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Comment by mawise | Hacker News Reader

This isn't the hard part of self-hosting, at least not anymore. In the comments here there are lots of examples of similar projects that solve basically the same problem (app selection and deployment). To make self-hosting "easy" we need to solve domain registration, DNS management, and port-forwarding configuration.

This probably requires a project more like OpenWRT that includes an API-driven relationship with a registrar. The lack of a standard (consumer accessible) domain registration API is a huge hole in automating this. If such a project gets some traction, then it could migrate to a physical router that prospective self-hosters could buy. With domain registration, DNS management, and port forwarding all in the router's software, then the remaining hard parts can be sufficiently automated to make self hosting accessible to the average gaming console owner.

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Makes me a little sad that it's been almost exactly 6 years since I made this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24475946

In that time I started a domain registrar, a free OpenID Connect login service (https://lastlogin.net/), created the de facto list of tunneling tools (https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling), and built a couple of my own tunneling tools (SirTunnel and boringproxy), all to try and make self hosting easier.

I'm still trying to solve this problem. Some progress has been made (mostly by other projects), but we're still not there.

FWIW, I used to think everyone owning a domain was the way forward. I now suspect otherwise. Domains are too expensive (especially most TLDs outside .com/.net/.org) and the costs of accidentally forgetting to renew are catastrophic. Domains just aren't a consumer product.

I think you only need a domain if you want a permanent public web presence, and I don't think most people need that. Most people just need a better/faster/private google drive, google photos, google docs, etc, and for that it's ok if your domain changes once in a while.

So I think free subdomains set up without vendor lockin are probably the ticket.

If anyone is interested in collaborating in this space, definitely reach out.

I wholeheartedly agree with your comment and have thought a lot about how I would solve these problems. Considered founding a startup as well, but the market size is very unclear. I would say in theory, cloud-in-a-bottle already comes quite far. The only thing missing is another tier where imbue only provides you with a domain and a reverse-proxy so your home-server is reachable. Of course, their software would then also habe to manage the whole certificate lifecycle and DNS-challenge, but if it did, then you can have your server at home and not have to worry about how it manages to be reachable from the internet.

However, if I'm understanding you correctly, a solution like this would also be too much vendor lock-in for you, correct? If so, how independent do you wanna go? I think especially if you want people to be able to self-host from home, you will always need some proxy in the cloud. Or are you considering a DDNS setup?

Interested, I've lastlogin, working on simplifying this space too

I agree and disagree. Easy management of server apps IS a hard part. Domain registration, DNS management and port-forwarding are ALSO hard parts.

For 99.99% of the humans on earth, their primary computer is a smartphone. Anything that they can't do with a smartphone-like interface is hard, bordering on impossible. Even on the smartphone, there is a huge app complexity hurdle - sure some folks will use complex apps, but most people won't go much further in complexity than a subset of the apps that come with their phone. They'll add apps because it is easy, but they won't actually use apps that are too hard for them to use.

These days, those same majority of the population might be annoyed at having to use an app to manage their wireless headphones, printers, smart appliances etc etc.. but they WILL do it. And they CAN do it.

Effectively all of those devices are technically servers too. Back in my youth, we'd call a printer connected to a network a "print server" and it was often a standalone device that connected the printer to the network.

There is no inherent reason that managing a fairly capable server, backups, DNS, VPN tunneling, port forwarding etc can't be as simple as "a basic app." Yes - a lot of limitations on what is theoretically possible will be imposed. Limitations and defaults will need to happen in the background to keep it simple. But it can happen.

There are many of us who don't need public DNS records and rely on local-only DNS records accessible from outside via Tailscale/WireGuard.

Insightful comment I fully agree that the hardest part needs to be automated fully, there's plenty of DNS providers with API access so it can be done. Naming is oftentimes the hardest part we have in tech, I dream of a future we are more decentralized and we have alternatives to DNS to access ressources,see this great text by Andrew Nesbitt about the subject of naming: https://nesbitt.io/2026/03/03/package-management-is-naming-a...

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