Self-hosting services has been a life-changer. And I thank this community for helping me a lot recently. Not only did I learn a lot more about linux, network and docker, but it helped me understand better how platforms and advertising just f*cked up the internet I grew up with.
But I wonder: do any of you hate how self-hosting services like photo- or document-management systems, or even a simple rss tool, forces you to sort your stuff out, and put your decades old files in order?!
I’m in the process of migrating my web browser bookmarks to linkding because it’s a GREAT tool. But I have like 2k websites to manualy check wether they’re still there, wonder at how cool they still are, tag properly and archive with SingleFile!
And that’s just ONE service…
I’m in the long process of paperlessing. It’s THE perfect example of that (not so) hidden cost. But there’s no lying or trying to sell you magic. You put effort in a systematization that empowered by a great tool and a well thought out and tried model, and voila, winning.
Yeah I think of it the other way round: I couldn’t get myself to organize them without combining it with a nice selfhosted tool. The goal is getting my stuff organized, the cost is doing work, which includes setting up a system. I can cheat on the cost a little by including a fun project in the cost part.
I do think there’s a hidden cost in selfhosting though and it’s maintenance. Fortunately, there’s selfhosted tools that help with that too :-)