Thanks for your feedback David!!
Here is where I am coming from. I think there are 3 types of people.
System Admin, business folks, and hobbyists. I used to have a friend
who is a sys admin and a programmer. He does all his own hosting.
There is a person on the list that has referred to his home lab a few
times. I suspect most have some level of a home lab.
I was doing some research and found there is demand for learning how to
build and maintain a web server out of ones home/home office/home lab.
My commercial advice is don't do it. Much cheaper to rent shared
hosting or a VPS. That is my advice to a business owners.
Having said that I was able to configure an old laptop as a web server +
Bind+Postfix+Dovecot+let's Encrypt... and possible some other packages.
I did it to learn and in the end I liked the fact that I could do so. As
you know I am a PHP dev. I made mention at the time that I had bragging
rights. Was a big accomplishment for me. I assume being able to build
a full stack web server pushes me in the realm of being a full-stack
developer.
The motivation for this post was based on some research I performed that
showed there is a fair amount of interest in leaning how to build and
maintain a web server out of ones home/home office/home lab.
I posted hoping for feedback on what others might know of the demand.
I learned a lot the first go around and would like to learn more. And
as you know I have a YouTube channel and blog. I would like to share my
experience with others.
Keith
On 2025-04-19 21:47, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
I guess this all depends on if this is just a hobby for you or
something you want to make money from.
Here’s my opinion; it’s not exactly what you’re wanting to hear, but
it’s a legitimate option… I may have mentioned it before.
Take a look at Latenode. It’s an automation service, functionally
similar to Zapier, Make, Pabbly, and others, but I think its a lot more
affordable.
Most web apps these days require logic to be hidden in a back-end
service to keep people from accessing your keys. As a result, the
majority of things the back-ends do is forwarding requests on to other
services, including DBs, AIs, and other things.
I really do not want to deal with my own server ANYWHERE — at home or
anywhere else in the world, especially if I can build little modular
services accessible as webhooks on an automation platform. The servers
they run on are fast, scalable, and made for heavy-duty use. (Mostly
cloud-based, I’m guessing.)
I can’t speak to the security issues, but nothing I’m doing is worse
than keeping my backend “secret keys” out of reach from the front-end
users. (If you don’t, they end up in your browser in clear-text and
they can be scraped without much trouble.)
If you’re really that paranoid and worried about stuff that it makes
sense to become an expert on all of those server-side tools on a server
you keep hidden in your home or office, then knock yourself out. I
don’t care; I don’t want to care, or even keep up with the changes
they’re constantly undergoing. I want to be able to quickly set up a
proxy to sit between my front-end and some other service that gets me
what I want without having to manage anything you mentioned.
If you need some custom programming, then Latenode allows you to use
javascript in their nodes. Pickaxe works with Python, and it can even
help you write the code.
(Pickaxe is an interesting 2-faced thing, part of which is an
app-builder and part of which is has some basic logic and it can
trigger webhooks to other back-end services, including automation
services. They only mention Zapier and Make, but their interface is not
specific to either one except in name only. It works fine with
Latenode, Pabbly, and others. I think something called Lemonade is
somewhat competitive with Pickaxe.)
I know, folks on this list are going to complain that these services
are not free except for trivial purposes to get familiar with them. But
I value my time far more and I don’t mind paying a couple hundred bucks
a month to have SEVERAL high-quality services managed for me so I don’t
have to deal with anything to keep them running. I did that for a while
on a Windows VPS (which I had to use b/c the code I needed only targets
Windows) and problems were constantly coming up; unfortunately, the VPS
host didn’t provide an support.
I bought a small Windows box to run at home to replace the VPS, but I
decided I can do pretty much anything I need on Latenode. So it’s just
sitting there.
I learned how to admin Unix boxes back in the 80’s, and it has always
been one of my least favorite things to do. I’m very happy to pay
people the cost of one restaurant dinner per month to keep my services
working. But my goal is to use these services to make money, at which
point the costs are going to be minscule compared to the potential
revenues.
If it’s not a hobby, then you need to decide if you want to work ON
your business or IN your business. Running your own server means it’s
all on you. Outsourcing it lets you work ON your business.
TBH, I’m getting away from programming and all of this admin crap. It’s
about frigging time we’re seeing things start to bury this stuff behind
walls that are being run by AI services. Dealing with AI prompts and
automation tools is the future, IMHO. Working with stuff that’s still
clearly recognizable today from what it looked like in the 80’s is
hardly “progress”. I’ve had people ask me over time, “Why don’t you get
certified to work on Cisco hardware?” I used to write code for devices
like that back in the 80’s, and it looks like it HAS NOT CHANGED AT
ALL, just like talking to modems and Epson printer escape codes.
This is 2025; I’ve been there, done that, and AI is the future. Prompts
are actually structured a lot like imperative programming code but they
use normal language to explain things. Unfortunately, if you don’t know
the basics of imperative programming, you’re going to miss a lot of
details and mess up the structure. And if you aren’t an SME in the
domain you’re trying to get AI to do for you, you’re screwed.
Just my thoughts.
-David Schwartz
On Apr 19, 2025, at 6:10 PM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
I did some research and it appears there is a lot of demand for
content that covers how to create a web server out of home/home
office/home lab.
I assume this means Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP + Bind9, Postfix,
Dovecot, some form of webmail, Let Encrypt, and possibly other
servers/software.
What does the list think on this subject?
Keith
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