I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc.
As I spend more time here, I realise that it is practically impossible; especially for a newcomer, to setup any any usable self hosted web service without relying on these corporate behemoths.
I wanted to have my own little static website and alongside that run Immich, but I find that without Cloudflare, Google, and AWS, I run the risk of getting DDOSed or hacked. Also, since the physical server will be hosted at my home (to avoid AWS), there is a serious risk of infecting all devices at home as well (currently reading about VLANS to avoid this).
Am I correct in thinking that avoiding these corporations is impossible (and make peace with this situation), or are there ways to circumvent these giants and still have a good experience self hosting and using web services, even as a newcomer (all without draining my pockets too much)?
Edit: I was working on a lot of misconceptions and still have a lot of learn. Thank you all for your answers.
DDoS and hacking are like taxes: you should be so lucky as to have to worry about them, because that means you’re wildly successful. Worry about getting there first because that’s the hard part.
You don’t have to be successful to get hit by bots scanning for known vulnerabilities in common software (e.g. Wordpress), but OP won’t have to worry about that if they keep everything up to date. However, this is also necessary when renting a VPN from said centralised services.
Well he specified static website, which rules out WP, but yes. If your host accepts posts (in the generic sense, not necessarily specifically the http verb POST) that raises tons of other questions, that frankly were already well addressed when I made my post.
A static website and Immich
Oops missed that
EDIT: And I missed Immich too