What can the 'average Joe' start hosting, that will change their life?

jaackf@lemmy.world to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 997 points –

I'm already hosting pihole, but i know there's so much great stuff out there! I want to find some useful things that I can get my hands on. Thanks!

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For me it's 100% Nextcloud. It was a pain to get working at first (and I'm dreading the day it breaks, if that happens). But it is so much more than just a self-hosted Dropbox solution:

  • Maps
  • Calendar
  • Email
  • Markdown editor (I'm using this to try and replace Google Drive for collaborative document editing with my friends; most of what we need can be achieved with Markdown formatting)
  • I haven't tried it but there is a Talk plugin that allows for video conferencing in browser;
  • a bunch of other stuff I've never played with like mind maps, PDF conversion, music player, etc.

My experience has been that Nextcloud can do 1000 different things, and it sucks at all of them.

That's a little harsh but I definitely agree it doesn't tend to offer a better or equal alternative to any free options available. You're giving up a certain level of ease of use.

I tried setting up nextcloud. Just ended up creating a samba share instead.

Been using nextcloud for about 5 years, right now I use it for storing files and nothing else, and it still kinda sucks at that.

Gonna use paperless for any documents I have in NC, after that there won’t be much left in there, just some old dot files. Maybe I’ll get rid of it entirely

I’m not getting Microsoft Office or Apple quality mail clients, or word editors, but the fact that it’s always available to me is enough to make the trade off worth it. YMMV

Nextcloud is the Wordpress of cloud storage. You can customize it to do literally everything. You can even write your own plugin if necessary. But unlike Wordpress, the default setup is quite locked down (you can't just drop php files somewhere and have it accessible to reduce security risk) and you'll actually have to follow certain formats and standards when writing a plugin, unlike the free-for-all every-man-for-himself nature of wordpress plugin development.

Ive run NC in one way or another for years now, and switching to a docker-compose stack was an absolute gamechanger for upgrades and break fix ease.

Absolutely this. Nextcloud brings so much stuff to the table, it's just awesome.

Yes, Nextcloud. It's not perfect, but it has made my life easier for the last few years

It's a lot of pain to set up, but Nextcloud with OnlyOffice is just great for editing documents collaboratively and in realtime on the web. Actually one of the things that works better than O365's web editors.

Some of my notes here if anyone wants them

The problem with OnlyOffice is that it doesn't allow for editing from Android, because then you'll have to pay, which is why I switched to Collabora Office.

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

Yeah, I've also found that issue a while ago. Though I don't use the editor on Android anyways, so not an issue for me.
I had trouble setting up Collabora Office, but maybe I should revisit that.

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway

I had a lot of trouble setting up nextcloud in the past but if you go with the Docker method, it's really easy.