About

This site began with a handful of goals: build something with Next.js, self-host it, add a newsletter, and keep the costs as low as possible.

The deeper motivation was to gain experience with the back end. Until then, most of my work had been on the front end. I knew how to build user interfaces, but I had much less experience with everything behind them. Building and hosting this site from scratch was a way to change that.

As I worked, I documented what I was learning, partly because I knew I would eventually forget how everything was set up. The site became a personal archive, somewhere I could return to whenever I needed to do something again. Since those notes were going online anyway, I started turning them into tutorials that other people could follow. Writing things down in a structured way helps me clarify my own understanding, and hopefully saves someone else a few hours of head-scratching along the way.

The self-hosting content is organized as a course called Self‑Host Hero. The lessons follow a logical order, so you can work through them from start to finish.

The course is the most structured part of the site, but it isn’t the whole thing. You’ll also find standalone posts about the tools I use, problems I run into, and things I’m learning along the way. Some are practical tutorials, while others are simply explorations of topics that have caught my interest.

Newsletter

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive a notification when a new post goes live. I won't flood your inbox though.

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Calculators

Along the way, I also built a few calculators for forex, health, and poker. They’re not directly related to the rest of the site, but they seemed useful enough to keep around.

Browse the calculators

Contact

Have a question about something on the site, spotted a mistake, or just want to say hello? Feel free to contact me.

Get in touch