Homelab For the Beginner: You Can Self-host Your Own Server on $50 Hardware

Building on my last post about the Gemini and Gopher protocols, I realized I wanted to take a step further in helping others reclaim web autonomy and sovereignty. So I'm writing this guide. A few months ago, I wrote about permacomputing and computing for the apocalypse where I briefly spoke about self-hosting and creating your own homelab. But I did not get into the "how-to" at all. I want to do that today, because I took another swing at creating a homelab, and though there was a lot of trial and error, I was overall really impressed by how much capability and functionality you can get out of old, inexpensive hardware. I originally shelved the project in January and put it on the backburner, because I'm the stereotypical dev that enjoys hopping from one new shiny idea to another. But more than that, I am not a full-stack web developer. I stick to the front-end and JAMstack, avoiding databases, backend, and DevOps altogether. But the Internet doesn't actually work that way. Sure, you…