Self-Hosting Dockge: Lightweight Docker Compose Manager

Self-Hosting Dockge: Lightweight Docker Compose Manager If you’ve been managing Docker Compose stacks by SSH-ing into servers and editing YAML files in nano, Dockge is about to change your life. Created by the same developer behind Uptime Kuma, Dockge is a reactive, web-based Docker Compose manager that keeps things simple — no abstraction layers, no proprietary formats, just your compose.yaml files with a clean UI on top. Unlike Portainer (which wraps everything in its own API) or Coolify (which is a full PaaS), Dockge stays close to the metal. Your compose files live on disk exactly where you’d expect them, and you can still use docker compose commands directly. Dockge just gives you a nicer way to do it. ...

March 20, 2026 · 7 min · Self Host Setup

Docker Compose Profiles: Managing Dev, Staging, and Production

Docker Compose Profiles: Managing Dev, Staging, and Production You’ve got a self-hosted stack running in production. Now you want a staging copy to test updates before they hit your live services. Maybe a dev environment too, with debug tools and hot-reloading. The old way? Three separate docker-compose.yml files with 80% overlap, constantly drifting out of sync. Docker Compose profiles solve this. One compose file, multiple environments. Services tagged with profiles only start when you explicitly activate that profile. Everything else runs by default. ...

March 19, 2026 · 6 min · Self Host Setup

Docker Networking Explained: Bridge, Host, and Macvlan

Docker Networking Explained: Bridge, Host, and Macvlan Networking is the part of Docker that trips up most self-hosters. Your containers need to talk to each other, to the host, and to the outside world — and Docker gives you several ways to wire that up. The three modes you’ll actually use: bridge (the default), host (skip Docker’s network layer entirely), and macvlan (give containers their own IP on your LAN). Each has tradeoffs, and picking the wrong one leads to hours of debugging. ...

March 17, 2026 · 9 min · Self Host Setup

Complete Guide to Docker Healthchecks and Restart Policies

Complete Guide to Docker Healthchecks and Restart Policies Your Jellyfin container is running. Docker says it’s healthy. But the web UI returns a blank page and nobody can stream anything. Docker’s default “running” status only tells you the process hasn’t crashed — it says nothing about whether the service actually works. Docker healthchecks fix this. They let you define what “healthy” actually means for each container, and combined with restart policies, they create a self-healing setup where broken services recover automatically without you waking up at 3 AM. ...

March 17, 2026 · 9 min · Self Host Setup