Comment on Yunohost frustrations of the beginner self hoster
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 1 year agoI’m serious about not wanting my email, files, publishing in the hands of corporate anymore, so I’m determined to get that running for myself. But I don’t want to sit in front of a screen all day to keep it running. I just want my two static professional websites for my clients to look at, and one or two small wikis that so far will not have more than two or three collaborators to start with.
What means ‘from scratch’ for you? Installing a linux distro and then telling it what to do over command line? And what exactly would I need to tell it to do? If you have any learning resources that would be great. I wonder if all those services that supposedly make the work easier just add more layers of complication in the end.
But yes, to get a vague idea about what the basics of server administration even are, yunohost is great! I’ve learned so much in a few days.
schmurian@lsmu.schmurian.xyz 1 year ago
I tried docker and stopped shortly after, because it was adding a layer of complexity I was not prepared for at the beginning. So I started with services I could run on bare metal with an OS like Ubuntu. For this a basic website for clients could be a good starter because it might only need a reverse proxy with php and a database. BUT this already opens questions around how secure is your server, which would be the first topic I would focus on, especially when hosting stuff for clients. Because if something happens to their data, you‘re responsible for it.
If it‘s just a static page like a portfolio, simple things like restricting access with firewalls ACLs and other basic server configurations might already be enough.
For hosting email, this topic still hasn‘t come to a mence for me, because it sounds like a lot of time and effort that goes into maintenance so I keep looking for hosted services with a good privacy approach.
What resources are you thinking of (there are many). Again, the best way of approaching it is take something with little dependencies and components that are well documented and easy to learn, so you can focus on how to monitor the host, and make sure you can administrate it fast and efficiently.
Later on you can add more complex services and learn about the new components.