thehatfox

It’s worked well for me so far. I chose Homarr because it has a GUI for dashboard creation, I wanted the whole family to be able to use it and they aren’t all up to editing YAML etc.

I use Homarr and initially created a really complex dash, but I’ve since whittled it down to just the bare essentials as a homepage.

Links to my most used web pages and self hosted services, and a couple of vital metrics that I would need to act upon quickly.

For everything else I have Grafana dashboards I can dip into as I need to.

A VPS is going to have all the same problems as a local server in terms of inexperienced users, and will also add all the extra hassle of managing and paying for the VPS account.

I would say the best options for emergency access are local backups and documentation, which you already have. You could also consider keeping additional copies of essential passwords (like email accounts etc) in a simpler vault like Keepass. Or even physical copies written down in a security envelope in a safe.