My Selfhosted Joruney

I started self-hosting in 2023. I've been fascinated by computers since I was a kid. I never owned one and used to visit my friend's house just to watch him use his. Sometimes I got to play games, but it always felt like something out of reach.

During college, I finally got a brand new Compaq laptop. It was a black beast with basic specs, the best we could afford back then. I used it every day—learning new things, playing games, watching movies, listening to music, and creating designs, posters, and videos. Our dorm room became a hangout spot where friends came to watch series, dance, laugh, and sometimes I played games while they watched (and sometimes the other way around, lol). That laptop taught me a lot—from software development to multimedia design and editing, even hardware repairs. I still have it today; it runs only on direct power since the battery is dead. It’s a keepsake that reminds me of my college days.

After starting my IT career, I became more responsible and budget-conscious. I never bought another personal laptop, but the idea of setting up a home lab kept popping into my mind. One lazy afternoon, while scrolling through my phone, a video about a home lab setup with a small Raspberry Pi caught my eye. I went down a rabbit hole, and before I knew it, $150 was gone from my account, and I had ordered a TrigKey Intel NUC on Amazon. The next few days were a spending spree on HDDs, enclosures, cables, UPS, and more. I had no idea about operating systems, virtualization, Docker, or self-hosting at first. But bit by bit, it started to make sense.

It felt overwhelming at first, but now it’s second nature to set up, edit, deploy, check security, and troubleshoot. There are plenty of basic guides out there, and some really good ones too, but not much in between. I want to fill that gap with my own experiences. In this section, I’ll share my self-hosted app installs, the problems I faced, how I solved them, what worked, what didn’t, what failed spectacularly, and what thrilled me. More to come.