Selfhost

My Self-Hosted Map: How I Built My Digital Home

My Self-Hosted Map: How I Built My Digital Home
Photo by ThisisEngineering / Unsplash

In my last post, I talked about why we should own our data. Today, I want to show you how I actually do it.

You don’t need a room full of supercomputers to start. My setup is built on a mix of affordable mini-PCs and used hardware. Think of it like a house: you need a front door, a storage room, and a brain to run the show.

1. The Front Door: The Secure Router

Most people use the router their ISP gives them and never think about it again. But your router is the front door to your digital life. If it isn't secure, the rest of your house isn't either.

  • My Setup: I use a Mini-PC running pfSense.
  • Why? pfSense is open-source and incredibly powerful. It gives me a professional-grade firewall that protects everything inside my house from the "wild west" of the internet.

2. The Privacy Shield: NextDNS

Every time you visit a website, your computer asks a "Phonebook" (called a DNS) where that site is. By default, you use your ISP's phonebook—which means they see every single site you visit.

  • My Setup:NextDNS.
  • Why? It stops my ISP from tracking my history and automatically blocks ads and malicious websites before they even reach my devices.

3. The Storage Room: The NAS (Network Attached Storage)

This is where all my files, photos, and backups live. I didn't buy an expensive pre-made box; I built this myself using old parts from eBay and "Enterprise Grade" hard drives (the heavy-duty ones used in big data centers).

  • My Setup: A custom-built PC running Unraid.
  • Why? While Unraid isn't open-source, it is famous for its simplicity. It lets me mix and match different-sized hard drives easily, making it perfect for a growing home library.

4. The Brain: The "Proxmox" Server

This is where the magic happens. I have another Mini-PC that acts as the "Brain" of the house.

  • My Setup:Proxmox.
  • The Concept: Proxmox is a "Virtualization" platform. It lets me run multiple "Virtual Machines" (mini-computers) inside one physical box.
  • What it runs: Inside these virtual machines, I use Docker to run all my services:
    • Bitwarden: My private password vault.
    • Immich: A self-hosted alternative to Google Photos.
    • Nextcloud: My personal version of Google Drive/Dropbox.
    • This Blog! Yes, the words you are reading right now are being served from this very machine.

What’s Next?

This setup might sound like a lot, but I built it one piece at a time. In my upcoming posts, I’m going to go "deep" into each of these sections