We can’t stop progress!
Moreover, the world of web hosting is not to be outdone, including everything related to self-hosting. This concept, long reserved for a niche of passionate geeks and knowledgeable professionals, has been widely democratized in recent years.
Indeed, self-hosting offers total autonomy over the administration and configuration of your websites and web applications. You are the only one in charge, and this freedom tastes particularly sweet in a digital world that is increasingly prone to the excesses linked to the centralization of data and its exploitation by large companies.
Here, you choose where your data is stored, how it’s managed, and who can access it.
But of course, with great power comes great responsibility. Self-hosting requires a certain amount of technical mastery and an often significant investment of time to deploy and maintain applications, not to mention security. Fortunately, there are solutions to make your life easier and reap all the benefits without having to suffer (too much) from the disadvantages.
That’s why today I want to talk to you about Cloudron, a platform that is truly ushering in a new era of self-hosting.
In a nutshell, it’s a platform that greatly simplifies self-hosting by allowing you to deploy your favorite apps in just a few minutes, ranging from NextCloud to RocketChat to Gogs, to name a few. If you are interested in the list, click here.
With Cloudron, each application is deployed in a Docker container, making it easy to install, update, and back up all at the same time.
No useless talk, no complicated manipulations; everything is designed to make your life easier and allow you to focus on the essential: the use of your applications. The Cloudron team even offers a turnkey service, including hosting and backup if you don’t want to start hosting on your own server.
Cloudron also has a series of features that are particularly attractive to anyone interested in self-hosting. There are about forty applications available in one click, a complete mail server with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, a backup system locally or on Amazon S3 and via Minio, as well as a complete security system with iptables, SSH keys, and the secure HTTPS protocol with HSTS for all subdomains.
In terms of prerequisites, getting started with Cloudron doesn’t require much. All you need is an Ubuntu Jammy 22.04 (x64) server with 1 GB of RAM or more, 20 GB of disk space, a domain name (not just a subdomain), and an SSH connection using an SSH key. Installation is done in just a few minutes with a configuration script, and you can access your Cloudron by going to your server’s IP address (make sure ports 443 and 80 are clear).
wget https://cloudron.io/cloudron-setup
chmod +x cloudron-setup
./cloudron-setupOnce Cloudron is installed, you’ll be able to set up your platform, including domain name and DNS management, either through Amazon Route 53, DigitalOcean, with a Wildcard, or manually. Once the installation is complete, you will then be able to access your Cloudron via the main address of your Cloudron, which will be https://my.votrenomdedomaine.com.
To dig deeper into the subject and discover all the features of Cloudron, I invite you to check out the full documentation on their site.
There you have it; you are now equipped to embark on the adventure of self-hosting with Cloudron. This is a solution that I highly recommend to anyone who wants to regain control of their data while benefiting from extraordinary ease of use and ease of administration. But be careful; you will have to be rigorous because the security of your data will then depend only on you.
