hi everyone,

I was just about to self-host a Ghost blog but then was warned that my ISP might change my external IP address at any time, so I would need to pay for a static IP address.

Is that true?

(I’d not seen much about that in stuff I’ve looked up so far about self hosting)

  • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.comEnglish
    0·
    18 days ago

    You only need a static address for hosting email or VoIP.

    You can do just about everything else with DDNS (dynamic DNS). However with DDNS, you will have downtime until the DDNS update takes effect and propagates to clients. This can be seconds… or hours. Depends on the DDNS service and TTLs that they set and how quickly your script/DDNS client works to push the update out.

    You should check how often your address changes and check how quickly your DDNS solution pushed the update out. If it’s 10 seconds every 10 months, you will likely find that perfectly acceptable. If it’s an hour every other sunday… maybe not. But only you will know how much downtime you can tolerate.

    I always will take static IP personally. But it’s not technically required and you can work around it if you want to save the 10-15$/month.

    Edit: You could also argo tunnel if you’re okay using cloudflare. But I don’t think that answer is particularly in scope of the question. But just in case it’s useful to someone out there I’m adding this edit. Doesn’t fix the PTR requirement for Email and VoIP stuff though.

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    0·
    18 days ago

    How are you hosting? And do you have a domain? Lot’s of good advice here, but knowing if you’re running on a Pi, in Docker, etc, would help others give you the easiest/best method.

    In short, you do not need a static IP.

    • Paddy66@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      Hi, I’m using Docker - one container for Ghost and one for Nginx Proxy Manager.

      I’ve decided to go with DDNS but am having trouble choosing a reliable free provider. I’ve seen Dynu.com recommended but that is not available in the dropdown list of servers in my router’s section on DDNS. Is that relevant?

      Or would I just ignore the router settings and set it up some other way?

      • RecitalMatchbox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        17 days ago

        I’m having a good experience with cloudflare, using ddclient on a cron job

        To clarify: it doesn’t matter much what your router supports if you have a server with ddclient (possibly in Docker container). Then you can choose whatever provider you’d like, and there are tons of resources on ddclient.

        • Paddy66@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          If I install ddclient on my mini-pc is that what you mean by having a server with ddclient?

          My Asus router is not shown in their docs as supported - does that matter?

          Also - can I just keep using my current domain name registrar, and not use Cloudflare?

          • RecitalMatchbox@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            Yeah, you just need to set your DNS using Cloudflare. Your router doesn’t matter. Ddclient will get your external IP address, usually by querying an external server like ifconfig.me (this is all configurable), and then use the configured provider (e.g. cloudflare) to point the DNS records to your external IP. You need to configure your DNS registrar to use the Cloudflare nameservers for your domain. Then just regularly (daily) run ddclient, e.g. using a cronjob