Today, I'm year old 🎉 🥳.
Hi, today I'm happy to announce that the server is one year old. I'm happy, glad and grateful for all that has happened and learned in this self-hosting journey, from my start as a dumb guy who didn't know how to set up ssh keys to setting up dockers, dealing with rust and reverse proxies.
From first to read guides like https://landchad.net/ to read to understand more to online guides and blogs to even official docs.
While I can't offer anything special today, like a new frontend to self-host or a giveaway (I'm broke :/), I decided to make this announcement and make you feel happy with me and tell you that while I'm not an expert, I've certainly learned a thing or two, and I can help you if you're interested in self-hosting too, because more people are welcome in this space!
I actually started self-hosting much earlier, in November 2021 to be exact. It was my old computer and I installed docker and started to learn how to use self-host invidious and kept it running for a month but decided to disconnect it due to expensive electricity and bad internet reasons (I'm subbed with their “Super” plan, so it's 30mb/s 🙂) so I looked online until I got VPS from Hetzner for a month, but my plans are to host a lot of services, so you can see why I did not stay for long. Later I heard about contabo, but a lot of people warned me about how slow their hardware is and that's why their VPSes are cheap. And later I heard about Kimsufi (my love) and I was stunned by how cheap it is (sure, it's old hardware but come on, at least it's dedicated servers) so I kept looking at their list until one day they hosted the 2022 winner sale and at first I was scared because it was a lot of money to pay, ~ 300 EGP to pay monthly, and it was my first time to pay monthly for something (aka. rent) instead of one time (laughs, now I pay ~ 700 for the same server. Damn you dollar) but I encouraged myself and here we are. One year later and I think it's the best choice I ever made.
And last but not least, I would like to thank Allah (yes, you heard me right) because I literally pray every month to get money from my freelance work so I can keep this server running for another month. And I am grateful to all of you who have stuck with me and used the front-ends that I host myself and I hope you continue to enjoy them and I continue to give back to the community because, damn it. We need more privacy alts and more decentralization, even if it's just another guy/girl self-hosting a frontend.
A year has passed by, what a long journey, man.
This is the first bill I paid for this server, and it's dated 25 Jan 2022 (Alt link)
PS: Donate, so I can keep it running for another year (or even years, hopefully): https://esmailelbob.xyz/en/#donation