I’ve been a Software Engineering Student for 2 years now. I understand networks and whatnot at a theoretical level to some degree.
I’ve developed applications and hosted them through docker on Google Cloud for school projects.
I’ve tinkered with my router, port forwarded video game servers and hosted Discord bots for a few years (familiar with Websockets and IP/NAT/WAN and whatnot)
Yet I’ve been trying to improve my setup now that my old laptop has become my homelab and everything I try to do is so daunting.
Reverse proxy, VPN, Cloudfare bullshit, and so many more things get thrown around so much in this sub and other resources, yet I can barely find info on HOW to set up this things. Most blogs and articles I find are about what they are which I already know. And the few that actually explain how to set it up are just throwing so many more concepts at me that I can’t keep up.
Why is self-hosting so daunting? I feel like even though I understand how many of these things work I can’t get anything actually running!
The things of “how to set up” are usually covered by software’s documentation, further supplemented by googling certain specific questions and going on various forums. Never just use the first page you find but crossreference information as well.
Having gone into self-hosting as a hobby with the intention of supplementing knowledge in my career path (currently still studying), it can become quite daunting quite fast, especially if you try looking at a big picture, rather than taking it step-by-step. The best thing to do would be to follow a tutorial within the documentation of something you’re trying to host, then expanding per step as far as dependencies goes, and then go from there. Compartmentalizing is a very effective way to not get lost.