Self-Hosting: Introduction
Page Created:
Last Modified:
There is nothing controversial in saying that social media has ruined the internet. I would expand on this statement and add that the replacement of personal websites by social media has ruined the internet.
In the late 90s/early 2000s, the only way to have an online presence was through a personal website. Services such as GeoCities, Angelfire and Tripod made it easy for anyone with a basic level of technical knowledge to have a custom website featuring content and (CSS) styling of their own design.
Navigating said sites was facilitated by hosts grouping them in a directory by category, by offering webrings or by simply having friends link each other’s websites.
Whether they focused on a specific topic or just featured the owner’s stream of consciousness, personal websites offered a level of creativity and control unmatched by anything that came since.
In the early days of Web 2.0 and before social media fully took off, YouTube channels or MySpace profiles allowed for a decent amount of customisation, at minimum permitting font styling, custom backgrounds, subscribe buttons etc.
Whether it was for the sake of becoming more advertiser-friendly or any other reasons, there are little to no options for customisation on the modern internet. With everyone now relying solely on social media, people can only be differentiated by usernames and profile pictures while anything they post is constrained to what a given platform supports; Post length limits, video duration and more importantly, the content thereof.
Despite this, I believe that it’s easier than ever to self-host; Both personal websites for blogging purposes etc. as well as publishing various projects and self-hosted alternatives to cloud services and corporate-owned products.
Moving away from over-reliance on these platforms, even in small increments, will make the internet more interesting for everyone again while hopefully helping you to reduce your dependance on a small number of huge platforms which have completely monopolised the internet.
Over the upcoming blog posts, I’m going to go over my preferred methods for self-hosting and anything associated with it such as some basic security principles.