I want to self-host a bunch of things. Why? Let’s see here… techno-fascism, privacy disasters, tech companies randomly sunsetting things, enshittification spirals, etc… I’m tired of it. I want to run some stuff myself, own the data, and be happy with my tech.

Here’s some of the things I’m looking to run myself…

  • RSS
  • Read-It-Later / Bookmarks / Links
  • My Website (aspirationally)
  • Fediverse Account(s)
  • A Community Platform (to replace Discord)
  • Podcast
  • XMPP?

So for each of these technologies, here’s what specific platforms am I considering thus far… I am still researching my options here and will add to this list as I discover new alternatives. I also give a little reasoning as to why I’m looking for alternatives for each tech.

  • RSS: I use Feedly now which is ok. It doesn’t cost that much but there’s limitations on the amount of feeds I can subscribe to, even on the pro tier. Annoying. They’ve also had some not-so-great stuff in the news.
    • FreshRSS - This is probably what I’ll go with since I’ve heard good things about it.
  • Read-It-Later / Bookmarks / Links: Stupid Mozilla killed Pocket. So here I am…
  • Website: I have a static site. It’s been on GitHub pages forever. I like GitHub pages. It’s worked really well for nearly 6 years. What I don’t like is Microsoft. It’s high time I find a better place to stick my site.
  • Fediverse Account(s): My main Fedi account is on Masto.host. It’s been a great experience. I will honestly probably keep it there. My only gripe with them is that I have to use vanilla Masto which has the awful character limitation. My GtS instance however needs a new home.
  • Community Platform: I’ve had a “shellsharks” Discord for ages. It’s not terribly active, but I’ve kinda liked having it. I’m interested in creating a new place but not sure exactly what that would look like. Maybe it could be more of a forum, like with Discourse. Or perhaps it could be Discord-ey and I could use Matrix. Or maybe I’ll just set up shop in an existing Lemmy instance. TBD!
  • Podcast: My old Castopod (managed) instance needs a new home. (Not that I’m doing a great job keeping my podcast alive but w/e)

OK, so once I know what I want to self-host, I need to figure out how exactly to do it. This is where I’m in the beginner-iest of stages. I’ve not self-hosted much of anything before so I’m looking to understand the best way to do this for each of the things I’ve mentioned above. The list below is a bunch of toolinng and other resources/writeups related to this endeavour (in no particular order).

This is where you fine folks come in! What should I do? Any recommendations? Are there platforms you like? What’s your go-to strategies for self-hosting? Cloud? At-Home? What should I do!?

Feel free to email me, hit me up on Fedi, or contact me any of these other ways…