if you could start again in your self hosting journey, what would you do differently? :)
That’s an excellent question.
If I were to start over, the first thing that I would do is start by learning the basics of networking and set up a freakin’ VPN! IMO exposing services to the public internet should be considered more of an advanced level task. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s risky and frankly unnecessary.
The lowest barrier to entry for a personal VPN, by far, is Tailscale. Automatic internal DNS and clients for nearly any device makes finding services on a dedicated machine really, really, easy. Look into putting tailscale right into the compose file so you automatically get an internal DNS records for a service rather than a whole machine.
From there, play around with more ownership (work) over what can touch your network. Switch from Tailscale’s “trusted” login to hosting your own Headscale instance. Add a PiHole or AdGuard exit node and set up your own internal DNS records.
Maybe even scrap the magic (someone else’s logic that may or may not be doing things you need) and go for a plain-Jane Wireguard setup.
Apparently I’m in the minority, but I love Logseq. I’ve used it with Syncthing for personal notes and grad school for the past three years with no hiccups. Maybe my success with it is partially due to nested bullet points already being how my brain works but the default paradigm is perfect for me.
The plain markdown files are organized reasonably, so I can straight up use Vim as my notes editor if I want.
Tags (#) create a new page to easily circle back to topics later without interrupting your thought pattern to make that structure manually. Once you leave edit mode for the line the tag becomes a link to that page. Some of my favorites are #clothes-that-fit (where I can easily embed a picture of the tag of what I’m trying on to look for deals online later), or #reading-list.
It’s just so useful.