My initial thoughts

For some time now, I wanted to create and host a website. Nowadays is easier than ever to do this – you find on Google lots of offers for hosting, with domains included, with prices for every budget to start any kind of project you might have in mind. I didn’t want that. I wanted to have a VPN as well. I wanted to have a recursive DNS as well, that can block ads and act as a DNS server for my local network too.

How could I do all of this?

Because I like doing stuff in Linux, I love having options that are open-source and can be freely accessed and done if you invest your time in learning and doing them, I thought of a better way to start my project. I made some research and made some calculations and I found out that on the long term I will be investing more than I want to for this kind of project, and will also learn less than if I would buy a solution and DIY.

So with a rather small initial investment, I bought a Raspberry Pi 4B and started this project’s journey. I installed Linux on it and started administrating it. For this project, I think the Raspberry’s hardware is more than enough. Frankly, I believe the initial price is worth taking learning and developing skills into consideration compared with other solutions – plus it’s a sustainable and low-power consumption solution.