The website’s author has been writing and publishing how-to guides since 2018 when he started the Home Network Guy blog. Shortly after starting that blog, he had a long term vision of creating three separate blogs focused on different yet overlapping niches that personally interests him. In 2021, the author launched The Private Smart Home blog to focus on smart home technologies. The Self-hosted Tips blog launched in 2023.

This blog will be concentrated on various self-hosted software and hardware that may run locally on a home network. Self-hosting is generally more private and secure than having your data in the cloud since you are able to control your own data. When the services are free, most likely your data is being sold and marketed to help fund the company hosting the services. Since hosting services in the cloud is not free for companies, they have to generate revenue somehow and users’ data is a very valuable commodity. There have been movements of organizations and individuals to use fewer cloud-based services. Cloud services can be useful, but you need to ensure they respect your privacy and security – you most likely need to pay for the services which are committed to those values.

Visitors of this blog may find the association between the three blogs interesting and beneficial. Even though they are three separate niches, there is overlap between them all. Both self-hosted software/hardware and smart home technologies require having a reliable home network. A more advanced home network architecture as discussed on the Home Network Guy blog may be an important consideration especially if you are concerned with security and privacy.

I hope you can see where the three areas can overlap to complement each other yet each area has its own distinct topics, which is why I felt having separate dedicate blogs for each area would be beneficial for my readers.