Hi everyone

Thanks for all the advice on buying a domain. Its a big week for me. Getting on grapheneos, buying a domain, and I also recently started self hosting my contacts and calendar. I love this way of life.

My original plan was to one of the xyz 1.1111b domains for $1 a year but most of the feedback I got said just go with cloudflare. Its a lot more money than I had planned but all the security features are baked in and I feel that’s worth the extra money.

Here are my questions. I use the latest version of truenas community

  1. How do I connect my domain to my server apps? I’ve got a series of apps I’d love to he able to access without tailscale and solely use the domain.
  2. I have heard the term DNS a million times but don’t really understand it. What do.I need to know about DNS to keep security up and stay protected
  3. I’d like to let family access my media server, are there any considerations I need to make?
  4. How can I use one domain to access multiple services on my server? Do I need to pay extra for subdomains?

Thank you for any advice

  • Jason2357@lemmy.caEnglish
    62·
    7 hours ago

    Sorry to have made you upset. I consider Cloudflare to be the “gatekeeper” here.

    I have seen all the walkthroughs and it looks like the worst of both worlds -false sense of security and more complexity and weird non-transferrable knowledge than first glance. I suggest they use a VPN to connect to anything you can’t secure easily, as there are lots of options, and far smaller attack surface than a Cloudflare “protected” (hint: its not protected from anything but the lazyest automated attacks) proxy.

    Note: I understand moderate sized businesses using Cloudflare because DDOS attacks for ransom are a thing and a days outage can cost a lot of money. But its a protection racket and I don’t blame victims.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
      English
      2·
      4 hours ago

      I think you missed my point. You are mistaking your preferred architecture with moral superiority.

      Cloudflare is not “gatekeeping” someone from self-hosting. It is an optional tool. A person choosing to use it because they are new, budget-conscious, or not ready to expose services directly is not sad, fake self-hosting, or somehow philosophically impure.

      You can absolutely argue that Cloudflare has tradeoffs. That is fair. It adds dependency, abstraction, and vendor-specific knowledge. It is not magic security dust. No disagreement there.

      But telling a beginner “this is sad” because they are using a mainstream protective layer while learning is exactly the kind of gatekeeping that makes self-hosting communities hostile to newcomers.

      Also, “just use a VPN” is not a universal answer. VPNs are great for private admin access. They are not always the right solution when someone wants family members to access media or services without managing VPN clients, device support, troubleshooting, and onboarding. Different threat models, different usability needs.

      The helpful response would have been: “Cloudflare can be useful, but understand what it does and does not protect you from. Don’t expose admin panels. Use MFA, strong auth, least privilege, good backups, updates, reverse proxy rules, and keep anything sensitive behind a VPN.”

      That is useful advice.

      “This is sad” is just self-hosting purity signaling.

      I have tagged you as “selfhosting gatekeeper” for future reference.