Lots of people contributed really good answers, so I don’t have anything valuable to add to their answers. But I wanted to point out for your detailed question, you include what you have done, what is your understanding and what are your shortcomings clearly. As opposed to a lot of posts with vague, detail-challenged narratives, that’s a top notch post.
And the community delivered by giving good answers, so go community!
Also, you didn’t just ghost after the initial post and interacted.with the people who graciously donated their time, so another bonus point there, as well.
I have personally been very happy with FreshRSS. Nowadays I use Nextcloud News (just a Nextcloud) app for it. So if you already have Nextcloud you don’t even need to selfhost something extra.
They both have WebApps. FreshRSS has a few themes to fit your taste and Nextcloud News will obviously follow your Nextcloud theming.
As far as apps go, FreshRSS has (probably) more than Nextcloud News. I personally like Feeder (only in PlayStore but worth it imo). For Nextcloud there is an App with the same name. Also good imo, but FreshRSS/Feeder has more customization options.
I use wireguard and nginx but I set my WG DNS as the server ip. I have adguardhome running on the server and have added the external domains to map to their LAN address so they resolved locally when using the vpn or the LAN. A similar setup should work for you.
No, because I am worried the NSA may try to collate data from them. In fact, I zero-wipe, drill bit the drives in the platters and the PCB, and drop them off at e-waste for recycling.
Preferably Home ISP that has provides public IP addresses - no CGNAT BS;
Ideally a static IP at home, but you can do just fine with a dynamic DNS service such as freedns.afraid.org.
Quick setup guide and checklist:
Create your subdomain for the dynamic DNS service freedns.afraid.org and install the daemon on the server - will update your domain with your dynamic IP when it changes;
List what ports you need remote access to;
Isolate the server from your main network as much as possible. If possible have then on a different public IP either using a VLAN or better yet with an entire physical network just for that - avoids VLAN hopping attacks and DDoS attacks to the server that will also take your internet down;
If you’re using VLANs then configure your switch properly. Decent switches allows you to restrict the WebUI to a certain VLAN / physical port - this will make sure if your server is hacked they won’t be able to access the Switch’s UI and reconfigure their own port to access the entire network. Note that cheap TP-Link switches usually don’t have a way to specify this;
Configure your ISP router to assign a static local IP to the server and port forward what’s supposed to be exposed to the internet to the server;
Only expose required services (nginx, game server, program x) to the Internet us. Everything else such as SSH, configuration interfaces and whatnot can be moved to another private network and/or a WireGuard VPN you can connect to when you want to manage the server;
Use custom ports with 5 digits for everything - something like 23901 (up to 65535) to make your service(s) harder to find;
Disable IPv6? Might be easier than dealing with a dual stack firewall and/or other complexities;
Use nftables / iptables / another firewall and set it to drop everything but those ports you need for services and management VPN access to work - 10 minute guide;
Configure nftables to only allow traffic coming from public IP addresses (IPs outside your home network IP / VPN range) to the Wireguard or required services port - this will protect your server if by some mistake the router starts forwarding more traffic from the internet to the server than it should;
Configure nftables to restrict what countries are allowed to access your server. Most likely you only need to allow incoming connections from your country and more details here.
Realistically speaking if you’re doing this just for a few friends why not require them to access the server through WireGuard VPN? This will reduce the risk a LOT and won’t probably impact the performance. Here a decent setup guide and you might use this GUI to add/remove clients easily.
Don’t be afraid to expose the Wireguard port because if someone tried to connect and they don’t authenticate with the right key the server will silently drop the packets.
Now if your ISP doesn’t provide you with a public IP / port forwarding abilities you may want to read this in order to find why you should avoid Cloudflare tunnels and how to setup and alternative / more private solution.
I found that it really depends on the app and how they’ve set it up. For the vast majority, the users in your SSO will be added to the other app when they first login. I use Authentik and Nextdoor, and the user is automatically created from details from Authentik. Generally you can enable multiple login types so can play with SSO whilst still enabling access until it works. You can usually switch off non-SSO access afterwards too.
You set which field defines the user (e.g. username or email). If there is already a user then it’ll just login to that account you already created, so you can also create a user in both.
You can limit access to certain groups of users in Authentik. You can also setup headers that get passed along to apps (e.g. in Nextcloud you can setup a size limit for each group that gets passed on to Nextcloud when they first register - the Authentik or Nextcloud documentation tells you how).
I found quite a few apps don’t have SSO functionality, and I usually end up doing a reverse proxy pass through Authentik. Nginx Proxy Manager first goes to Authentik, you login then it’ll pass you to the app. If already logged into Authentik, NPM takes you directly to the app. I switched off login altogether on the apps, especially for tools where you don’t need users (e.g. Stirling PDF). Only logged users get to the app. Authentik can forward any headers you set so I have a feeling you can use it for the app’s own login (though not new users) but not managed to work it out.
One app I tried recently had SSO but you couldn’t enable access to the main household for new SSO users so had to create an account in the app first, then SSO would let users login. I ended up not using that app for other reasons anyway.
I do recommend Authentik and you can setup access one by one so definitely try it and see.
One “hammer” mitigation to most threats could conceivably face when self-hosting is to never expose your services to the internet using a firewall. “Securing” your services against a small circle of guests/friends/family members in your home network is a lot simpler than securing against the entire world.
If you need to access your services remotely, there are ways to achieve that without permanently opening a single port to the internet such as Tailscale or ZeroTier.
Otherwise, commonly used tools in self-hosting such as Docker or VMs usually offer quite decent separation even if a service is compromised.
Nothing replaces good security hygiene though. Keep your stuff up-to-date. Use secure methods of authentication such as hard to guess passwords or better. Make frequent backups (3-2-1). The usual.
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