Matilda LoveMar 19

hey fedi. i got a domain name. i want to be able to put up a static site, access certain files from wherever, stream my music maybe.

how do i set up a simple html/file server on a laptop

TO CLARIFY: i mean HOW. like, complete beginner. can someone point me to a comprehensive tutorial?

#AskFedi #LinuxHelp

Show threadAlexia Mar 20
@matildalove there is a good chance you don't have a public non-changing (static) IP address, so it'd make sense to proxy it through somewhere else. Usually this will mean some kind of server somewhere that is connected with your laptop usually through a VPN.

Think something like tailscale.com and a webserver like nginx or caddy to redirect requets from the server to ya local laptop and back.

you could also just rely on cloudflare to do the proxying, but that gives up some control to cloudflare. (Specifically: Cloudflare tunnels)

I don't have the time to walk you through every step but I'm sure that someone else might step up, and this info should give you a general direction to get started.
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Show threadPixelcode 🇺🇦

@alexia @matildalove Tailscale is only suitable for private websites, because the Funnel feature doesn't support custom domains. Basically all of the tunnel services I know of (c.f. https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling) require a paid subscription to use custom domains or must be self-hosted entirely.

Hosting the website directly on a small, paid VPS (e.g. Hetzner) is usually cheaper than exposing your locally hosted server to the public through a paid tunnel service.

Purely static sites can be hosted for free (even with a custom domain) at various providers, such as https://statichost.eu, Codeberg Pages (licence restrictions), GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, Vercel etc.

Mar 20 at 4:35pmWeb
Show threadAlexia Mar 20
@pixelcode @matildalove
Tailscale is only suitable for private websitesThat is why I suggested a separate VPS that runs something like caddy, and to only hook the two up using tailscale. the actual vpn here doesn't matter. I didn't even mention the tunnel feature.
Hosting the website directly on a small, paid VPSIt is implied that she wasn't talking about just static files but instead about hosted services, that she wanted to host at home and access from outside, like streaming music.
Show threadPixelcode 🇺🇦Mar 20

@alexia @matildalove Ah, that's what you meant.* Yes, the

paid VPS ↔️ Tailscale ↔️ local server

setup is possible of course, but I don't see the benefit of it when you could just host everything on the VPS 🤷

* (elsewhere, I had seen Tailscale being recommended as an Ngrok-like tunnel service, that's why I misunderstood)

Show threadAlexia Mar 20
@pixelcode @matildalove
but I don't see the benefit of it when you could just host everything on the VPSlocal control over the data, being able to encrypt said traffic at your home PC instead of the VPS provider (thus providing more privacy), having to pay less for a beefy VPS depending on what you wanna host, etc