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.
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Yes it's possible. You can buy a domain name and then do literally nothing else if you want.
If it's just for LAN use, you don't even need to buy a domain name. You can use anything under the home.arpa, test, or internal TLDs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-use_domain_name
but a friend told me that to get one I either need a VPS with a public ip (which just takes all the fun out of selfhosting) or purchase a static ip
Neither of those are requirements. Just buy a domain at a registrar that allows you to dynamically update an IP address with a domain you have there. Look into DDNS update scripts and/or your own internet router, many routers have that feature built-in already.