this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
136 points (98.6% liked)

Selfhosted

55014 readers
771 users here now

A 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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Domain names seem expensive in comparison. The cheaper VPS that I use for playing around is just $10.29/year.
I thought I'd get a domain name from RackNerd as well, but they're $24.95/year + I think $4.99 for privacy.

I've checked Namecheap, and that seemed great, until I found that renewal prices are often through the roof.

I don't really care about it being nice. For now, mostly I just want to use the VPS as image host for Lemmy, since Imgur and Catbox are both a bit problematic.
And without a domain name, the images only show as link posts in the default LemmyUI (though it seems to work elsewhere). Plus it makes migration impossible.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] excess0680@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I’ve read that if you or your family depend on some kind of firewall provided by a company (and removing or disabling it is not allowed), then that firewall might outright refuse to connect to such a domain, even if the domain was never used. (Basically outright blocking .xyz at the root.) It’s not applicable in most cases but it is definitely a case of overzealous “protection” software. It’s just an unpredictable outcome and a risk. If you don’t plan on hosting email and don’t use a firewall like that, then it would be marginally acceptable.

I would still strongly recommend a .com or .net. The only advantage of using lesser known (or of low reputation) TLD is that more domains will not have been taken. I’d rather just try to be creative or pick something longer with .com.