Yes, as @[email protected] says, just create a new user for each event you want to share photos about: ‘BeachBBQ’, ‘WeekendStay-July’ etc, then bind those user accounts to whatever folders you want to have the photos in and set the user restrictions to upload, share, but not delete for example.

I also use various FileBrowser instances, with a different subdomain pointing to them, also as a way to filter out usage as well. collegefriends.mydomain.com could take you to a FileBrowser instance that only has access to photos from a certain friend group. Not sure how useful that would be to you, but it’s another way of controlling the data flow.

I’ll admit I’ve not tried Traefik yet, but I see Caddy as being to web servers (and reverse proxies), what WireGuard is to VPNs.

It does what it needs to well, with a minimal config file. And if I learn and get comfortable with Caddy, then I know it can do anything I will ever need of a web server down the line with no need for me to ever change setup.

For what it’s worth given the age of this thread and disagreement going on in it, I would recommend Unraid.

Easy for a beginner, with enough to take you up to intermediate level: a web GUI for pretty much all the required terminal commands. It’s been around for years, is not going away, but instead getting updated. Works on any old eBay hardware and most of all, the community there are very supportive of beginners. There’s also lots of YouTube tutorials.

It ticks all the boxes for easy self hosting. It’s just not for Linux protocol purists.

EDIT: I’m learning a lot from this thread, and it’s interesting to see how tolerant people are for self hosting. I would add in my vote for Unraid: it allows me to be dynamic with the time I have for self hosting. I’m sometimes extremely busy and don’t have the time to keep my self hosting updated, so the web GUI is essential for basic maintenance. Then there are times when I do want to waste an afternoon trying something in terminal and learning more, and that’s when Unraid again comes to the rescue. I couldn’t self host with 100% terminal, and neither would I want to with 100% GUI. The best self hosting platform is one that can mix them up efficiently and effectively. I am keen to try some others mentioned here, as some look quite interesting. However NAS is a massive element of what I need for my homelab, so Unraid will stay for now.

When creating a user, bind them to a folder, then when they login with said user, they only see that folder. That’s the way I’ve been handing out uploadable links.

I think the thing with self hosting is that it’s a hobby, and when it goes wrong, it’s part of the hobby to figure it out. But in terms of business, then it becomes a risk. By all means try and use FOSS to improve solutions. I use a self hosted dropbox / file delivery to clients as it can saturate my 1Gbps fibre which is faster than most cloud file shares, but only because if it goes wrong one day, it’s a 2 min job to use a cloud solution instead (temporarily) and email clients with the alternative solution. But I would never build something up that only ever worked via one system.

Don’t just have data backups, have service backups. And in that regard, you may decide it’s just easier to do as others have said and use enterprise solutions from the start.

If using a self hosted Office suite, have all files duped into a single Google Drive account for example. That way you’re only paying for one Google account and have an emergency backup solution in place. EDIT: I’ve just recently degoogled and use Infomaniak in Europe for my office suite backup as its free for the 1st user. Experimenting with other non-Google/Microsoft solutions might be part of your journey.

You may decide the savings aren’t worth the effort in what you’re trying to achieve. EDIT: but I want to add that this is all part of the fun of what we do: thinking outside the box!

I would recommend Unraid. Not sure what people think of it round here as surprised no one has mentioned it. My homelab was a mix of machines for VMs, Docker and NAS, and I consolidated it last year with Unraid and couldn’t be happier. I run Plex, Immich, Wordpress, Home Assistant and a load of other containers, alongside a Windows and Ubuntu VM on a cheap eBay HP Z workstation. If on a NUC with only a single drive, V7 of Unraid will now work without an array, so a single drive basically. It’ll give you a GUI for Docker and everything.

Sure, so I use Caddy as a reverse proxy for all my subdomains, the public ones direct straight to whatever service(s) are on IP:port etc, then the private ones only allow private IP ranges of which one is my VPN subnet, therefore only allowing LAN and VPN access. I then also have a section for each of the private subdomains with Authelia authentication which is omitted here in the caddyfile example:

(allowed) {
	@allowed client_ip 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.10.0/24 192.168.20.0/28
}

sub.domain.com {
	import allowed
	handle @allowed {
		reverse_proxy 192.168.80.8:8080
	}

	handle {
		abort
	}
}

So among my services I self host, a few need to be publicly accessible for work. For those I wish to remain private, Caddy only allows private IP ranges, plus then Authelia as auth which is set to 30 days. There is then the login of each service behind Authelia as well. It’s as good as it needs to be for my needs.

If I were only self hosting private services, then as others have said, I would put all access through a VPN.

Edit: I should add that of course the private services are then only accessed via VPN to the router (part of the private IP ranges). Caddy as reverse proxy also obfuscates the subdomain names I use.