Guides on The Self-Hosting Blog

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.