For me, it was PhotoPrism. I used to be an idiot, and used Google Photos as my gallery. I knew that it was terrible for privacy but was too lazy to do anything about it. When Google limited storage for free accounts, I started looking for alternatives. Tried out a lot of stuff, but ended up settling on PhotoPrism.

It does most things that I need, except for multiple user support (it’s there in the sponsored version now). It made me learn a bit about Docker. Eventually, I learned how to access it from outside of my home network over Cloudflare tunnel. I’m happy that I can send pics/albums to folks without sharing it to any third party. It’s as easy as sending a link.

Now I have around a dozen containers on a local mini pc, and a couple on a VPS. I still route most things through Cloudflare tunnels (lower latency), only the high bandwidth stuff like Jellyfin are routed through a wireguard tunnel through the VPS.

Anyway, how did you get into selfhosting? (The question is mostly meant for non-professionals. But if you’re a professional with something interesting to share, you’re welcome as well.)

  • Jardincorenda
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    51 year ago

    2003 I had a custom built full ATX tower with some parts from work running RAID for disk storage, and three cable capture cards. The box ran MythTV to record and serve shows DVR style to my modded Xbox that I had loaded XBMC on. From there I moved over to Plex for watching the recorded shows and ripped my DVD and VHS collection.