Self hosted, independent, & free

A while back, I had been on a mission to self host my web presence, and I took steps to do so, and did so successfully for several years, thanks to Yunohost. Eventually though, I ended up having problems with Yunohost, and got frustrated and shutdown my server.

I am not saying it is because of Yunohost, it's truly an amazing project. I think it was more that I was way too ambitious, by trying to self host like ten different web apps on the same Debian based Yunohost instance. I had a website, podcast, searx, pleroma (fediverse), vpn, nextcloud, peertube, gitlab, yacy, and a couple of others I can't remember, all on the same server.

For one, this overwhelmed the limited resources on my cheap and shitty little vps. The second factor, is that I should have used containerization. Yunohost uses scripts to install everything, and sometimes when updating, some apps have issues with the scripts, they have conflicts, there are different versions of the same software installed, there can be dependency issues, etc. and it leads to problems.

I got caught in an endless cycle where every single time I had to update I was stressing because I knew something would fuck up, and then I would have to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what, and then try and fix it. It became too time consuming (I have a family, and a full time job, and hobbies, and a social life.), so I said fuck it and nuked my server.

I had to find a better way.

A new approach, a new tech stack

For the past year or two, I just didn't self host anything. When I first started using Yunohost, I did so, because I was not very technical from a sysadmin point of view. Yunohost allows you to just use a GUI and do one click installs for almost everything. While this certainly has advantages, it is not without its drawbacks.

When you are not technical, and rely on GUIs for everything, when something goes wrong, you are kind of up shit creek without a paddle. I learned a ton of technical nitty gritty details fixing problems that arose, but anyway you slice it, I was out of my depth. I had to find an easier way to self host a bunch of stuff without having so many maintenance headaches. After reading around online, and learning about docker, proxmox, kubernetes and other containerization methods, I finally decided I was ready to try self hosting again.

I am a big believer in keep it simple stupid, so I opted to go for a new setup utilizing docker, portainer, nginx proxy manager and a much beefier vps instance. I also recently got a new laptop, so my old desktop machine is going to now be the home server for my homelab. I am now ready to self host everything.

Currently, on my new vps, I am hosting this ghost blog, gitea, nextcloud, wirehole, portainer, nginx proxy manager, searxng, whoogle, along with watchtower to keep all the containers up to date. It's light, it's working flawless, and I am planning on adding a castpod instance, jitsi, a fediverse instance (akkoma, misskey, or rebased, still undecided), and possibly an ownstream instance, and maybe a forum like discourse.

For my home lab, I want to add a funkwhale instance for music streaming, a plex or jellfin server for streaming pirated movies/tv, a basicswap dex node, particl marketplace shop, a monero btcpay server, and all the foss social media front ends I can install. So, things like teddit, nitter, invidious, etc.

The way the internet was intended to be used

In our current era of censorship, deplatforming and other types of dystopian control online, the ability to self host your online presence is important. We are about to witness the rollout of online ID, cbdcs, social credit, and totalitarian financial deplatforming for posting "taboo" thought online.

The only way to overcome this and be a free and sovereign first class citizen online is to embrace self hosting, privacy tech, libre software, foss AI, 3d printed guns, and untraceable digital cash like monero, or similar privacy coins. You must carve out your own little barrio online with similar minded people or you will get swallowed up with the retards in the coming dystopian chinese great firewall and censorship push, complete with having your ponzi credits turned off for posting "extremism" on social media.

When the internet first began, it was imagined that people would host their own servers, and control the aspects that governed their presence online. Tragically, the learning curve was too steep, and people outsourced their online freedom to companies and services, which quickly became extremely predatory. These companies now feel they own you, your data, and are actively using all the data you create against you, for surveillance, control, and censorship.

By simply self hosting, controlling your own data, and not giving it to them, you are making a powerful revolutionary step to take back your freedom of thought and speech online. At the same time, you can use your self hosted platform to teach others how to stick it to these parasites, to get the ball rolling. Freedom is integral to the human spirit, and cannot be stopped.

I'll be documenting what I am up to on this blog from here on out. Stay tuned for my podcast coming soon, and more blog posts, as well. Peace, love, God bless, and fuck the commies trying to censor and deplatform us.

Donate Monero

85zkFgr375mYmwRHHWfVpv8NBgKXdTwFjPmoQcej8ufRSXsnrwCKtsmCs9bH7f6sdhKnwG4iKmBUDevsRZcgqw45KDYSePB