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

jaackf@lemmy.world to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 999 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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Why is this better for you than using a folder structure with a decent naming convention? I've tried to get started a couple times, but I just haven't managed to get what's better about it. I know i'm missing something, and I feel like if I knew what it is i'd be more likely to out in the work to transition.

well, there are a few things:

  1. using the app to take photos (in a scan sort of mode, where it trims it to be at right angles), really quick and easy, no matter where i am.
  2. remote access - i can view all of my documents where ever i am.
  3. easy & sophisticated search. I have my documents assigned to people (me, wife, child, etc). I also assigned them to things like payslips, tax, shares, legal documents, education docs, receipts, etc. it also helps to automatically tag them to some degree of accuracy
  4. Automatic dating, it is quite good at picking out the date of the document, as seperate to the upload date. and it is easily updatable if it is wrong
  5. OCR - the documents content is searchable!
  6. Ease of tax time. I have some financial year views that make it really easy for me to do my tax (Australia), and i dont need to go hunting for paper that has faded in the heat and is no longer legible.
  7. folders - the documents are placed in a folder structure of your choosing. if you change the details in the document meta-data, it will move it to the correct place.

so, whilst a folder structure would work. this is SOOO much easier, and provides much more functionality as it is not just storage. it also has WAF!

That was a really clear explanation, thanks. Decent remote scanning would be nice. I guess I just have to wrap my head around tags for some of the niceties to make sense, though I guess i'd be no worse off if I just used folders if that's an option as well.

you're welcome.

I tend to use document types more than tags now. note that there are a number of meta-data fields:

  • correspondent
  • docuemnt type
  • tag

i started with tag, but now mostly use a combination of the doc date, type and correspondent. Then use the search bar for specific documents.