Nerdy Guides Step-by-step self-hosting and Docker guides

About Nerdy Guides

Clear, tested self-hosting guides from a real homelab, so they work first time on yours.

Step-by-step Docker guides in plain British English, run on real hardware and sanitised before they go live.

Browse the Docker apps Read the latest guides

Who's behind it

Hello, I'm Nerdy Technician 👋 I'm a home-labber and self-hoster, which mostly means I'd rather run my own services at home than rent them from someone else.

Over the years I've set up, broken and rebuilt more self-hosted apps than I'd like to admit, and I kept notes as I went. Nerdy Guides is those notes, tidied up into proper step-by-step guides. They explain the why as well as the how, so when something changes later you can fix it rather than paste and hope.

The guides are written for anyone running their own kit at home, whether that's an old PC under the desk or a small rack in the loft. If one of them helps you get something running, it's done its job.

What you'll find

Guides Docker, step by step A complete compose file, every setting explained, obvious placeholders to swap for your own values, and how to update safely. All Docker guides → Directory The A–Z of Docker apps Every self-hosted app in the lab, by category or A to Z. Apps with a full guide are marked, the rest are coming soon. Open the Docker apps →
Tips Homelab tips along the way Reverse proxy options, single sign-on, local DNS, hardware transcoding, updates and backups, covered inside the guides where you need them.

Browse by category: Media · DNS & Network · Dashboards

Latest guides

New guides also appear on the home page and in the RSS feed.

The homelab in brief

A quick, sanitised tour of what the guides are run on. No addresses or hostnames, just the shape of it.

  • Hypervisor A Proxmox host running a few Docker VMs
  • Containers Docker and Docker Compose, with a compose file per app
  • Front door A reverse proxy, with single sign-on in front of the admin panels
  • DNS Local DNS with ad-blocking for the whole network
  • Media A media server, plus the usual helpers for the library
  • Dashboard A start page with a tile for every service
  • This site Ghost, self-hosted in Docker and published through a tunnel

How the guides are tested

  1. Run on real hardware. Every guide is followed from start to finish on real hardware in the homelab before it's published.
  2. Secrets sanitised. Passwords, keys, tokens, IP addresses and hostnames are swapped for obvious placeholders before anything goes online.
  3. Checked against current versions. Each guide is checked against the current image version, which is listed under Tested with at the top, and the date is shown on the guide.

Software moves quickly, so if a guide is a few months old, have a look at the app's release notes before you start.

Reading a guide

  • Placeholders such as example.com, 192.168.1.20 and CHANGE_ME_STRONG_PASSWORD must be replaced with your own values.
  • I use PUID=1000 and PGID=1000 in examples. Check yours with the id command.
  • Paths like /path/to/appdata are where you keep your container data. Pick one place and stick with it; it makes backups painless.

Credits

  • App icons from selfh.st/icons, licensed under CC BY 4.0. A few PNG-only icons are wrapped, unmodified, in an SVG container.
  • Logos and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. They're used only to identify the software each guide covers and don't imply endorsement.
  • Powered by Ghost, the open-source publishing platform, self-hosted with Docker.
  • The Nerdy Guides logo is the site's own branding. Its lettering uses the Titan One and Righteous typefaces (SIL Open Font License 1.1), converted to outlines.

Get in touch

Spotted a mistake, or a guide that no longer works? I'd like to know. You can find me on GitHub, and every new guide goes out in the RSS feed.

GitHub Nerdy-Technician Projects and code RSS Subscribe to the feed Every new guide, straight to your reader
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Disclaimer. These guides are shared in good faith and come with no warranty. Always keep backups, read the release notes before updating, and never expose an admin panel to the internet without authentication in front of it.