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

The homelab

A sanitised tour of the kit every guide is tested on.

No addresses, hostnames or secrets, just the shape of it and how the pieces fit together.

See the tools Browse the Docker apps

At a glance

  • 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 with hardware transcoding, 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 it fits together

Virtualisation Proxmox and Docker VMs Proxmox runs a few VMs, and the apps run in Docker inside them. Media transcoding uses the Intel iGPU (Quick Sync), as in the Jellyfin guide.
DNS & Network Local DNS and ad-blocking Technitium DNS answers for the whole network, blocks ads and trackers, and gives services friendly local names. Read the guide →
Front door Reverse proxy, SSO and a tunnel Traefik handles HTTPS, Authentik adds single sign-on in front of the admin panels, and Cloudflare Tunnel publishes the public bits without opening ports.
Media Jellyfin and friends Jellyfin with hardware transcoding, the *arr apps for the library, Seerr for requests and Tdarr for background transcodes. Read the guide → Dashboards & Monitoring One page for everything Homarr is the start page, Uptime Kuma checks everything is up, and Gotify sends a notification when it isn’t. Read the guide →
Security & Automation Secrets, alerts and workflows Vaultwarden for passwords, Wazuh for threat detection, n8n for workflows and Dockhand for managing the containers.

How the apps are run

  • One folder and one compose file per app, so each app can be updated, moved or removed on its own.
  • All app data under one parent folder, so backing up is a single job.
  • Pinned versions where it matters. DNS and dashboards use a specific image tag so nothing changes overnight; the version each guide was tested with is listed at the top of the guide.
  • Secrets in a .env file, not in the compose file, and never in a guide.
  • Admin panels behind single sign-on. Authentik sits in front of anything with an admin login.

How this site runs

Nerdy Guides itself is part of the homelab: The theme is a custom one, with app icons from selfh.st/icons.

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Sanitised on purpose. IP addresses, hostnames, internal domains and anything else that maps the network are left out of this page and every guide.