I have done self hosting for a long time, and many of the aspects are very fun to me. Finding out what fits best for my project, fine tuning the configurations (or not, depending on how I feel about it), and setting everything up, hoping that I did everything right.
From git-sites to forums, from mail to integrations, I have a fair few projects in my portfolio. It’s not just about having full control, it’s also the fun of setting up systems and hosting them myself. By self hosting, I have full control over the system, but also full responsibility. This means that if something breaks, I have to fix it.
The joys
The joys about self hosting is the fun with setting up your own system, then sitting down and say “this is mine, I control this.”
There is also a lot to learn with self hosting. Setting up a server, maintaining it, configuring the software, running the software and more.
The horrors
Of course, with technology, there are a lot of horrors. Things might suddenly break, certificates might not be properly configured (or not included for the subdomain you’re setting up), something might be misconfigured (the oh-so fun HTTP 502 error), the server’s disk might be full and lots of other “fun” problems. Reading logs, deleting things, reinstalling, reinstalling, re-reinstalling, it’s all part of the fun of self hosting.
Some services are dead easy to set up; you just run a script or a binary and it’s all up and running. They can be very unfuzzy and accept pretty much everything you throw at it with no issue. My Git site is one of those. Gitea is very easy to set up, it’s only one binary and requires a database, and that’s pretty much it. My preferred choice of MySQL is also supported, so that makes it a lot easier.
I’ve been getting more into authentication, and so far I’ve been pretty much out of luck. The services I’ve set up have been quite fuzzy about the setup of the server and what it likes.
Discourse is what I like to call “the middle ground.” It’s easy to set up when using Docker, but has some annoyances with configs having to be made. However, once I got that set up, it’s been smooth sailing.
What I find to be the most fun part about self hosting is actually the more difficult services. Having to research how to set it up and debug why it’s not working is somewhat enjoyable. I see it as a learning experience, and I get a good understanding of how complex it may be. There is also a lot of fun working on my own server, dealing with maintenance and management.
Knowing what you’re doing is convenient, but there is a lot more to learn if you don’t know the system.