Matt The Horwood

As a homelabber and systems admin, I would start with learning how to use Linux on the command line.

It’s all well and good looking at docker, but if you don’t know how to move about or edit on the command line. Your going to get stuck real quick.

Once your happy doing simple tasks on the command line, I would actually look at running something like wordpress on a pi or VPS. That will help you understand how to connect services together, and cement your basic command line knowledge.

Yeah, OVH do website hosting as well

I moved all my domains from Google to OVH, OVH have an API so you can get certs with certbot. You could also use the API to update records for a dynamic home broadband

I have stuff in new releases.io and also GitHub release RSS feeds in nextcloud, I then sit down once a week and see what needs an update. Reboot when required.

I nextcloud news (RSS) for that sort of thing, you can organise feeds into folders and see an unread list. There is even a mobile app to get whats on the server

I would recommend not using a mobile to edit a spreadsheet, I have tried and gave up as its less the ideal.

your running something on port 443 already, if its nginx thats still running kill it. If not, then found out what is running on port 443 and kill it use ss -nlp to find the process name

for some helpful config, the below is the logging config I have and logs have never been an issue.

You can even add 'logfile' => '/some/location/nextcloud.log', to get the logs in a different place

  'logtimezone' => 'UTC',
  'logdateformat' => 'Y-m-d H:i:s',
  'loglevel' => 2,
  'log_rotate_size' => 52428800,

I moved to Google workspace for email, yes I know it Google.

I have my home IP and dedi IP in the routing settings, then just use SMTP to Google and let them forward to me.

All servers have null mail installed and setup for Google, I also have docker containers with config if needed

You need a way to hand it a file for editing, nextcloud can do that

I use nginx as the internet facing proxy, write my own config and manage it with source control. Also use traefik in docker land with service labels to configure it

Im not sure I understand your issue, DNS is the magic that allows you to goto home.somedomain.com and get a webpage. But you still need to give DNS the location of the server, much like the contacts in your phone.

DDNS is how you have your home connection attached to a DNS record that is updated when the IP changes, see other comments.

Also once you understand how it all hangs together, you can do some really cool magic to make getting to your services easier

First off, backups of the configs any user data that you can’t torrent should the inevitable happen.

Then set time aside to do updates, I spend Wednesday evenings updating and improving my setup.

Then find a way to track update announcements, I use both an RSS reader and newrealeases.io to know when something I run gets an update

What I can tell you, working for a company hosting data for the UK NHS.

Is that hosting is easy, I have a very reliable homelab. I keep things up to date and make sure to secure things the best I can.

But security is hard, there are many things to secure. Blind spots you didn’t even know you had.

The bast way to look at security, it to start with secure and dial things back so that it works.

With let’s encrypt and DNS APIs, theres no excuse not to have a real certificate!

More so if you want to have that service interacte with other systems not your own

Yes you can use lemmy apps to access a self hosted instance, but you will need a real certificate for that to work.

A quick check of Lemmy.rip show it has a self signed certificate, thats not going to allow you to access it easily and my even stop federation from working.

You should be able to get a lets encrypt certificate very easily.

I have my home assistant check and also my nagios, better safe then sorry

Or a git repo and ansible/semaphore, thats how I manage my docker services. I have a git repo with all my configs and compose files (not in github, but my own server), then in semaphore I have a playbook to update a compose or swarm stack.

What you have missed is the ability to run what ever you need, self hosting is more then just backups and sync.

Some self hosting to self reliant, nextcloud can do way more then just file sync. For example I use it for calendar and contact sync, photo and file backup from my phone, an office suit, RSS server.

Your very welcome