hello friends! new(ish)!
Selfhosting
Selfhosting refers to hosting your own server, whether it is a communication server, game server, web site such as a wiki, etc.
Prerequisites
- Should you wish to keep your server running 24/7, you will want to have a dedicated machine. Any computer would work, but specialized hardware is strongly recommended, consider ARM-based devices to keep power consumption low (high efficiency but less raw power).
- Proper OS. For most servers you will want to use GNU/Linux or similar Unix-based operating system.
- The required server package. On the aforementioned systems it should be easy to install through your package manager, and all that is left is configuration of the package and networking so it works properly.
Guides for hosting specific servers
Now, each server use case will require different configuration, you should look up the specific documentation. You will also have to configure networking so whichever port your server daemon uses is reachable from the outside. This is not covered in this article as of writing, yet. But once you do this your server will be reachable using your IP address and port.
If you want to host a server anonymously, you can do this by the means of a Tor hidden service. Other than the benefit of anonymity and end-to-end encryption, it makes networking easier because you do not have to open any ports to the outside, the Tor daemon takes care of that. Drawbacks are possible connection speed bottleneck by the Tor network, but mostly latency (response time in milliseconds) will be hurt, so it is not suitable for some game servers, but if your game does not need latency to be low, it will work for the most part just fine.