Category
Run your own services and take back your data: home servers, Docker, VPNs, backups, and privacy-first alternatives.
The practical guide to Tailscale — the zero-config mesh VPN built on WireGuard — how it differs from raw WireGuard, installing it across a real homelab, exit nodes, self-hosted alternatives like Headscale, and honest pricing.
7 articles
The guide to YubiKey and hardware security keys — what they are, how to set one up for 2FA/SSH/passwordless login, device comparisons, alternatives, and how they stack up against passkeys.
7 articles
The practical guide to securing a home network — router hardening, WiFi encryption, firmware updates, IoT device isolation, and firewalls, written from the author's own homelab network.
7 articles
The practical, first-hand guide to protecting your privacy online — private email, browsers, messaging apps, authenticator apps, identity theft protection, encrypted DNS, and self-hosted tools — from someone who runs a homelab and actually uses them.
8 articles
The practical guide to running real self-hosted services with Docker Compose — restart policies, networking, volumes and backups, secrets, build vs pull, debugging, and the down/stop/kill difference — grounded in the author's own homelab compose files.
14 articles
The guide to replacing Big Tech apps with your own self-hosted server — LLM chat, music streaming, automation, Reddit reading, git hosting, and CI/CD, all run and benchmarked on the author's own homelab.
7 articles
The hands-on guide to turning a Raspberry Pi into a real home server — a NAS, a Minecraft server, a security-camera hub, a retro-gaming box and a headless always-on box — with real setup steps, running costs and where a Pi actually hits its limits, from a working homelab.
7 articles
An honest, first-hand guide to password managers — whether your browser's or phone's built-in manager is good enough, how Bitwarden and 1Password compare, and how to self-host your own with Vaultwarden.
9 articles
A hands-on guide to building and running a home lab: hardware, virtualization, storage, media, and self-hosted services — from someone who runs one.
7 articles
A README lists 40-plus Docker Compose subcommands. In practice, running several stacks on one homelab host means using about eight of them daily, plus one gotcha: pull, logs, restart, and exec all scope to a single service if you name one.
Every Compose stack you copy from a README defaults to the same handful of ports. Here is how host vs container ports actually work, why multi-stack homelabs collide, and when to add a reverse proxy instead of publishing ports directly.
You ran docker-compose up -d on a box where that exact command has worked a dozen times before - or a Pi you just flashed, or a Synology you just rebooted - and the shell answers docker-compose: command not found. Docker itself is clearly installed; docker ps works fine. So what broke?
Bitdefender SecurePass, Kaspersky, and Norton all bundle a password manager into their antivirus suite — here is what each one actually includes, and skips, versus Bitwarden.
The real decision framework for outgrowing Docker Compose: numeric container and node thresholds, the K3s middle step most guides skip, and what migrating actually costs — grounded in a single-host homelab.
I migrated a real vault from Bitwarden to Proton Pass: what imported cleanly, what broke, and whether the bundle price beats paying separately.
Firefox saves and syncs your passwords for free with real encryption — but it's missing sharing, 2FA storage, and a true biometric vault unlock. Here's when that's fine, and when it isn't.
Docker Compose profiles let one compose.yml split services into groups (core, monitoring, backup, dev) that only start when requested, instead of every service always starting together.
Compose's 'Up' status only means a process started. Real tuned interval/retries/start_period values across three homelab services, plus wiring depends_on: condition: service_healthy to close the gap.
Home Assistant or Pi-hole goes into a docker-compose.yml, the stack comes up healthy, and device discovery still doesn't work -- no new devices show up. The forum fix is network_mode: host. What it actually does, when it's worth the isolation you give up, and when bridge is still right.
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