I’ve been a Software Engineering Student for 2 years now. I understand networks and whatnot at a theoretical level to some degree.
I’ve developed applications and hosted them through docker on Google Cloud for school projects.
I’ve tinkered with my router, port forwarded video game servers and hosted Discord bots for a few years (familiar with Websockets and IP/NAT/WAN and whatnot)
Yet I’ve been trying to improve my setup now that my old laptop has become my homelab and everything I try to do is so daunting.
Reverse proxy, VPN, Cloudfare bullshit, and so many more things get thrown around so much in this sub and other resources, yet I can barely find info on HOW to set up this things. Most blogs and articles I find are about what they are which I already know. And the few that actually explain how to set it up are just throwing so many more concepts at me that I can’t keep up.
Why is self-hosting so daunting? I feel like even though I understand how many of these things work I can’t get anything actually running!
I strongly suggest to not only read articles on the internet but get decent books and read them carefully. It will fill in plenty of gaps you have now and in a blink of an eye self-hosting will become a smooth and fun experience.
I have been self hosting for like 20 years and I must say it has never been easier to bring up a service and make it secure as well.
Good network understanding is key, forget about IPv4 it’s dead. If you engineer new stuff, concentrate on IPv6. Also a good book or two about Linux, it’s the platform to go for the next decade. If you’re still hungry dive into containers and container orchestration.
Most importantly, keep experimenting. I’d say 80%+ of my empirical data comes from my own experience.
I’ve always struggled to find good books. And as a broke student in college, the ones I find are either too expensive or unavailable in my region.
It’s also highly illegal and actually prosecuted to do piracy where I live, so I don’t want to do that…