Insights

Longer-form notes on self-hosted building blocks—patterns that show up across engagements—so you can compare options before you commit.

Articles describe general patterns, not a map of any single private network. When a piece reads like a story, look for the short Note at the end on anonymization.

Sister lanes—productions, services, hosting, IT—share the EasyGoin Technologies roof; this hub stays about technical notes and reaching Alex when you want help applying them.

• NGINX Proxy Manager at the edgeWhat NGINX Proxy Manager is for, why a friendly reverse proxy matters in self-hosted stacks, and how it keeps TLS and routing boring on purpose.
• Pi-hole, split DNS, and fewer mysteriesHow Pi-hole fits a self-hosted stack: LAN DNS, ad blocking, and why internal names deserve the same care as public ones.
• Portainer and stacks you can hand offPortainer CE as the operations face of Docker: why stacks beat one-off containers for anything you intend to keep.
• Gitea and Git that stays close to homeWhat Gitea offers for self-hosted Git, how it pairs with CI and Portainer, and why small instances still deserve grown-up hygiene.
• Proxmox VE and the virtue of boring metalAn approachable look at Proxmox for VMs and containers, and how a small virtualization layer changes what you can try safely.
• OPNsense and a calmer network edgeWhat OPNsense contributes at the edge: routing, firewalling, and the habit of naming what is allowed instead of hoping defaults guessed right.
• Vikunja and keeping execution honestHow open task boards like Vikunja help teams ship without turning planning into performance art.
• n8n as glue between honest systemsWhat n8n is good at in a self-hosted stack: workflows that connect APIs without pretending every integration deserves a new microservice.
• Netdata and metrics you will actually openWhy Netdata is useful for quick health checks without building a three-week observability science project first.
• Stalwart and modern self-hosted mailA high-level look at Stalwart Mail Server: why new mail stacks exist, what they optimize for, and how to think about mail without nostalgia.
• MariaDB and the one-app-one-user habitPractical notes on MariaDB in multi-service stacks: least privilege, connection hygiene, and why shared databases still need boundaries.
• DNS: registrars, edge caches, and the two audiences problemHow public DNS, registrar APIs, and edge networks interact—and why your LAN and the internet both deserve explicit answers.
• Rundeck, Pterodactyl, and friendly ops facesWhy job runners and game panels show up in serious stacks: repeatable jobs, delegated access, and fewer SSH keys on sticky notes.
• WordPress vs static sites: a pragmatic menuWhen WordPress is the right hammer, when static HTML wins, and how to avoid choosing based on vibes alone.
• Micro-wins in configuration that compoundSmall stack habits—DNS, TLS, backups, naming—that look trivial until they save a week.
• When DNS was the real bugHow split DNS and VPN paths can masquerade as an application outage until resolution is aligned across offices and remote workers.
• One Git truth, fewer release firesBranching drift, shadow workflows, and how a single forge restored release confidence for a small engineering team.
• Automation that bought Fridays backReplacing fragile copy-paste reporting with scheduled, well-bounded automation for a small administrative team.
• Remote consulting with English-speaking teamsHow I work with clients across time zones: communication defaults, async respect, and the same stack discipline as on-site engagements.