Your guide to self-hosting

Introduction

What is a home server?

A home server is a dedicated system within a private network that provides services such as file storage, application hosting, media streaming, or even web hosting. Think of it as a personal data center scaled down to meet the needs of a household or small team.

The flexibility of a home server allows you to self-host critical services—such as backups, development environments, or even private VPNs. But this autonomy comes with responsibility. Misconfiguration or poor security practices can open up your home network to significant vulnerabilities, especially if the server has internet-facing components.

In short: while a home server offers immense value, it demands deliberate and thoughtful security considerations.

Why prioritize security when setting up a home server?

Home servers often house sensitive and/or irreplaceable data, from family photos to proprietary code. They may also act as critical nodes in your digital infrastructure, offering services like DNS resolution, CI/CD pipelines, or private cloud storage.

Without proper security measures, these systems are vulnerable to common attack vectors, such as:

• Weak or default credentials allowing brute force attacks.
• Unpatched software that exposes known vulnerabilities.
• Open ports with inadequate access control, leading to remote exploitation.

For example, a misconfigured media server might unintentionally expose files to the public internet, or an insecure SSH setup could allow attackers to gain unauthorized access.

By applying principles such as least privilege, defense-in-depth, and continuous monitoring, you can significantly reduce risk. Practical measures include:

• Enforcing strong, unique passwords or using SSH keys for authentication.
• Restricting access via firewalls and VPNs.
• Keeping all software and operating systems up to date.
• Logging and monitoring traffic to detect unusual patterns.

TL;DR - Treat your home server as you would a production system.

Do not let this dissuade you, though. We are going to show you the ropes best we can, and you can always find us on Discord. We'll give you the best practices, point out the caveats, and share what we know.

If even that is too overwhelming, I hear ya. You can still support the cause by using services hosted by others, donating money to help offset costs, spreading the word, starting a blog, using RSS readers, etc. The internet needs rewilding.

We'll have two paths to follow. You can take one, the other, or both. There's the home branch, and the world at large branch.

The home branch is about things you can host for yourself and your household. A PiHole, for example. Or your own Git server. Or search engine. Or a media server. Or a password vault. Even your own local alternative to ChatGPT and Claude. The possibilities are endless, really.

The world at large branch is about things you can host for yourself and others. How about a private Instagram-like for you and your friends and family that doesn't try to sell you the latest and greatest products from famous retailers like amocrids.0TF3 and Xomplutxdoh.Y33F? Or a Twitter-like microblogging platform that's not Twitter? Or your own blog? Like, your own, your own. We'll cover that, too.

Again, we want to try and make this as accessible as possible, so, if you're a super-duper self-hosting shinobi, I don't think you'll get a whole lot of new information here. That being said, this is a collaborative endeavor: you can clone the git repository and submit your pull requests! We have a dedicated channel for this series over at our Discord, so come over and let's hang.

On the next episode, we'll talk about hardware selection for the home branch, purchasing and setting up a domain, and finding a good cloud provider for the world at large branch. Stay tuned!