Hi all, I’ve been noticing a pattern in self-hosting communities, and I’m curious if others see it too.

Whenever someone asks for a more beginner-friendly solution, something with a UI, automated setup, or fewer manual configs, there’s often a response like:

“If you can’t configure Docker, reverse proxies, and Yaml files, you shouldn’t be self-hosting.”

Sometimes it feels like a portion of the community views complexity as a badge of honour. Don’t get me wrong, I love the technical side of self-hosting. I enjoy tinkering, breaking things, fixing them, learning along the way. That’s how most of us got into it.

But here’s the question: Is gatekeeping slowing down the adoption of self-hosting?

If we want more people to own their data, escape Big Tech, and embrace open-source alternatives, shouldn’t we welcome solutions that lower the entry barrier?

There’s room for everyone:

  • people who want full control and custom setups,

  • people who want semi-manual but guided,

  • and people who want it to work with minimal friction.

Just like not every Linux user compiles from source, but they’re still Linux users.

Where do you stand? Should self-hosting stay DIY-only or is there value in easier, more accessible ways to self-host?

My project focuses on building a tool that makes self-hosting more accessible without sacrificing data ownership, so I genuinely want your honest take before releasing it more widely.

  • BootLoop@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    75·
    8 hours ago

    If you can’t configure Docker, reverse proxies, and Yaml files, you shouldn’t be self-hosting

    Yes, absolutely.

    Configure Docker

    if you cannot run docker compose up or understand the basics of what it’s doing, you should not be self hosting. Yes, Docker can be difficult to troubleshoot but you need to understand where your data is being stored and generally self hosting projects using Docker are easy to set up.

    reverse proxies

    Implying exposing your server to the Internet. Yes. 100%. If you do not know what you’re doing, you should not. This is dangerous to your machine and to your data.

    Yaml files

    This is a plain text file. You can open it with Notepad or your operating system’s equivalent. Editing a text file to enter some default parameters is a low bar and if you can’t edit a text file, you’re going to get caught up in some other part of self hosting

    • l3db3tt3r@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      5 hours ago

      I think you’ve missed the point OP is trying to communicate. It’s not that these things aren’t relevant, highly important, and good caution/warning. It’s the gate that people are creating with these no depth explainers. “you need to understand” “if you don’t know” – then fail to provide direction to people who want to know, to learn these things, to figure out where to start; that’s the gate.

    • otacon239@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      8 hours ago

      You made pretty much every point exactly how I was going to make it.

      I will mention that even as a pretty experienced sysadmin, learning Docker, reverse proxies, and relevant config files took ages because there are treated as assumed knowledge.

      Every YouTube video on Docker is 30 minutes shorter than they should be, and terminology for reverse proxies is really confusing if you’re not already familiar.

      It’s great to say you shouldn’t use these if you’re not familiar, but these are also probably the most poorly taught subjects in computing right now from my experience.