What Are The Benefits of Having Your Own Server?
While building your own server you will learn new things about computers, networking, ssh, web, coding, etc. You will have your own privacy. And most importantly you will have fun building it all out. You can even share it’s awesome features with your buddies.
Ask yourself these questions:
Are you tired of everyone spying on you? Get your own server.
Are you tired of ads? Get your own server.
Are you tired of not having control over your files on the cloud? Get your own server.
Are you tired of Github using your private repos to make their AI smart? Get your own server.
Are you tired of paying big corporations for hosting your own website and your hobby projects? Get your own server.
There are lots and lots of more reasons why its a good idea to invest in your own server and please for the love of god set it up yourself. Don’t get some “expert” to do it for you. Go out there and learn this stuff. It will help you immensely, trust me.
Do Even You Need Your Own Server?
Short answer, Yes! Every one and their mom needs a server. If you’re at least a little bit interested in computers. Maybe you’re starting to learn to code or you just want to understand how things work on a bit of a deeper level then you should go and set up your own server. It’s really not that difficult.
What Hardware Should I get?
To get started in the world of hosting your own server, you should first get the classic Raspberry Pi. I have the Raspberry Pi 4 model B 8GB but any raspberry pi will do really.
What’s great about Raspberry Pi is that its power consumption is really minimal. Over a year of running the pi you will pay at most $5 – $10 and that’s it. That’s what it takes to run your own server. It’s literally nothing compared to what these crazy cloud providers charge, plus you own all the infrastructure yourself.
And it’s easy to upgrade if you need to and of course there are no issues migrating your code and data, you literally have access to the hardware of the server in your own room. Just wonderful as it was years ago and always should be, self hosting forever!
What I have Running On My Server
My own applications written in NestJS and React. But in simpler terms you can run any application on here. It’s quite powerful.
Adguard to get rid of ads. This wonderful piece of tech will create your own DNS service and every time it comes across an ad it will throw it in the garbage. 100% better than Adblock.
SearXNG is a super powerful search engine, no more tracking of my searches google.
Miniflux is an amazing RSS feed viewer. There are no ads, no limits on how many articles/news it displays. Pure and simple RSS feed, just what you need. Did you know you can even add youtube channel into your RSS feed, so you never miss out when your favorite channel posts a video? It’ll never get hidden by the algorithm again. Cool right?
Git, yes indeed I have my very own git setup on my server with SSH keys and everything. So only I can access my code stored on there.
My own Cloud Storage, I have an external SSD connected to my raspberry pi and so whenever I want to I can access my files.
Filebrowser is a very simple and basic file browser that’s accessible from your web browser. It has a minimalistic database but just for storing users and settings data. No real data is stored here, anywhere you point it to it will show files in that folder. Pretty good for viewing photos, but doesn’t support apples HEIC format.
You can also add your own copy of the Wikipedia, TED talks and lots more using Kiwix. In a way you have your own internet stored up on your server.
You can use it for notifications or some cron job, maybe you need to back up your db every day or some you you need to run some task repeatedly but can’t because your PC is not always on. Well with your own server you can do that! That baby is up even when you sleep. 😌
I would also use my raspberry pi to host my website that you’re currently on, but I have already paid for Hostinger for 3 years, so it’s staying up there for a long time.
Conclusion
It’s just amazing how many cool things you can do, once you have your own server. The possibilities are endless. Yes it can be a pain to set it all up. But once it’s up and going and you have it setup so that even when the power goes out or the internet is out for a while, the server restarts all your services and it’s back up running without you lifting a finger. That feeling is amazing, just wonderful. And you can always add new features to it as you come up with more ideas to have on your server.
