Got some really cool projects from all the comments, some of the things on my side:
Miniflux: RSS Reader
Forgejo: Git forge
Mattermost: Chat and notifications
Shiori: Bookmark manager (PSA: I’m the current maintainer)
n8n: Automation
Node-Red: More automation (can’t decide between n8n and Node-Red)
ArchiveBox: Archival, though I rarely use it.
Syncthing relay: My own relay to use with the Syncthing file sync clients
I had other services that I let go because I didn’t use them and I’m currently moving my home services into a k3s cluster, since I use kubernetes at work is a good learning process.
I have been hosting my own websites on what I call The Server in the Cellar for 20 years. I know the trend is to use something like Docker with Cloudflare tunnels, but I use a straight install of Apache.
The OS has varied oveer the years, it started off with Windows 2000, then I used Fedora for a few years, and now it’s on Windows 10.
I recently digitized thousands of family photos and am looking at hosting something to display those. My leading contender for that is currently Piwigo bu that might change before I get round to installing something.
I am running it on PikaPods https://www.pikapods.com/ I have not done much with the instance other than dump my photos into it honestly. I do plan to look into it more as I venture more into some plans I have with photography, but as of now it is just another place for my photos to be.
I’m also currently testing Memos for daily usage, and considering running Paperless-ngx.
Update (02/12/2025): I decided not to continue with Memos and Paperless; I also stopped running Miniflux in favor of adding the News app to my Nextcloud server. Aside from the remaining services above, now I’m running:
My home box hosts Jellyfin. My VPS is predominantly just an email forwarder & IRC bouncer but also hosts some of my buggy pet projects including:
An image host
A notes/mindmapping webapp
A google reader clone
It used to host a lot more, but many of my tools and projects are essentially static web apps and so I moved most of those onto Netlify recently.
Pretty soon I plan to just build a proper little energy-efficient server to keep in my basement and use the VPS only for emails, but that has to wait for funds and space to become available
At the beginning of this month I received a hand-me-down server from my dad (along with a router a month prior), which kickstarted my self-hosting journey. A modest i3 processor, 300GB of HDD space and 12GB of RAM. Now I’m hosting the following on my homelab:
Jellyfin for streaming TV/Movies, has syncplay so I can watch with friends/family remotely.
they are so much fun to mess with. especially because they are super cheap if you keep an eye out. I traded an old mobo+cpu and power supply for the 2 I have.
This is definitely something I want to get into (I have an orange pi 4lts I would like to put to use somehow) but the port forwarding stuff… I just don’t know enough about it to be confident I’m not leaving huge security holes for ne’er-do-wells to waltz through. I had Yunohost installed with the Nextcloud plugin up and running save for the port forwarding and got stuck. I’m a little out of my depth, but hearing all your successes has got me excited to keep trying <3
Memos, single-user micro-blogging – I use it as a digital journal for collecting loosely organized thoughts that don’t seem to belong elsewhere.
Yarr, my feed reader – I’ve tried a bunch of feed readers over the years, like FreshRSS and Miniflux, but I currently prefer Yarr as it’s a single binary which uses sqlite; I can read entries from within the app and the UX just makes sense to me.
OpenWRT for proxying and related
Some services I might self-host in the future:
Soju, an IRC bouncer and thelounge, my favorite web IRC client (I might also opt for Gamja instead, it seems to require less resources to run)
Wallabag or Shiori – read-it-later and archiving
A bookmark manager such as linkding – I’m happy with the free plan of raindrop.io, but in case I run into vendor lock-in or similar issues
Hoping to move off Notion for my primary means of note-taking, possibly Joplin, or a Syncthing server to use it with Obsidian/Logseq
I don’t self-host my website because I want it to have better uptime and be better managed than my own server
In case anyone wishes to explore other options in addition to this thread, I recommend a related thread on Lobste.rs:
Currently self-hosting a few websites, personal back-end apps and a mediawiki instance for a niche research project. Plus qbittorrent, Jellyfin and slskd for when I need some… public domain media… A single raspberry pi 4 carries all my stuff.
I’ve somehow always been unlucky with completely bulletproof CG-NATs from ISPs, so I currently expose services to the internet via Cloudflare Tunnels (requires you to own a domain, though).
Never heard about Cloudflare Tunnels before, but that’s interesting. Seems like a good option for remote access to my self-hosted stuff if I’m out of the house. Wasn’t sure how I’d go about doing that when I’m on a dynamic IP. Does it have any advantages over standard dynamic DNS?
Yeah, it doesn’t require port forwarding and will work even if your CG-NAT blocks any external connections (as is my case). If you’re hosting a website, you can also use CF’s anti-AI protection, which is also free.
The downsides (over a dynamic DNS) is that you must point your entire domain to CF’s own DNS. They also seem to be slowly deprecating the command-line interface and encouraging you to use the CF web dashboard to manage the tunnels, which can be a little confusing at times… (phrasing edit)
FreshRSS - I use this mostly through the NetNewsWire client, but also wanted something that I could use on my e-ink tablet in the browser.
Jellyfin
Listmonk
Minecraft server - mostly used by the kids
Installed, but not really in use
Memos - super cute but I haven’t figured out what to use it for
Pixelfed - but I’m not really using it because my Instagram archive import isn’t working. I really wanted to import my personal instagram archive to my own server.
Immich - I installed this but haven’t decided how I would import photos, so it’s just sitting there empty
n8n - Installed, but haven’t figured out what I should do with it.
I’d like to try something in the chat server space, but I haven’t used Matrix or anything and would need to explore the options more.
The only thing I really “host” are a couple of websites, and a backup for my git repos (in addition to GitHub). I have a much of local music, but I just keep a copy of it on my local music, and a copy on my phone. I am working on a web-centric writing system that will have to get hosted eventually. And one day I need to sit down and figure out a photo hosting situation.
I’ve become more and more interested in self-hosting over the last couple of years. Even started to enjoy fiddling with “sys-admin” stuff!
Currently I’m only running an old Macbook Pro as a home server. I use it as network storage for all of my media (books, music) and running my static site generator. It’s also connected to a Nextcloud instance I run on a VPS, and backs up everything to local storage. Just in case!
I also use the Nextcloud sync as a way to communicate with my home server when I’m not at home. Various Python scripts watch various folders in my Nextcloud storage for textfiles containing “commands” — like for instance triggering a rebuild and and update of my website.
My website is hosted on an OpenBSD VM. I think my next “big” project will be to figure out how self-hosting my website from that old Macbook.
Longer term, I want to run a “proper” home server where I host my Nextcloud instance, a media server like Jellyfin, a web server. But no intentions of building a big hardware stack, so am doing some research on what “mini PCs” might be a good solution.
you can often find the micro versions of dell optiplex as well as lenovo’s tiny thinkcentre line that are a few generations old for a very nice price. it has been awhile since i’ve looked into them but i believe they tend to use lower power CPUs if power efficiency is something you’re interested in with regards to self-hosting on a home server
Thanks! I’ve looked at the Lenovo Tiny a little bit. It’s not clear to me what kind of room there is for upgrading storage and RAM on these machines though.
