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You’ve got Ollama running. You’re pulling models, chatting through curl commands in your terminal. It works, but let’s be honest — typing JSON into a terminal isn’t exactly the ChatGPT experience. Open WebUI (formerly Ollama WebUI) gives you a polished, feature-rich chat interface for your local models. It looks and feels like ChatGPT, but everything runs on your hardware. Conversations stay private. Models run offline. And it’s packed with features that even OpenAI’s interface doesn’t have. ...

Managing Docker from the command line works fine — until you’re juggling 20+ containers across multiple stacks. That’s where Portainer comes in. It gives you a clean web UI to manage everything: containers, images, volumes, networks, and even Docker Compose stacks. Portainer CE (Community Edition) is free, open source, and takes about 2 minutes to set up. Here’s how to get it running on your server. What Is Portainer? Portainer is a lightweight management UI for Docker (and Kubernetes). Instead of remembering docker ps, docker logs, docker exec commands, you get a dashboard that shows everything at a glance. ...

Your self-hosted server is exposed to the internet. Bots, brute-forcers, and scanners hit it constantly. Fail2ban helps, but it only learns from your own logs. What if you could tap into threat intelligence from thousands of other servers? That’s CrowdSec. It’s like a community-powered immune system for your infrastructure. What Is CrowdSec? CrowdSec is an open-source security engine that: Parses your logs (Nginx, SSH, Traefik, WordPress, etc.) Detects attack patterns using behavioral scenarios Blocks attackers via bouncers (firewall rules, Nginx deny, Cloudflare API) Shares threat intel — when you block an IP, the community benefits and vice versa Think of it as Fail2ban + community blocklists + modern architecture. ...

Every time you need to merge two PDFs, compress a large file, or convert a document, you probably end up on some random website. You upload your file, wait for processing, hope they’re not reading your tax returns, and download the result. There’s a better way. Stirling PDF is a self-hosted, open-source PDF toolkit that handles virtually everything you’d ever need to do with a PDF — merge, split, rotate, compress, convert, OCR, add watermarks, extract images, and dozens more operations. It runs entirely on your own server, so your documents never leave your network. ...

Running large language models locally used to require a PhD and a five-figure GPU budget. Not anymore. Ollama makes running LLMs on your own hardware as simple as ollama run llama3 — no API keys, no cloud costs, no data leaving your network. In this guide, you’ll set up Ollama on your server, run popular models, expose an OpenAI-compatible API, and integrate it with tools like Open WebUI for a full ChatGPT replacement you own. ...

Zapier charges $20/month for 750 tasks. Their business plan? $600/month. Meanwhile, n8n does everything Zapier does — and more — and you can self-host it for free. No task limits. No per-execution fees. Your data stays on your server. This guide walks you through deploying n8n with Docker, PostgreSQL for reliability, a reverse proxy for HTTPS, and building your first real workflow. What is n8n? n8n (pronounced “nodemation”) is an open-source workflow automation platform. Think Zapier or Make.com, but: ...

If you’re running multiple self-hosted services, you’ve probably noticed the login fatigue. Nextcloud has its own login. Portainer has another. Grafana, Gitea, Jellyfin — each with separate credentials. It’s a mess. Authelia solves this by acting as a single sign-on (SSO) gateway with built-in two-factor authentication (2FA). Put it in front of your reverse proxy and every service gets enterprise-grade authentication without touching the service itself. What is Authelia? Authelia is an open-source authentication and authorization server. It works as a companion to your reverse proxy (Nginx Proxy Manager, Traefik, Caddy) and provides: ...

Beszel: Lightweight Server Monitoring Made Simple Monitoring your home server doesn’t need to be complicated. While tools like Prometheus and Grafana offer powerful features, they can be overkill for smaller setups. Enter Beszel—a lightweight, modern server monitoring solution designed specifically for self-hosters who want simplicity without sacrificing functionality. What is Beszel? Beszel is a minimalist server monitoring platform that provides real-time metrics for your infrastructure. Built with Go and featuring a clean web interface, it tracks essential system metrics like CPU usage, memory, disk space, and network activity across multiple servers. ...

Self-Hosted RSS Reader: FreshRSS vs Miniflux RSS isn’t dead—it’s just gone underground. While most people rely on algorithm-driven feeds from social media, power users and privacy-conscious individuals have rediscovered RSS as the ultimate way to curate content without tracking or manipulation. If you’re ready to take control of your reading list, self-hosting an RSS reader is the way to go. The two most popular options are FreshRSS and Miniflux, but which one should you choose? ...

Setting Up BookStack for Documentation Management Good documentation is the backbone of any project, whether it’s a home lab setup, a small business wiki, or technical notes for your team. But where do you store it? Google Docs lacks structure, Notion locks you into their platform, and Confluence is overkill (and expensive) for most self-hosters. Enter BookStack—a free, open-source, self-hosted documentation platform that strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and power. Built with PHP and MySQL, BookStack organizes content into Books, Chapters, and Pages, making it intuitive for both writers and readers. ...