this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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I don't fully understand how/why you guys selfhost some apps (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by dafuccdoyoumean@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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I don't have a home server yet but I'm exploring and sometimes I get confused about some posts here.

For example I saw a post asking for recommendation for a "self hosted budget management app". Can't you just install this type of app to your phone or pc? What's the purpose here, will you host it and access it from a browser? Or do you only want to backup its data to your server?

I hope I don't sound stupid please enlighten me.

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[–] Wdrussell1@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

This is going to highly depend on what you hope to achieve with an application.

  1. Does the app need more than one person to access it?

  2. Does the app need constant up time?

  3. Does it make sense to host it?

Really this boils down to how you feel about each of these questions. So your example, the budget software. Yes I can have a single instance of that app on my computer. However I need my wife to have access to it, as she handles the finances.

Another example however is Jellyfin. This is something that is accessed from multiple locations and by multiple people. So today I might be watching a movie while I work. Tomorrow my wife might be doing that. Friday we might have family night. So that needs a server hosted out to actually make sense.

Game servers are another example here. They need constant up time and to be on hardware that is not the machine I am playing the game on.

It is also important to remember that many of us host all of this in a single location that we back up, and also have redundant drives. So we can easily make sure we have copies of our data at any given point. So while yea I can keep all my D&D data and PDF management on my computer, it is easier and more secure to keep and host that on my server where I have a backup and parity running. There plenty of other examples here too like my phone pictures of my daughter or other various bits of data.

Finally, there are things I just want to tinker and play with. I have no reason to host specific things other than to look at what the tech is like. Stable Diffusion is an example here. But my own ChatGPT instance would be useful if only every now and then. Just have to figure out what exactly makes the most sense to you.