Hey all, I know the purists might sneer at me for this, but I just spun up a server via Hetzner so I could run Docker in the cloud. Since my ISP uses CGNAT, my only options for hosting services at home are either via Tailscale Funnel or CloudFlare Tunnel. If you remember my previous post about Yattee, that’s not available on the public internet, but was meant for my private use only. The idea behind this new project is hosting things I intend for public access. I’m debating if I’m going to use a domain I already own that ends in the .us TLD or if I should wait until I get paid in a couple of days and buy a new one from Pork Bun that doesn’t have the .us TLD and all the potential baggage that carries. Three questions come to mind:
- How practical is running Portainer on my Docker instance? (I’ve got it installed, but I’m new to Portainer and Docker for the most part.)
- Other than Friendica, Mastodon, Matrix, PeerTube and PieFed, what’s worth running on a Docker instance with 8 VCPUs, 16GB of RAM and around 300GB of storage?
- Is there a Matrix room for those wishing to discuss self-hosting, especially via Docker?


Regarding domain name, use what you have. It’s super easy to change domain names, and some people do it regularly to take advantage of 1st year sales. Basically all you have to do is transfer your DNS entries to the new domain, and update your reverse proxy entries.
Definitely put everything behind a reverse proxy. I followed this advice so I don’t even have to expose ports using Docker. Everything runs through the reverse proxy, and Dockge makes it trivial add each container to the same network.