I’ve been wanting to get into self hosting for a long time and messed about a bit with setting up a nextcloud. But while I am reasonably well versed in linux and programming all things to do with the internet are quite confusing and mostly after reading blogposts and the like I am feel like I am missing so much knowldedge. From why people use traefik, how and why to use docker containers, what settings to change on the router, how to connect and setup the domain, and probably most importantly how to do this safely. Is there a good book or site that explains these more basic things?
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Start small and basic. Pick a service you want to host and then decide how you want to access it and ask questions. Over time it won’t seem so insurmountable.
If you have a bunch of questions list them and we will do oir best to answer them.
Like 10 years ago, I got started by doing this project:
In general, I’d recommend ANY BSD documentation or guides, they’re all written by knowledgeable ppl who are also likely educators in CS departments. Also, I’d recommend actually doing a project. Reading is useful and IMO the doing is much more effective.
No, there is not one resource for all of these things. Any guide that takes you end to end setting up one service is going to omit a lot of important context. I would research each step individually.
Cisco’s CCNA exam, I think, covers a lot of ground. Although, homelab specific knowlegde, is best gained by building stuff and getting your hands dirty, so to speak, in my opinion.
I mean, there’s literal full step by step guides on youtube on how to start hosting and exposing services locally on a home server to the world, just look for “how to self host” or “home server guide” and you can learn alot of the basics that way. You don’t really need to learn all of networking, unless you want to.
Adding the security basics, since nobody listed them yet:
- A firewall with default deny, then open only what you need. A simple one such as ufw is fine.
- Install CrowdSec or fail2ban early. Within a day you will see how much junk hits any public server.
- Reach SSH and admin pages over a private network (Tailscale or WireGuard) instead of exposing them.
- Read your reverse proxy access log for a week. It teaches you more about how the internet really behaves than most courses.
None of it has to be perfect on day one, but it is much easier to build in from the start.
