{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
  "title": "Self-Hosting on enumerator.dev",
  "icon": "<no value>",
  "home_page_url": "https://enumerator.dev/",
  "feed_url": "https://enumerator.dev/feed.json",
  "items": [
      {
        "id": "https://enumerator.dev/self-host-something/",
        "title": "If You Make Software, You Should Self-Host Something",
        "content_html": "<p>If you write software for your job, you probably write software that runs &ldquo;in the cloud&rdquo; somewhere that users access it over the internet.</p>\n<p>Do you know how all of this works?</p>\n<p>Probably not.</p>\n<p>I don&rsquo;t doubt your skills and knowledge as a developer. Software deployments are so complex, even small companies have teams dedicated to managing deployment and uptime.</p>\n<p>Self-hosting something&ndash;anything&ndash;can teach you a lot about how software runs on the web. Knowledge that is essential to being an <a href=\"/excellent-engineers/\">excellent engineer</a>.</p>\n<p>While your company might deploy with Kubernetes triggered by your git workflow, the fundamentals of how software runs on a computer aren&rsquo;t that different between a small self-hosted VPS and a k8s deployment.</p>\n<h2 id=\"what-should-you-self-host\">What Should You Self Host?</h2>\n<p>There are plenty of open source projects you can self-host these days. You can deploy any of these just to try them out and then tear down your server. Here are a few ideas:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Host your blog with a <a href=\"https://caddyserver.com\">Caddy</a> or NGINX server in front of it.</li>\n<li>Run a <a href=\"https://kan.bn\">kan</a> instance for your own todo list.</li>\n<li>Deploy a WordPress site on a VPS.</li>\n<li>Deploy a <a href=\"https://miniflux.app\">MiniFlux RSS reader</a> (you do use RSS, right?)</li>\n<li>Run your own <a href=\"https://apps.yunohost.org/app/vaultwarden\">password manager with Vaultwarden</a>.</li>\n<li>Run <a href=\"https://trivabble.org\">Trivabble</a>, a Scrabble-like game with no rules.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2 id=\"where-should-you-host\">Where Should You Host?</h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Your own computer.\n<ol>\n<li>Start here. You already have this computer! Edit your local <code>/etc/hosts</code> file to give yourself a fun domain that you can access from your local system. But you write software for the web, right? So you should deploy to a virtual private server.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>A Virtual Private Server\n<ol>\n<li>Find a provider of your choosing and deploy a small VPS. Get this connected to the internet and deploy an app. Find a free subdomain provider and connect it to your VPS.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>A Computer at Home\n<ol>\n<li>If you have a spare computer you can keep running, set up a web server on it. This will require more tinkering and probably require a reverse proxy to expose it to the public internet.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<h2 id=\"how-to-host\">How To Host?</h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Manual! You&rsquo;ll learn the most this way. Follow the install instructions on the app you chose to get it up and running. Once you can log in, celebrate!</li>\n<li>Automated(ish). <a href=\"https://yunohost.org\">YunoHost</a> is a software for managing your server. Once you&rsquo;ve done it manually, you&rsquo;ll appreciate all the work that&rsquo;s gone int to YunoHost. The docs help you understand how user roles work on the operating system and how applications are protected from reading one another&rsquo;s data.</li>\n</ol>\n<h2 id=\"self-host-for-fun\">Self Host for Fun</h2>\n<p>You really don&rsquo;t need to keep apps up and running. Remember that the point is to get something out here, break it, and learn to fix it. Along the way you&rsquo;ll learn about unix systems, application processes, resource management, backups, downtime and application resiliance.</p>\n<p>Try self-host something and have some fun.</p>\n",
        "date_published": "2026-09-21T00:00:00+00:00",
        "url": "https://enumerator.dev/self-host-something/",
        "tags": ["self-hosting","career-growth"]
      }
  ]
}