I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc.
As I spend more time here, I realise that it is practically impossible; especially for a newcomer, to setup any any usable self hosted web service without relying on these corporate behemoths.
I wanted to have my own little static website and alongside that run Immich, but I find that without Cloudflare, Google, and AWS, I run the risk of getting DDOSed or hacked. Also, since the physical server will be hosted at my home (to avoid AWS), there is a serious risk of infecting all devices at home as well (currently reading about VLANS to avoid this).
Am I correct in thinking that avoiding these corporations is impossible (and make peace with this situation), or are there ways to circumvent these giants and still have a good experience self hosting and using web services, even as a newcomer (all without draining my pockets too much)?
Edit: I was working on a lot of misconceptions and still have a lot of learn. Thank you all for your answers.
Use any old computer you have lying around as a server. Use Tailscale to connect to it, and don’t open any ports in your home firewall. Congrats, you’re self-hosting and your risk is minimal.
Exactly what I do and works like a dream. Had a VPS and nginx to proxy domain to it but got rid of it because I really had no use for it, the Tailscale method worked so well.
I’ve been thinking of trying this (or using Caddy instead of nginx) so I could get Nextcloud running on an internal server but still have an external entry point (spousal approval) but after setting up the subdomain and then starting caddy and watching how many times that subdomain started to get scanned from various Ips all over the world, I figured eh that’s not a good plan. And I’m a nobody and don’t promote my domain anywhere.
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Use any old computer you have lying around as a server. Use Tailscale to connect to it, and don’t open any ports in your home firewall. Congrats, you’re self-hosting and your risk is minimal.
Exactly what I do and works like a dream. Had a VPS and nginx to proxy domain to it but got rid of it because I really had no use for it, the Tailscale method worked so well.
I’ve been thinking of trying this (or using Caddy instead of nginx) so I could get Nextcloud running on an internal server but still have an external entry point (spousal approval) but after setting up the subdomain and then starting caddy and watching how many times that subdomain started to get scanned from various Ips all over the world, I figured eh that’s not a good plan. And I’m a nobody and don’t promote my domain anywhere.