It is possible an infinite amout of cloud accessible storage without having to pay a dime to Google or Microsoft. Let's talk about it.

Every service you use online is likely being hosted by a company at some large computing center on a server; the server, likely sitting next to hundreds or even thousands of neighboring servers. This is cool and all, but do you ever get aggravated when a company decides to up their prices for the use a service they provide? Or when they decide to implement more ads... or collect more of your precious data? If you answered yes to any of the previous questions, the non-caped hero you need is self-hosting.

But what exactly is self-hosting? Self-hosting describes hosting a local or online service yourself, often to avoid having to use a similar service provided by another entity. Examples of services that you could be self-hosing include music/video streaming, cloud storage, game server, and task automation services.

Now you are probably wondering, "How do I host said services?" And my response to that would be, "Don't worry, noob, I got you!" Here is a short outline that I have created to describe what the process of setting up your service can look like:

• Find some old computer lying around (or buy dedictated server hardware)
• Re-image the machine with an operating system of your choice (more on this later)
• Research the service that you would like to self-host.
• Install the necessary software and run the service
• If desired, tunnel your connection through a reverse proxy software for access beyond your local network

I am now going to explain this process in more depth. In regards to the machine that you decide to host your service on, as long as that machine can boot into Windows or Linux, this tutorial will likely work for that machine. Common examples of computing devices used to self-host services include Rasberry Pis, old family desktops, and old personal laptops. Once you have selected your desired machine, it is now important that you back up any files that you deem important on the system as the following steps will result in your machine's data being completely wiped to allow for the new OS (Operating System) to be installed.

It is now time to choose an operating system. For this situation I will highly recommend a Linux-based OS, and in particular, one without a GUI (Graphical User Interface). This is because if you decide to leave your machine running constantly for weeks on end, the more software that is packed into your OS by default, the higher the cost of electricity that your machine will consume over time. This makes sense as more processes will likely run at any given time when there is more software to create those processes. For this example, the latest Debian OS is recommended for this reason. Debain is an open source and often light-weight Linux distrobution that can manage your installed services and importantly your machine's resources. Here is a guide on how to install Debian on your machine.

Unfinished... Check back later for updates, or look up how to self host a service on YouTube.

I love the concept of self-hosting for many reasons, including the amount of control and freedom it brings to users when configuring the services hosted. Self-hosting can also greatly increases users' privacy. In a world full of digital, personally directed advertisements, it is understandable that large corporations would do just about anything they can to gather peoples' data...

Happy Hosting!