Hello everyone,

Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on it, and use it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.

Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

Thanks.
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Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on it, an it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.

Awesome, have fun!

Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

Although I love the project. I would still say take a 5 USD/month server at CloudWays and save yourself much headache. You can still do all the nice server stuff, but at least its backed up, always available etc etc.

Thanks.

Just my 2 cents, sorry if it doesnt align.

oP!

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Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on it, and use

it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.

Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

Good questions and good on you for giving this a go...
There are sooooo many ways to do this.
Lately I've wanted a no fuss, no cost web UI to manage multi-tenant web
servers - like cPanel does without all the bells and whistles, and no mail.

I opted for CloudPanel.io
Its free, fast reliable, and most importantly, unlike most of the other free web panels, Wordpress sites run super fast!!

As for protection, well as long as permissions on files & folders are set properly (read up on best practices for that - use Wordpress BP as a guide), ensure user names & passwords are complex, secure, etc, where possible,
enroll 2FA/MFA.

You can also opt for a reverse proxy in front - just means a little more
admin if adding / removing sites. As for reverse proxy, you could do it all using nginx (cli / conf text files) or go for something with more features
and a UI. Options include Sophos Firewall (using Home license (free) which include the WAF), or a free license of Kemp LoadMaster (limited to 20mbps bandwidth) NetworkChuck (YT) did a video on Kemp setup.

Again, PLENTY of options to do all of this, I wanted to use something with little fuss, free, good performance, so chose CloudPanel (and yes, I pretty much tested ALL of the free web panel options) and for the rProxy, I already use Sophos so went with that.

Hope this helps!

|14Dave!
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BY: Vintholdt (21:1/183)

Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on it,
and use it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.

Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

Unless you have a passion to learn and tinker, use Cloudflare pages and leave the worry to them.

I used to have several ESX servers, my own Exchange server, IIS servers, etc. all running from home. Got rid of all of it. Mainly because as I got older, I had more things in life I wanted to do than maintain infrastructure. Plus, nowadays with all the security issues happening at lightning speed, just was too much work and worry.

-dmxrob

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Vintholdt wrote to All <=-

Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on it, and use it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.

Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

Use the built-in firewall to block anything but ports 80 and 443 from
coming in from the internet.

If you search for "nginx hardening guide", you'll find lots of sites
with information on how to secure the web server.

NGINX is pretty complex, it can do a lot. If you're just serving up a
couple of static pages with no cgi, maybe something like Caddy?



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Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on i and use it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.
Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

I am not expert, however I have been running a home server for quite sometime. I would suggest not installing the webserver directly on the hardware, but instead use something like proxmox, and create a container for a webserver. You are never going to get perfect security, however you can have daily backups of you services, and if anything critical does happen, restoring a previous backup is one click away. This is also useful not just for security, but if you simply goof up a configuration, same idea. If I plan to make any changes to any of my services, I have learned to take a quick snapshot, just to make sure I can restore back to a working sate.

Lloyd (neoshock) sysop @ Vintage Pi BBS
vintagepi.asuscomm.com

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I am not expert, however I have been running a home server for quite sometime. I would suggest not installing the webserver directly on the hardware, but instead use something like proxmox, and create a container for a webserver. You are never going to get perfect security, however
you can have daily backups of you services, and if anything critical
does happen, restoring a previous backup is one click away. This is also useful not just for security, but if you simply goof up a configuration, same idea. If I plan to make any changes to any of my services, I have learned to take a quick snapshot, just to make sure I can restore back
to a working sate.

Yes, excellent advice here, definitely virtualise and use snapshots whenever doing maintenance or updates!

|14Dave!
|05(|13dflorey|05)
|13Retro16 BBS |05--> |14bbs.retro16.com |05(|13WIP|05)
|07No one expects the Spanish inquisition!

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Re: Advice on self-hosting a website?
By: Vintholdt to All on Tue Apr 01 2025 07:20 am

Hello everyone,

Recently I dug up an old PC and decided to install Ubuntu Server on it, and use it as my server for hosting a website. I am using Nginx.

Does anyone have any general and/or security advice?

Thanks.

Which sort of website is it? Is it static? A node.js service? Some PHP application?

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Re: Advice on self-hosting a website?
By: opicron to Vintholdt on Tue Apr 01 2025 08:00 pm

Although I love the project. I would still say take a 5 USD/month server at CloudWays and save yourself much headache. You can still do all the nice

And then have an OVH like crisis when their datacenter burns to the ground? XD

Having a virtual private server on rent is no replacement for proper practices. You should not count on having anybody backup your stuff.

Where I work at we have been pulling services off the cloud back into our premises because budgetworthy cloud services are not that reliable.



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Re: Re: Advice on self-hosting a website?
By: Dmxrob to Vintholdt on Thu Apr 03 2025 05:52 pm

Unless you have a passion to learn and tinker, use Cloudflare pages and leave the worry to them.

Cloudflare is a Google-level threat to Internet privacy. I wish everybody stopped promoting it.

I mean if you use CloudFlare you are axing down any visitor that shows up with a non-standard browser, from an VPN, from Tor...

Sincerely, first thing you ask if they ask you for advice is which sort of service they are setting. So many services that can run from home are set-and-forget these days. There is no reason to delegate security to yet another party which also happens to suck.


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neoshock wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I am not expert, however I have been running a home server for quite sometime. I would suggest not installing the webserver directly on the hardware, but instead use something like proxmox, and create a
container for a webserver.

Snapshots are wonderful. It's so nice being able to take a snapshot
before maintenance and backing the changes out if needed.




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Arelor wrote to opicron <=-

Having a virtual private server on rent is no replacement for proper practices. You should not count on having anybody backup your stuff.

If I had symmetrical networking at home with no bandwidth caps, and
could rsync between a VPS and home, I'd be all over it.



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