I am somewhat late into the Linux-verse (three years in now) and want to move into self-hosting to do two things:

  1. Host my own Jitsi server and sessions. (or any other open source solution)

  2. Host my own solution to privately and securely share photographs of my kids and life here with my family abroad.

At some point, I want to host my own little static-website about myself which should “replace” having to give people a LinkedIn account or something.

The thing is, I know nothing about owning domains, etc. I have never done this before. I have been lurking around this forum to learn some of the basics, but would really like a more tailored reply (is possible). I am working in Europe.

  1. Which computer should I use? I want to host everything on my computer at home. I don’t want to go the VPS route.

  2. Where can I buy an inexpensive domain(s)? I assume I only need one.

  3. What other things do I need to consider? My current broadband is IPv4 only.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•8 months ago

    Hi! I’m quite new to self-hosting as well. Started about a month ago. I bought this Mini PC while it was on discount, but in general, any PC with Intel N100 should be cheap and good enough.

    I bought my domain on Namecheap, and I use Cloudflared to expose my self-hosted service with the domain I bought. More on Cloudflared here.

    I’m currently using the Mini PC to host a media server, personal notes app, a Minecraft server, and a link preservation software. I currently don’t have a photo storage service set up, because most of my storage are already used for my movies on the media server.

    However, I’ve been looking into the options for a self-hosted photo storage service. Others have mentioned Nextcloud and Immich, and they look great. I also found Ente which I might also give a try once I have upgraded my storage.