I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. My current ADHD hyperfixation is NodeBB, but I think my questions fit most anything that you want to be available to the general public and not just yourself and your friends.

Basically, I want to host a NodeBB instance intended for the general public out of my house. What are the risks of doing this? In particular, what are the risks of doling out a web address that points to my personal IP address? Is this even a good idea? Or should I just rent a VPS? This is 80% me wanting to improve my sysadmin skills, and 20% me wanting to create a community.

I have a DMZ in place. Hosts in the DMZ cannot reach the LAN, but LAN hosts can reach the DMZ. If necessary, I can make sure DMZ hosts can’t communicate with each other.

I have synchronous 1 Gb fiber internet. Based on the user traffic of similar forums, I don’t anticipate a crush of people.

I know the basics of how to set up a NodeBB instance, and I’ve successfully backed up and restored an instance on another machine.

I’m not 100% on things like HTTPS certs. I can paste a certbot command from a tutorial, that’s it.

Anything else I should know? Thanks!

EDIT:

I also have a domain, a couple of them, actually. They’re like potato chips; you can’t stop at just one.

I don’t plan on self-hosting email used for forum registration and announcements. I’m not a masochist.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    generating a decade long cert is a terrible idea.

    what if a malicious actor gets your private keys and can spoof you now?

    you’re fucked unless you work through the vendor to blacklist that cert, which is a huge pita.

    certs should be done yearly at most. quarterly at best.

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        1 month ago

        amateur.

        you’re going to get fucked by doing that one day, and it’s going to be months or longer before you realize it.

        I just hope you’re not responsible for an actual business with poor security practices like that.

        • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          You’re just not a pleasant person, are you? Every time you’ve replied to one of my posts, it’s to be a twatwaffle.

          An ignorant twatwaffle, considering you obviously have no idea how Cloudflare certs work. Which ends up making me look like I’m smarter than I really am, so thanks!