this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
46 points (96.0% liked)

Selfhosted

40152 readers
553 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hello. I’m pretty new here. I just managed to get my Raspberry Pi setup at home to selfhost a simple website that will act as my portfolio for some art I do.

I’m using WordPress to make the content of the website, meaning it runs on Apache, MariaDB and MySQL in the background. It’s connected via port 80 since I don’t want to pay for SSL certificates to setup https. There will be no accounts or transactions happening on my website. I don’t have anything to manage my dynamic IP but I’ll figure that out later. I’ve deleted the default Pi user on the RPi.

Are there security issues I should address preemptively? I’m worried for instance that I am exposing my home network, making it easier for someone to breach into whatever is connected there.

Any tips on making sure my setup is secure?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

since I don’t want to pay for SSL certificates to setup https.

You don't need to pay for SSL certs anymore, most of the time. You can get them for free from a bunch of different places now. I use Let's Encrypt. The web server/reverse proxy I use, Caddy is able to automatically get a cert for you, install it, and keep it renewed. The only time you need to pay for a cert is if you are handling financial transactions.

Are there security issues I should address preemptively?

WordPress itself has a generally good reputation for security, though depending on how the current drama goes, that may change. WordPress security problems have almost always stemmed from plugins or poor password hygiene. Remove any plugins you are not actively using, keep the ones you are using updated, and use a good password that you don't use anywhere else. A password wallet like Bit Warden can generate and store such passwords for you.

Better on the security front would be to evaluate whether you actually need something like WordPress at all. A static site would likely be far more secure. There's less moving parts that might be vulnerable.

While you could program a static site yourself, it's more common nowadays to use a static site generator like Hugo to build the site. You set it up once for how you want the site to look and then you write your posts in markdown or whatever your particular generator uses.

I don’t have anything to manage my dynamic IP

Most domain name providers have some sort of setup for dealing with dynamic IP addresses, a program called ddclient is pretty common and is available in most repos.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Wow lots of info. I’ll check all of this out. You have a good point that I don’t need wordpress. Hugo looks interesting, thanks for the advice!

And yes, as said above, I’ll look into the free SSL certs to setup https.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

To add to this, you might check out some of the free Hugo themes here: https://themes.gohugo.io/tags/portfolio/