malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it."

Self-hosting a Wireguard VPN, the easy way

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We're going to cover setting up a Wireguard VPN on your home server or cloud service. For secure remote access to your internal network, or a cheap, secure connection to a cloud service for some increased privacy when browsing online.
VPN's don't make you anonymous, there's a lot of stigma around this. Here's some helpful information if you want to read into this some more.

Setting up Wireguard, the easy way

I initially found setting up Wireguard confusing. Keys kept getting mixed up, I had no way of sending public keys between devices so that I could set up a client on my mobile device etc..

Completely Self-Hosting Bitwarden Password Manager (Updated 2022)

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This article will cover setting up your own self-hosted Bitwarden (Vaultwarden) instance with Docker and configuring ngnix to allow for public exposure for cross-device access to your vault.

What is Bitwarden?

Bitwarden is a free and open-source password management service that stores sensitive information such as website credentials in an encrypted vault. The Bitwarden platform offers a variety of client applications including a web interface, desktop applications, browser extensions, mobile apps, and a CLI.

How to completely self-host Standard Notes (Updated 2021)

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This article will cover setting up your own self-hosted Standard Notes instance and routing your instance through Nginx to allow for public exposure.
We'll also go over self-hosting Standard Notes Extensions to allow you to use extensions within your instance, such as a Markdown editor or secure spreadsheets

What is Standard Notes

Standard Notes is a free, open-source, and completely encrypted notes app. Being open-source, allows anyone to self-host their own Standard Notes server. This means that you own all of your data, on your server.

How to Set Up a Headless Syncthing Network

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Sponsored Post

Overview of Syncthing

Syncthing is a P2P (peer to peer) network that allows you to keep your files synchronised.

Syncthing aims to replace services such as: Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. By putting the user in control of their own data. Syncthing enables the user to set up multiple 'nodes' which can communicate with eachother.

A node can be, your personal computer, a work machine, a machine in another location or even a central server.

Configuring Vim for Node Js Development

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Using Vim

If you have come across this article, I probably don't need to explain why you need to use Vim as your development IDE.
You're probably here because you want to use Vim, but not sure how to integrate it into your current workflow.

I was in the same position a few months ago.

The easiest way is to install a vim extension into your current IDE of choice, this will bring all of the features of vim into your current workflow.
After getting used to Vim, in something that you're familiar with. You'll probably want to jump-ship into full-blown Vim.

My Self Hosted Note Syncing Journey Once Switching to Iphone

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Recently moving to the iPhone meant that I had to re-think and re-design my existing note-taking solution, this is a quick writeup of my journey.

My existing solution with Syncthing and VS Code

I loved my original solution. I had recently discovered Syncthing and got it set up on my self hosted solution in my loft. I had a central sync server and then a node on each of my devices, including my Huawei P20 Pro.

How to Route Nginx Through a Child Nginx Configuration - Jumpbox to Web Server Configuration

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I had a specific use case where I needed to run a docker instance, which had it's own configured nginx instance.

The issue was that I already use nginx on my JumpBox.

The fix was relatively self explanatory, but I wanted somewhere to write down the issues that I had to tackle.

The Solution

So the solution is just to point nginx (JumpBox) to the other nginx instance (docker).

Just to let you know, in my case, there are separate physical servers. The configuration will not differ, but you may need to internally expose ports between hosts if you have something like UFW installed. I have a tutorial here on how to set up UFW.

Setting Up UFW on Ubuntu Server

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is a program that allows you to internally control ports on your Linux instance. This gives you the ability to forward ports from your machine.

The common use of a firewall is to control the ports that have access from the outside world, for instance, running a website would need ports 80/443 exposed on your network to be able to route your site.

UFW is different, think of port forwarding, but between local instances. You can lock down internal exposure to port 22 (ssh) for example.

Posts on The Self-Hosting Blog

📰Issue #21 • We're back

📚 Some light reading

💰 Want to support The Self-Hosting Blog?

Issue #20 • Competition time & Fun with Ansible!

🎉Competition time!

Issue #19 • Production Wordpress migrations

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #19

Issue #18 • Blog expansion over to Forem

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #18

Self hosting Stringer, the anti-social RSS reader

What is Stringer?

Setting up Stringer

Self hosting your own Matrix server on a Raspberry Pi (Updated 2022)

What is Matrix?

Issue #17 • New Horizons

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #17

Issue #16 • We're moving to monthly

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #16

Issue #15 • Tell me when I suck

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #15

🎯 Top posts from our favourite blogs

📈 Our popular posts last week!

💰 Want to support The Self-Hosting Blog?

Issue #14 • Are your services running?

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #14

Issue #13 • Switching to iPhone from Android

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #13

Issue #12 • Save time by using the Raspberry Pi Imager's hidden feature

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #12

Issue #11 • Free tunnels from Cloudflare

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #11

🎯 Top posts from our favourite bloggers

📈 Our popular posts last week!

💰 Want to support The Self-Hosting Blog?

Issue #10 • IP Masquerading and server notifications

📰 The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #10

Issue #9 • Obfuscate your online identity with an email alias

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #9

Issue #8 • De-Google! Beat the YouTube algorithm, follow your subscriptions with RSS.

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #8

Issue #7 • Don't underestimate the power of a Raspberry Pi 4

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #7

Self-hosting Papercups.io - Open-source live customer chat with Slack integration!

Self-hosting Papercups.io - Open-source live customer chat with Slack integration!

Papercups.io

Issue #6 • The self-hosted alternative to Trello and Notion

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #6

Setting up Focalboard - A self-hosted alternative to Trello and Notion

Focalboard

Host your static blog for free with the Digital Ocean App Platform

Digital Ocean

What is Digital Ocean's App Platform?

Issue #5 • Secure, decentralized communication

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #5

We're now Portainer community leaders!

Completely Self-Hosting Plausible.io. A privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics

What is Plausible?

Google Analytics

Issue #4 • Modern usability of the web

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #4

Setting up a Kubernetes cluster (K3s) using Raspberry Pi's and Portainer

We don't care who you are

Issue #3 • We should be back to normal soon

The Self-Hosting Blog • Issue #3

Setting up Portainer. Docker Container management made easy

What is Portainer?

Setting up a Valheim server using Docker

Issue #2 • RIP LastPass...

The Self-Hosting Blog

Issue #1 • Self-Hosting, why?

The Self-Hosting Blog

Why should you should spend the time, effort (and money) on self-hosting?

Don't be alarmed!

bowlerdesign.tech is no more

theselfhostingblog.com is born

How to self-host PiHole, an internet advertising black hole

What is PiHole?

10 of the BEST Self-hosting Subreddits To Follow (In 2021)

Introduction