If you have anything exposed, scripts and bots are testing your server all day, every day. So long as you’ve got proper security in place, ignore the failed attempts.

Check out https://www.servethehome.com/. I imagine you’ll find some useful info there.

You can rent a virtual private server (VPS). I used to have a number of these for under $10 / month. I imagine they might cost more now., but chances are you can still find something super affordable.

Wordpress.org will let you have a free site but you don’t get a custom domain. Wordpress.com has a personal plan for $4 / month. Matt Mullenweg (CEO) has revealed himself to be a crazy piece of shit, so maybe look elsewhere. I’m just trying to give you a sense of how accessible this stuff can be.

Running a VPS will require more learning, but it can be super gratifying if you enjoy nerdy computer stuff and solving puzzles just for self-satisfaction. I used to use Rackspace, Linode, and something else that I can’t recall at the moment. All were pretty reasonable. Rackspace had a ton of good setup guides for newbies that were well written. I’d occasionally land on those doing a web search for other hosting stuff and found them reliable.

Edit: DigitalOcean was the one I couldn’t remember.

Look up Eternal September on Wikipedia.

I’m a fan of pfSense, myself. But other suggestions here for OSes have been reasonable. I have a netgate router feeding an eero wap with a second wap creating a bridged wifi network. Future-proofing with 10GB on a wired switch if a good idea. I got a pair of Unifi 2.5GB switches with 10GB uplink for that. The difference in performance moving large data around is massive. I have 10GB between my primary machine, the one that I run as my always-on server, and my NAS. It’s awesome. Everything else is 2.5GB.

Edit: made one bit plural

12.8TB. Mostly uncompressed rips from Blu-rays, some DVDs, some from iTunes Store. Some from the high seas, but not in a long time because the market solved that problem with streaming.

I don’t have opensource solutions, but CloudFlare had some news about a system that I didn’t read about (saw two headlines) last week. Dunno if it works or not.

Cool, more power to you.

My Synology is compatible with an expansion unit and can support two of them. Check if yours can do the same for the storage aspect.

If you get a NAS with 10G (it’s such a nice upgrade, I made the jump last year), there’s no reason a nice NUC can’t do the job. I went that route after previously running significantly overpowered server hardware ten years ago. We have an embarrassment of riches with modern hardware.

A+

I had a tower that generated so much heat that during a particularly hot summer, I had to stop using it around 1-2pm every day. The room just got too hot to occupy. I’m a computer nerd, so this was particularly heinous for me.

You’re pretty rad, y’know that?

I moved to 10Gbps and 5Gbps on some of my devices and it’s been glorious. Future-proof by having either built-in.

All my extra RAM was super old and I let it get offed when I hired a junk hauling company clear out my last place when I moved (I’d been there for like 15 years, so there was a lot of worn out furniture and stuff).

Even though I’m already experienced in self-hosting, I absolutely love that you’re making this available. We need more on-ramps for newbies. Cheers!

Here’s a resource: https://serverfault.com/

I don’t care about his content, but I downloaded for historical preservation. If you’re willing to watch can you explain the beef?

Samsung for storage. Crucial if you can’t get Samsung.

I would venture that you spun it up yourself.