Digital sovereignty is the practice of keeping your data, communications, and infrastructure under your own control. These guides cover the tools and patterns that take you off the hyperscaler treadmill: self-hosted email, encrypted messaging, decentralised identity, hardware wallets, offline backups, and operational security practices that work in daily life. Not paranoia, prudence. Privacy is a right, not a suspicious activity. The goal is a dual persona that lets you participate in normal society without surrendering ownership of your digital footprint. Whether you are protecting a journalist source, locking down a business, or just tired of being the product, the approach is the same: own the stack.
A weekend rabbit hole worth sharing. I stumbled across Project NOMAD a few days ago. It’s an open-source bundle (Apache 2.0, runs in Docker) that puts the useful parts of the internet on a Raspberry Pi or a mini-PC. The first thing that surprised me was that I’d never heard of it. The second was […]
Project NOMAD: Self-Hosted Internet in a Box for Practitioners Read More »
From Gmail to self-hosted – understanding email privacy, control, and the spectrum of options. A practical guide to email sovereignty.
Email Sovereignty: Why Your Email Provider Matters in 2026 Read More »
The hosting landscape has fundamentally changed in the last three years. If you last looked in 2022, you probably still think the choice is “shared hosting for a tenner a month, or a VPS if you’re technical.” In 2026 there are four realistic ways to put a website on the public internet, and the right
How to Host Your Own Website in 2026: Four Realistic Options Read More »
83% of enterprises say they plan to bring workloads back from public cloud. Sovereign cloud spending is projected to hit $80 billion this year. The direction of travel is clear. But direction isn’t capability. I’ve spent 20 years building infrastructure – enterprise, cloud, and self-hosted. I architect Azure environments during the day and run my
The Cloud Exit Skillset: What Your Team Needs to Leave Read More »
How to Install Paperless-ngx with Docker (Go Paperless at Home) I have a filing cabinet in the spare room that I opened twice in the last five years. Once to file an insurance renewal, once to find a gas safety certificate that the letting agent needed in 48 hours and that took me two hours
How to Install Paperless-ngx with Docker (Go Paperless) Read More »
How to Install Jellyfin Media Server with Docker (Own Your Media) In October 2023, Plex announced they were adding a free ad-supported streaming service into their app. The media server I installed to watch my own content now shows me someone else’s ad-supported films in the same interface. In 2024, they removed some features from
How to Install Jellyfin Media Server with Docker Read More »
Why You Should Own Your Files I have been running Nextcloud in my homelab for over three years now. It replaced Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud across every device in my household. The honest version of that story is that it took me two attempts to get it right, and there were weeks where I
How to Install Nextcloud with Docker (Self-Hosted Cloud Storage) Read More »
Microsoft just moved the goalposts. Again. On March 9th they announced Microsoft 365 E7 — branded “The Frontier Suite” — the first new enterprise tier since E5 launched in 2015. It goes GA on May 1st at £79 per user per month. I’ve spent 18 years watching Microsoft licensing evolve. Every few years the pattern
Published on 25 February 2026 | Homelab / Self-Hosting | 12 min read Right, so you’ve got Docker running on a spare PC or a Raspberry Pi. Maybe you followed a YouTube tutorial, maybe you just winged it. Either way – now what? I’ve been running a homelab for a few years now, and honestly,
5 Containers Every Homelab Should Run (2026) Read More »
