What this book is about and who it’s for

This book is for anyone who wants to run their own projects without relying on expensive cloud services or constantly expiring free trials. It shows you how to host APIs, databases, and frontends on your own hardware or a low-cost virtual machine, safely and reliably.

You don’t need a powerful server. A mini PC, a cheap VM, a Raspberry Pi, or even an old laptop is enough. The goal is to give you control over your projects, reduce costs, and learn practical self-hosting skills along the way.

Who this book is for:

• Developers and hobbyists who want to experiment with personal projects
• Developers who want to showcase the personal projects they’ve built to potential employers or recruiters
• Anyone frustrated by the limits of free-tier services.
• People who want a home “cloud” that they can manage and scale themselves.

By the end of this book, you’ll have the confidence to host your own projects and make them publicly accessible, all without spending a fortune.

What this book isn’t

This book is not a hardcore, exhaustive guide to self-hosting. If you’re looking for a detailed reference on your preferred Linux distribution, Proxmox setup, or advanced cloud orchestration tool, this isn’t that book, and that’s okay.

The approach here reflects what I’ve found easiest as a beginner: a practical, straightforward way to get your projects online without getting bogged down in every technical detail. Think of it as a stepping stone: you’ll learn enough to host and showcase your projects confidently, and later, if you discover a tool or setup that suits you better, you’ll have the foundation to switch over with minimal effort.

The goal is to get you started, not overwhelm you, so you can focus on building and sharing your projects without frustration. I did my best to choose solutions that worked for me at the time. There may be better options for some of the technologies I cover, but once you’ve gone through the book you’ll be able to swap them out yourself.

About Me

I’m James. I’m not a professional systems / DevOps engineer. I’m just an amateur who enjoys breaking things, fixing them, and learning from the process. I’ve always been fascinated by DevOps technologies and how all the moving parts of an application come together behind the scenes. Over time that curiosity, combined with my frustration over the high cost of public clouds, turned into a hobby of self-hosting my own apps, experimenting with Docker, and building small setups that feel like my own personal cloud.