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self-hosting

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RSS is dead. Stop crying about Google Reader
2 months ago
- RSS is often nostalgically defended as a decentralized, anarchy-like web tool, but the average person does not care about algorithmic silencing, privacy, or paid reviews.
- Social feeds became profitable because they optimize for engagement with tracking and dark patterns, while RSS is 'too honest' for advertising with no tracking, profiling, or engagement optimization.
- Google Reader was killed in 2013 due to lack of profitability, not declining usage, as Feedly gained 3 million users after its announcement.
- Most people prefer easy doomscrolling over setting up RSS, but tools like yarr, rss-bridge, searxng, and AI integrations now make self-hosted RSS better and more private than ever.
Self-Hosting Turns Your Team into the Knowledge Base's Service Provider
2 months ago
- Self-hosting solves the location question but introduces ongoing operational challenges such as permission drift and backup recovery.
- Permissions must be regularly reviewed and updated as people change roles, temporary reviewers finish, or pages move; otherwise, unauthorized access persists.
- Page version history is critical for policy reviews, allowing comparison of current and past wording without relying on chat logs.
- Backup success is not verified until a full restore is tested, including both database and external attachments, to avoid gaps during recovery.
- Recovery rehearsals uncover missing credentials, undocumented steps, or incomplete files, preventing loss of access during an actual outage.
All Your Licensing Are Belong To Us^W You
2 months ago
- Keygen, a licensing-as-a-service platform, is now open source under the Elastic License 2.0 after 7 years of being closed source.
- Two self-hosted editions are introduced: Keygen CE (free, community edition) and Keygen EE (enterprise edition with advanced features, requires a license).
- The decision to open source was driven by market demand for self-hosting, reducing the bus-factor of a single founder, ensuring long-term continuity, building trust, deterring copycats, and meeting enterprise compliance needs.
- ELv2 was chosen over AGPLv3 to protect the business from being commoditized by well-funded competitors and to avoid the complexity of an open-core model.
- Keygen Cloud (SaaS) remains unchanged, and a migration path between Cloud and EE is being developed.
Self-hosting your Mastodon media with SeaweedFS
2 months ago
- Mastodon 4.5.0 introduces changes that may encourage self-hosting Fediverse communities.
- Media storage is a critical decision due to local caching, security, and privacy benefits.
- The author recommends self-hosted S3-compatible storage, specifically SeaweedFS for better performance with small files.
- Detailed setup steps include creating a FreeBSD jail, installing SeaweedFS, configuring buckets and users, and setting up an Nginx reverse proxy.
- Mastodon configuration involves setting S3_ENABLED and related variables in .env.prod to point to the SeaweedFS server.
Hosting an SSH Server
2 months ago
- Author wanted a remote server and used a spare laptop, home router, and free time.
- Installed an SSH server on the old laptop and modified the default configuration.
- Created an SSH key and copied it to the new computer for authentication.
- Forwarded port 666 on the router to port 666 on the server to allow external access.
- SSH worked successfully via IP address and port forwarding.
- Appendix includes tips for fixing networking on old laptops and specifying SSH ports more elegantly.
Why you should self-host your (vibecoded) app
2 months ago
- The author shares experience deploying over 50 services, eventually settling on self-hosting with Coolify on Hetzner VPSs for cost savings and ease.
- Cloud PaaS and serverless platforms have unpredictable pricing, with stories of unexpectedly high bills when traffic grows.
- Self-hosting offers freedom to choose your level of abstraction—from a simple Python script to Docker—without needing a system administrator degree.
- Coolify is an open-source self-hosted PaaS that provides one-click deployment, automatic SSL, reverse proxy, and notifications, making it user-friendly.
- Hetzner VPSs are significantly cheaper than alternatives like Digital Ocean, with similar performance, and offer a referral program with free credits.
- For most indie developers and startups, self-hosting is more cost-effective and sufficient; cloud scaling is only needed for extreme hypergrowth.
- The author recommends trying Coolify on Hetzner to quickly deploy apps, using Docker or one-click apps, and offers a premium guide for detailed steps.
How to self-host servers in your living room on static IPs
2 months ago
- A router is software running on hardware; any computer can be configured as a router.
- This guide shows how to obtain static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses using an L2TP tunnel from Andrews & Arnold Ltd (A&A), bypassing ISP restrictions like CGNAT.
- Set up a Debian/BSD machine with two Ethernet interfaces: one for WAN (connected to ISP) and one for LAN (hosting public subnet).
- Configure PPP over L2TP using xl2tpd and pppd, with static routes that force all traffic through the tunnel except for the A&A L2TP server.
- Enable packet forwarding, set up ifup/down scripts to add default routes, and use crontab or a loop to maintain the L2TP connection.
- No NAT or DHCP is used; hosts plug directly into the public network, requiring careful security considerations.
- The guide also covers DNS, MTU issues, reverse DNS (PTR records), and advises against running insecure devices on the network.
Self-host your mail server
2 months ago
- Self-hosting an email server is possible in 2026, despite warnings about blocklists and delivery issues; email is inherently open and decentralized.
- Home hosting requires a static IPv4 address (not blacklisted), no CGNAT, ability to set PTR records, and open ports (25, 143, 465, 587, 993); short internet outages (<40% downtime) are handled by sender retries.
- Recommended mailserver software includes docker-mailserver (easy Docker deployment), Stalwart, Mailcow, or manual setup; essential DNS records are SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, and PTR.
- Spam is effectively managed using rspamd with a local LLM (e.g., Gemma 4 12B) for email classification, providing Gmail-level filtering without relying on cloud services.
- Choose Thunderbird as a mail client; maintenance involves auto-updates, backups, and recovery testing. Self-hosting gives control and supports data sovereignty.
Kaizen #4: Overhauled Homelab
2 months ago
- The author overhauled their homelab after moving to a new house, transitioning from a Zimaboard with NixOS to a more powerful HPE DL380 Gen10 server running Debian.
- They improved networking by installing Ubiquiti UniFi gear (UCG Ultra, three U7 Lite access points) and running Ethernet cables throughout the house, including to the garage, overcoming challenges like moving the fiber inlet to the attic.
- The new setup includes services like Jellyfin for media, Immich for photos, Syncthing for file sync, qBittorrent for downloads, Docker management via Dokploy, and monitoring with Uptime Kuma, Beszel, and Grafana/Loki.
- The old Zimaboard will be repurposed as a backup machine with Restic, and the author plans to add a GPU for local LLMs and explore VLANs in the future.
The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin
2 months ago
- Plex began as a personal home media server tool but has shifted toward becoming an ad-supported streaming service, burying personal media under commercial content.
- Centralized authentication through Plex.tv creates a single point of failure, leading to lockouts during outages and raising data privacy concerns.
- Plex's feature development has been mixed: mobile downloads improved, but features like Watch Together were deprecated in favor of commercial-focused additions.
- Jellyfin offers a fully open-source, local alternative with no central accounts, no tracking, and free hardware transcoding, but its client apps are less polished and fragmented.
- Open-source projects like Jellyfin face challenges like maintainer burnout, unrealistic user expectations, and low-quality PRs; community support is crucial for their survival.
- Long-time users may still benefit from Plex's lifetime pass, especially with Plexamp saving on music subscriptions, but the recent price hike to $750 makes it hard to recommend for newcomers.
- A pragmatic approach is to start with Jellyfin today or run both Plex and Jellyfin in parallel to gradually transition as Jellyfin matures.
- Commercial pressures, subscription fatigue, and corporate 'enshittification' drive users toward open-source alternatives, but sustainable support is needed for these communities.
How to Host Your Own Email Server
2 months ago
- Hosting your own email server is feasible using a simple SMTP-only setup, bypassing IMAP and using existing email forwarding for receiving.
- Essential requirements include a domain name and a 24/7 server, preferably a fixed-IP VPS, avoiding home servers with dynamic IPs.
- Preparation involves unblocking port 25 from your hosting provider, checking IP reputation, and hardening server security.
- Configure DNS with an A record for your mail server hostname, then set up email forwarding via your domain registrar for receiving.
- Deploy a Postfix container (e.g., boky/postfix) with Docker, exposing only on localhost for security, and enable DKIM key auto-generation.
- Run a test email script; expect bounces initially, which will resolve after completing DNS and reputation configurations.
- Set up reverse DNS with your hosting provider to match your mail server hostname to its IP address, establishing a DNS loop.
- Add a DKIM TXT record using the public key from the container's generated key files, ensuring selector uniqueness if multiple DKIM records exist.
- Create an SPF TXT record with your server's IP and hard fail policy, merging with existing SPF records if necessary.
- Configure a DMARC TXT record with 'reject' policy and alignment modes, optionally enabling reporting via services like Postmark.
- Be patient as email servers build trust over time; use testing tools like Mail Tester and EasyDMARC to monitor deliverability and fix issues.
Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day
2 months ago
- Hardcore IndieWeb advocates for complete ownership and control of web content by hosting it directly from your own hard drive.
- The method involves authoring HTML content locally, previewing in a browser, and uploading to a web host, requiring only a text editor, file transfer tool, and a low-cost host like NearlyFreeSpeech.net at $0.01/day.
- Key website components like landing pages, blog posts, archives, and RSS feeds can be managed manually in HTML, offering full creative freedom and portability without dependencies on external services or subscriptions.
- This approach eliminates risks associated with third-party service failures, enhances content portability, and reconnects users with the simplicity and empowerment of early web publishing practices.
Using self-hosted Umami for iOS app analytics
2 months ago
- The author self-hosts Umami for analytics and developed umami-swift, a lightweight Swift package for iOS app analytics, avoiding third-party data collection and IDFA prompts.
- Apps are registered as websites in Umami with pseudo-domains (e.g., myapp.ios), allowing them to appear alongside websites in the dashboard with real app icons and similar visitor, visit, and view metrics.
- The Swift package sends data directly to Umami's /api/send and /api/batch endpoints, using a rotating in-memory UUID for visitor tracking without storing data on the device, maintaining privacy and compliance.
- Umami.screen() tracks app screens as pageviews, enabling detailed usage insights in the pages list, while Umami.track() logs custom events with optional data, all queued for offline reliability.
- Unlike web tracking, native apps bypass browser ad blockers as traffic is encrypted, though system-wide blockers could block the hostname if listed; self-hosted domains typically avoid block lists.
- A custom Cloudflare Worker serves app icons by replacing DuckDuckGo's favicon service, allowing real icons to display in Umami's dashboard for pseudo-domains, enhancing visual recognition.
A pure scheme web programming tool
2 months ago
- Goeteia is a Scheme-to-WebAssembly compiler that runs entirely in the browser, using a WebAssembly module (~70 KB gzipped) to recompile source code live.
- It features self-hosting compilation with byte-identical fixpoint verification, efficient runtime with unboxed fixnums and GC-managed data structures, and full Scheme syntax support including macros and hygiene.
- The system includes reactive web libraries for DOM, Three.js, and WebGL, direct-style RPC over HTTP/WebSocket, and supports R6RS-style modules with dead code elimination.
- Goeteia compiles to WebAssembly with GC and tail call support, compatible with modern browsers and runtimes like Node.js and wasmtime, and can be bootstrapped from Chez Scheme.
GitLab on FreeBSD
2 months ago
- Install and set up a GitLab server on FreeBSD using a Bhyve VM with a FreeBSD-15.1-RELEASE image.
- Configure PostgreSQL database with necessary extensions and adjust connection limits, then set up Redis with socket permissions and group access.
- Install and configure GitLab with specific worker settings, global Git configurations, asset compilation, and integration with Nginx for web access.
- Finalize setup with GitLab secret generation, service enabling, and accessing the web interface using the root account.
- Consider additional steps such as adding HTTPS certificates to Nginx for secure access.
Chatto is now Open Source
2 months ago
- Chatto is now open source and available for self-hosting, featuring a fast, compact group chat application similar to popular services but with enhanced privacy and encryption.
- The application supports easy self-hosting on multiple platforms, includes built-in voice and video calls with end-to-end encryption, and allows hosting multiple communities via separate processes.
- Chatto Cloud will soon enter public beta, offering paid hosting with European infrastructure, automatic scaling, backups, and no lock-in, while future updates focus on safety features and client polishing.
Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years
2 months ago
- Homegames is a free, open-source game platform for browser-based gaming and creation.
- Users can create games using a built-in editor, preview changes in real-time with multiplayer, manage assets, and optionally publish games.
- The platform is fully open-source under GPLv3, supports self-hosting for API and games, and emphasizes preservation even if the main site goes down.
- Developed as a solo side project since 2018, no account is needed to play games.
Convert your RSS feeds into a static website
3 months ago
- The author uses Liveboat to convert RSS subscriptions into a static website for easier access via browser, avoiding costly or complex RSS readers.
- Hosting on GitHub Pages provides free, low-maintenance access from any device, enhancing accessibility and eliminating the need for self-hosted servers or apps.
- Liveboat supports features like Newsboat integration, JSON data export, and filtering, though it lacks advanced functionalities of tools like FreshRSS, prioritizing simplicity for news consumption.

firstprev0next

self-hosting

RSS is dead. Stop crying about Google Reader

Self-Hosting Turns Your Team into the Knowledge Base's Service Provider

All Your Licensing Are Belong To Us^W You

Self-hosting your Mastodon media with SeaweedFS

Hosting an SSH Server

Why you should self-host your (vibecoded) app

How to self-host servers in your living room on static IPs

Self-host your mail server

Kaizen #4: Overhauled Homelab

The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin

How to Host Your Own Email Server

Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day

Using self-hosted Umami for iOS app analytics

A pure scheme web programming tool

GitLab on FreeBSD

Chatto is now Open Source

Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years

Convert your RSS feeds into a static website