All topics: Gym · Wearables · Productivity · DIY · Geek Gear
Everything on this site about home servers, self-hosting, and the gloriously unnecessary hobby of running your own infrastructure — organized so you can actually find it. Whether you’re eyeing your first mini PC or arguing with yourself about Proxmox vs TrueNAS at midnight, start here.
Looking for what’s new? Browse the newest DIY & homelab posts →
New to all of this? Follow the sections in order — they’re arranged the way a homelab actually grows: hardware, then containers, then media, then the rabbit holes.
Start Here: Your First Server
- Best Mini PC for Homelab Beginners — the easy first-box picks and what to run on them
- 4 Best Mini PC Home Server Picks for Every Budget — the full lineup from $150 starter to Ryzen workhorse
- Proxmox Beginner Setup Guide — your first VM in 5 simple steps
- Docker Compose Home Server — the beginner container setup that actually scales
- 5 Docker Containers to Run First — the proven starter stack
- Portainer for Beginners — a dashboard for everything you just built
- UPS Battery Backup for Homelabs — protect your NAS and Proxmox box from power loss
- How Much RAM for a Proxmox Homelab — 16GB, 32GB or 64GB, and the one thing everyone gets wrong
- How Many Docker Containers a Pi 5 Runs — the honest ceiling, and what actually eats the memory
Media & Streaming
- Jellyfin vs Plex — why the free option wins in 2026
- Raspberry Pi 5 Media Server Builds — the cheapest on-ramp to streaming your own library
- Best NAS for Media Servers — where the movies actually live
- Best NAS Hard Drives — CMR, workload ratings, and drives that survive RAID
- Immich Self-Hosted Photos — the Google Photos replacement that actually delivers
- Sonarr, Radarr & Jellyseerr — the automation stack that turns requesting a show into one click
Network, DNS & Privacy
- Pi-hole Self-Hosting — block ads on every device in the house
- Pi-hole + Unbound — private DNS in 5 steps — nobody logs your lookups
- AdGuard Home vs Pi-hole — which DNS blocker wins for homelabs
- Nginx Proxy Manager SSL Configs — wildcard certs and forced HTTPS without the pain
- WireGuard VPN Home Server Setups — get into your network from anywhere, securely
- Tailscale Home Network — the zero-config alternative that just works
- Caddy vs Nginx Proxy Manager — which reverse proxy actually fits how you like to work
- Tailscale vs WireGuard — managed convenience or full control of your own keys
Network Hardware
- Best Network Switch for a Home Server Rack — unmanaged, managed, or PoE, and how to tell which you actually need
- 2.5GbE Switch Upgrades — the cheapest way past gigabit without going full 10G
Monitoring & Apps
- Uptime Kuma Setup Tips — know when things break before the family does
- Grafana + Prometheus Dashboards — the pretty graphs your network deserves
- Self-Host Vaultwarden — ditch the password manager subscription
- Nextcloud Setup — your own private cloud in 6 steps
- Ollama Local LLM Home Server — your own private ChatGPT, running on hardware you own
- Paperless-ngx Docker Setup — turn scanned paperwork into a searchable archive
- n8n Self Hosted Setup — private workflow automation, no per-task billing
- Syncthing vs Nextcloud — folder sync or a full private cloud, and how to pick
Smart Home & Big Decisions
- Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi 5 — a local-first smart home in an afternoon
- My Self-Running Morning Routine — what smart home automation looks like in practice
- Proxmox vs TrueNAS — the 5 differences that actually decide it
- Proxmox Backup Server Setup — deduplicated, verified backups on a schedule
- Frigate NVR Setup — self-hosted AI cameras with no cloud subscription
- Proxmox vs Docker — bare metal is faster to start, Proxmox is easier to grow into
- Best NVMe SSDs for Proxmox & TrueNAS — boot drives, VM storage, and what endurance ratings actually mean
- Best Cameras for Frigate — the ones that hand over a plain RTSP stream without a fight
Prefer newest-first? Browse the latest DIY & homelab posts. And if you’re starting from zero, grab the free Homelab Starter Checklist — the one-page version of everything above, in build order. New guides land weekly; the newsletter delivers each one.