A few years ago, I decided I wanted more control over my data. I was tired of wondering what Google knew about me, tired of cloud services getting breached, and tired of relying on companies that could shut down tomorrow and take my data with them. So I started self-hosting — not to be optimal, but to be in control. If you’re here, you might be thinking about doing the same. Maybe you’ve heard about self-hosting but feel overwhelmed by where to start. Maybe you think it requires a server closet full of equipment and a networking degree. It doesn’t.