Honestly? Probably boredom. Computer-related projects are addictive to me.

Haven’t ventured too far, but searxng was my first selfhosted service. It’s very easy, single container, no database.

Never self-hosted Lemmy, but have self-hosted other things in the past. While you don’t necessarily need to code, you need a fair amount of code-adjacent skills. If you ever want to get into self-hosting, you should have a look into (at least):

• the linux command line
• ssh
• how ports work
• VPS providers
• DNS registrars
• nginx
• docker (while you don’t need it to host things, it makes your life 10x easier)

It makes sense in terms of reproducibility.

Imagine if your server gets compromised, you accidentally break it, or you just want to move to a cheaper provider or a different server. Do you want to have to tweak it all over again, and fix bugs that you figured out how to fix 6 months ago and you don’t remember?

I’d rather have some yaml files that do it for me. And it’s a new skill as well.

Docker is definitely worth the time investment.

If OP wants to go one level deeper: Ansible.