self hosting

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self hosting is the practice of running the software for your personal website on hardware under your own physical control, typically on a home server, or sometimes refers to only the aspect of running web applications on a (possibly virtual or shared) server under your control but not necessarily in your home.

The IndieWeb principles do not make any requirement or even recommendation that this is a good or bad practice. As long as you have your own domain and can export your data, you can move between hosting companies and locations without needing to tell people who visit your website that anything has changed.

IndieWeb Examples

In the broader sense, everyone with a personal website is already an example of self-hosting their web presence, but not necessarily on a server (hardware) in their home.

rosano

rosano self-hosts:

Ghost for Strolling
CapRover for his personal website and Easy Indie App.

carrvo

carrvo self-hosts MIndie (which is designed for a home server) for his personal website

Challenges

You have to be your own sysadmin. This means that if the server goes down, you are responsible.
You have to run your server 24/7 in your home.
- If you are environmentally conscious, it may be difficult to justify having another computer running all the time when you could use a shared hosting service that is already live.
You have to open up network ports to run a public web server.
- This makes it difficult to retain your anonymity because your IP address may be tied to your physical location.
- Some ISPs may not provide the functionality necessary to run a web server from home, or have restrictions in their terms of service.
- See port forward for some technical information.

Articles and posts

2021-09-02 Vice: Meet the Self-Hosters, Taking Back the Internet One Server at a Time
[…] A self-hoster controls it all, from the hardware used to the configuration of the software.
2025-01-16 https://defcon.social/@srfaudio/113838547276687554:
The point is: reality is always frustratingly more complex than we would like it to be. We’re in a complex capitalist system, where both literally and metaphorically, there is no free lunch. I don’t want it to stay like this, and nor should you. But making changes to these systems will require messy, coordinated efforts into all sorts of ethical conundrums. And just because those conundrums exist, doesn’t meant mean we shouldn’t act.

How does this relate to #selfhosting, you ask?

Well, I think we can still address concerns 1 and 2, without falling into the intellectual trap of 3.

Many big tech companies offer free tiers. If you are hosting an #indieweb service, you probably don’t have the benefits of scale that those companies do.

Leverage those free tiers by using AES-256 encryption BEFORE it hits their servers. You keep the keys secure. The files can sit on those public storage places, and it can’t be used for any data mining, because it’s encrypted gibberish to them.

You then use what’s available to you to actually help further the indie web that we want to see. We can use those services to HELP us get away from reliance on big tech, until we can get things to a scale to stop using those services.

Elsewhere

Self Hosted Show: podcast showcasing free and open source technologies you can host yourself.
Awesome-Selfhosted: 'Free Software' network services and web applications which can be hosted on your own servers.
/selfhosted community discussion on Reddit: place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Easy Indie App: showcasing apps that can be self-hosted with a few clicks via control panel like CapRover and others.