Docker

Mint is dead. YNAB costs $99/year. Your bank’s budgeting tools are terrible. Actual Budget is the answer — a fast, privacy-first budgeting app you can self-host for free. Originally a paid product, Actual was open-sourced in 2022 and is now maintained by a thriving community. It’s one of the best self-hosted finance tools available, with envelope budgeting, bank sync, and a beautiful UI that works on desktop and mobile. Why Actual Budget? Envelope budgeting — assign every dollar a job (YNAB-style) Bank sync — automatic transaction imports via GoCardless (free for personal use) Fast — local-first architecture, syncs in the background Multi-device — access from any browser, sync across devices Import — migrate from YNAB, Mint, or any CSV/OFX/QFX export Reports — spending trends, net worth, cash flow charts Rules — auto-categorize transactions 100% private — your financial data never leaves your server Prerequisites A Linux server with Docker and Docker Compose ~128MB RAM (very lightweight) A domain or local IP for access Step 1: Create the Project Directory mkdir -p ~/actual-budget && cd ~/actual-budget Step 2: Docker Compose Setup Create docker-compose.yml: ...

If you’re running a home server, you need visibility into what’s happening. Grafana + Prometheus is the gold standard monitoring stack — and it’s completely free to self-host. In this guide, you’ll set up Prometheus to collect metrics and Grafana to visualize them with beautiful dashboards. By the end, you’ll have real-time monitoring of your server’s CPU, memory, disk, network, and any Docker containers you’re running. What You’ll Build Prometheus — time-series database that scrapes metrics from your services Grafana — dashboard and visualization platform Node Exporter — exposes hardware/OS metrics to Prometheus cAdvisor — exposes Docker container metrics Prerequisites A Linux server (Ubuntu, Debian, or similar) Docker and Docker Compose installed Basic terminal knowledge ~512MB RAM for the full stack Step 1: Create the Project Directory mkdir -p ~/monitoring && cd ~/monitoring Step 2: Docker Compose Configuration Create docker-compose.yml: ...

Running a bunch of Docker containers but hate switching between docker logs commands? Dozzle gives you a beautiful, real-time web UI to view logs from all your containers in one place. No database, no agents, no configuration — just deploy and go. Why Dozzle? Zero config — point it at Docker and it works Real-time streaming — logs appear instantly, no polling Multi-container view — watch several containers side by side Search and filter — find what you need fast No storage — doesn’t store logs (uses Docker’s own log driver) Tiny footprint — ~10MB RAM, single binary Multi-host — monitor remote Docker hosts from one dashboard Dark mode — easy on the eyes during late-night debugging Prerequisites Docker and Docker Compose That’s it. Seriously. Step 1: Deploy Dozzle Create docker-compose.yml: ...

Discord is everywhere — gaming communities, dev teams, study groups. But it comes with baggage: data harvesting, Nitro upsells, and zero control over your data. If you’re already self-hosting, why not host your chat too? Here are the 5 best self-hosted Discord alternatives you can deploy today, ranked by feature completeness, ease of setup, and community size. 1. Revolt — The Closest Discord Clone Best for: Communities that want a Discord-like experience without the surveillance. ...

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. ...

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: ...