Recent content on Alwyn Soh | Blog
FoodieTrack is a Telegram-based meal tracker built to make logging meals quick, simple, and effortless. 
 
 🌐 https://foodietrack.com 
 🤖 https://foodietrack.app 
 
 The Problem 
 Most meal tracking apps have one thing in common: they ask you to do too much. 
 
 Open the app. 
 Wait for it to load. 
 Search for the food. 
 Choose the correct entry.…
OpenClaw is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own machine, connects to messaging platforms, and can automate tasks, check emails, manage calendars, and more. Unlike cloud-based AI assistants, OpenClaw runs locally — giving you control over your data and flexibility in how your AI assistant behaves. 
 In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up OpenClaw on a Windows…
Your Linux VPS is probably one of your most exposed assets. It’s constantly scanned, probed, and targeted by bots running brute force attacks on port 22. In this guide, I’ll show you how to restrict SSH on your Linux VPS so it’s only accessible via Tailscale — keeping port 22 closed to the public internet. 
 
 🧰 What You’ll Need 
 
 A Linux VPS running…
Exposing SSH directly to the internet is risky. Even with a strong password or key-based auth, brute force attacks are constant. In this guide, I’ll show you how to restrict SSH on your Synology NAS so it’s only accessible via Tailscale — keeping port 22 closed to the public internet. 
 
 🧰 What You’ll Need 
 
 A Synology NAS running DSM 7+ (or DSM 6) 
…
Both Tailscale and Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared) offer free tiers that are popular among self-hosters and home lab enthusiasts. But they work differently under the hood, and each has its strengths. In this guide, I’ll break down the key differences so you can pick the right tool for your setup. 
 
 🧰 What You’ll Need 
 
 A service or device you want to expose…
Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) is a free, open-source reverse proxy tool with a powerful web interface. It lets you expose your self-hosted services to the internet with free automatic SSL certificates — without needing to know Nginx configuration syntax. 
 In this guide, I’ll walk you through installing Nginx Proxy Manager on your Synology NAS using Docker. 
 
 🧰 What You’ll…
IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) keeps your email synced across all your devices. Read an email on your phone? It’ll show as read on your laptop. Delete something? Gone everywhere. It’s the superior choice for anyone using multiple devices. 
 In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up IMAP in Microsoft Outlook on both Windows and macOS. 
 
 🧰 What…
Sometimes you need to take a service offline — upgrades, migrations, or just fixing the mess you accidentally deployed at 2 AM. Instead of letting users hit a broken site, you can drop in a lightweight maintenance page using a Cloudflare Worker. No servers, no Nginx rewrites, no duct tape. Just edge logic. 
 
 Why use a Worker? 
 
 Always on edge – served before any origin call, so…
Exposing services like Synology DSM, File Station, or Photos should never mean opening ports to the internet. In this guide, I’ll walk through setting up Cloudflare Tunnel on a Synology NAS the easy way — no port forwarding, no headaches. 
 
 🧰 What You’ll Need 
 
 A domain managed in Cloudflare 
 Cloudflare Zero Trust enabled (free tier works) 
 SSH and Docker access on…
Both Netlify and Cloudflare Pages are excellent platforms for deploying static sites. After testing both for my personal blog and projects, I chose Cloudflare — here’s why it won me over. 
 
 🧰 What You’ll Need 
 
 A domain (managed in Cloudflare recommended) 
 A static site generator (Hugo, Astro, etc.) 
 GitHub or GitLab repository for CI/CD 
 
 
…

 Purchases made on this page help support my site. I may earn a small commission when you purchase through links on our site. 
 Why would you need a functioning web browser in your Synology? Aren’t we already using a web browser when accessing the Synology? 
 Easy, at times you need a web browser which is on your LAN, maybe to manage local services when you’re remote.…
Pixelfed.SG instance is Live but Pixelfed is technically still a v0.
During our beta launch, we’ve taken the time to learn how Pixelfed ticks. And we are satisfied to go live. 
 We’ve been listed on Pixelfed.org ! 
 https://pixelfed.org/servers/41/pixelfed.sg 
 Servers listed are required to adhere to the Privacy Pledge: 
 
 No analytics or 3rd party trackers…
Backblaze combined with Cloudflare seems to make the most sense if you’re selfhosting, that’s because Cloudflare is Backblaze’s Bandwidth Alliance partner . 
What that means is that we can take advantage of Cloudflare’s performance and free data transfer between Backblaze B2 and Cloudflare. Mainly because of $0 Egress fees. 
 Now you’ll notice when accessing…
Ever since working on Mastodon.SG , I’ve noticed Pixelfed and it’s potential. So I’ve decided to selfhost another decentralized social platform. 
 Welcome Pixelfed🇸🇬! 
 Pixelfed.SG is hosted in Singapore and it serves as a replacement to Instagram. The difference is, privacy. Pixelfed will not dump ads on you. We will not collect & sell your information. 
 The…
Some still have lives in Twitter and find it hard to let go, they might want to keep followers from both sides updated as well. 
 There are tools like Moa and Crossposter . But these services are shutting down ever since Twitter decides to limit their API and start charging it. 
 Why not just “do it yourself” and use IFTTT ? IFTTT free plan allows you to create 2 apps. Which is…
Mastodon has just released v4.1.0 stable version and there are tons of features and fixes to it.
Here are some of the noteable features and fixes. 
 New Features: 
 
 Add option to make the landing page be /about even when trends are enabled 
 Add tootctl accounts prune , delete any remote account that is never interacted with local 
 Add support for importing/exporting…
Mastodon is very flexible and useful, there are plenty of APIs available to play around with. 
To make use of most of the APIs, you’ll need to generate a token and grant specific permissions to it. 
 Here’s how you do it: 
 
 
 Login to your Mastodon instance, ie. https://mastodon.sg 
 
 
 Go to Preference -> Development, click on New Application . 
…
WordPress is the easiest blogging platform to host, so why not selfhost and use your own domain without paying extra for that feature? 
 Synology has an existing package for WordPress, should you use that? Or what if you have more than 1 webpage to host? You might even consider using the new mulit-site feature on WordPress. 
Otherwise, here’s how you can set it up on Synology Docker.…
Guys at Tapbots has just released a new beta v1.0.2 (10200) for Ivory which has a whole slew of yummies! 
 What’s new: 
 
 Edit Profile. You can now edit your profile within the app by going to your account settings or from the profile tab. 
 Follow Request Actions. Private accounts can now approve or deny follow requests from the notifications tab. 
 “Read More” posts…
Ghost has recently started to support MySQL and dropped support for SQLite. 
 Here’s how you can set it up on Synology Docker. 
 Prerequisites 
 
 
 Go to Package Center and install Docker 
 
 
 Go to File stations and navigate to Docker folder 
 
 
 Create two folders, ghost-app and ghost-db 
 
 
 Open Docker on Synology and select…
Hosting your services from home? But ISP is providing Dynamic IP Address? 
 In my scenario, I’ll be using a Synology’s Task Scheduler and Cloudflare. 
 
 
 You’ll need to get all the details for the following variables 
 #Email associated with your Cloudflare account
 EMAIL=""
 #Global API Key
 KEY=""
 #Unique ID provided by Cloudflare
 ZONE_ID=""
 
…
While most guides focuses on installing WriteFreely on Ubuntu or Docker (docker-compose), I could not find one that simply uses Synology with Docker. 
 And here’s how you do it: 
 
 
 Install Docker for your Synology. 
 
 
 Search and download algernon/writefreely. 













 
 
 
 
 
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