I’ve been dabbling with selfhosting for a bit now (home assistant and nextcloud), but it’s clear that I lack a fundamental understanding of networking. For example:
- I’ve got OpenWRT on my router, but no idea what I’m doing when it comes to firewall settings, DNS, DHCP, etc.
- I’ve got a domain thru Porkbun, but no idea how to properly setup my DNS settings there to route to my local machine.
- I’ve got NGINX running in a docker container in a VM and can get to the UI on my local network, but no idea what I’m doing wrong with my attempts at a reverse proxy.
Does anyone here have links to a good in-depth tutorial series for learning about securely selfhosting?


Well my first reply is: setting up yor own router is like to learn driving with a touring car. You just need to know a lot to set up/handle everything properly. Its just not easy and in m opinion the most wrong point to start.
DNS-wise I would like to recommend something like pihole. To me it was my first thing I installed and used until this day and also the handling of DNS is quite easy. Maybe you should consider lerning other things before setting up your own router.
@Nephalis @anticonnor I think there are two approaches. 1) Start with desktop linux, a vps or raspberrypi to start building linux and networking skills or;
2) start with something more packaged that provides more guidance on delivering services ‘out of the box’ like yunhost - which can provide some things off the rack services and with a templated approach - that then allows you to play around a bit while you learn the basics
@Nephalis @anticonnor Yunohost has a starting point for setting up an instance - yunohost.org/#start @elena is also writing something up.