You can only really be a landlord if there's a limited supply of land (or capital to build useful things on the land). Neither is true on the internet. The premise is flawed to the point it's always going to be a scam if anyone claims this is a useful thing to do.
The salient point is right on the front page of this site:
Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change.
If that is true for someone attempting to become an "internet landlord", it is also true for all of their potential customers.
rorads · 2h ago
This is a great resource. I just think the term “landlord” is a misnomer here. It implies you’ll be making income off the rent of your new self-administered infra, and as has been pointed out already - mostly this site pertains to stuff built on hyperscaler platforms.
I’d probably say “…internet homeowners where, like in the UK leasehold property system, you’re still basically a tenant but without paying someone else’s mortgage, and even when you’re a freeholder the king actually still more or less owns the land”.
Admittedly this is less snappy.
rchaud · 6h ago
Nice website that focuses on the simple basics of setting up one's own infrastructure, like it was back in the '90s.
Disagree with the "land ownership" portion of the title as it will be obvious to anybody following the tutorials that they don't own their web server or their domain name.
animuchan · 2h ago
In some countries (e.g. Singapore, China, Israel), when you buy a house, on paper you get something like a 99-year renewable lease on land — different from a domain name in scale, but not so much in substance.
So I guess the aptness of the analogy is unevenly distributed geographically. :)
The second instruction says to rent a VPS. How are you a landlord if you're renting a server?
lsb · 7h ago
How are you a landlord if you're paying property taxes?
Once you have everything else set up, you can migrate to a server hosted on your own internet connection. Running your own data center is one of the more tricky parts of the equation, compared to almost-free web hosting for a 10MB site.
You're also just renting a domain name.
Uehreka · 7h ago
You’re also only renting your internet connection!
If you want to be a real rent-seeker (sorry, meant to say “landlord”) you’ll need to purchase an AS and become a BGP-peering sovereign citizen cutting deals with backbone networks.
No comments yet
animuchan · 2h ago
Getting your own backbone cable installed in the ocean is where the real expenses begin though.
ai-christianson · 7h ago
I guess it's renting all the way down unless it's something like a decentralized network where control of keys represent ownership.
idle_zealot · 4h ago
And even with a decentralized mesh network you rely on good behavior from your peer/local nodes. Turns out the only way to truly own land is when your network consists of 10.0.0.0/8.
anonym29 · 7h ago
The government graciously allows you to sublet their property as long as you keep up with the annual protection racket payments
therein · 7h ago
> How are you a landlord if you're paying property taxes?
Asking the important questions.
xboxnolifes · 2h ago
Easy question. You're only a Lord, not a King, so you pay fealty.
akimbostrawman · 5h ago
this is why i love Tor. you can simply host a site from any pc without certificate, domain, proxy, vps.
Babkock · 10h ago
Really helpful site from Luke Smith. I would advise anyone interested in web development to check out this page. There's a lot of cool stuff on there.
saaaaaam · 2h ago
This is a great concept, but it’s not really for internet peasants. It’s for internet plumbers who already know how to do a whole bunch of stuff. An internet normie who doesn’t know their way around the command line wouldn’t even know where to start with this.
ornornor · 2h ago
Nice resource! What always bothers me is that virtually every resource of this type leave what is imo the most important part: backups and restore.
Setting up all these services can be tedious but it’s not the hard part. Robust backups and a strategy around them is, and there is very little information on this topic in comparison (generally)
deadbabe · 30m ago
Starting a website these days seems very dangerous. If you don’t comply with some obscure regulation imposed by a government somewhere you can be sued to oblivion. Someone should create a guide on how to start a website and cover your ass.
christophilus · 7h ago
I would suggest Caddy over nginX if this is for casual sysadmins.
nurettin · 7h ago
I would even suggest apache. It is ubiquitous, config samples are easy to find, it can act like a file server and certbot --apache easily sets up your https.
m463 · 5h ago
Do they really mean "homeowner" (self-sovereign) vs "landlord" (charging others rent).
nerdsniper · 11h ago
I kove the vibe of this website and their mission. Nitpick though, “FOSSPAY” seems to make no sense because it’s really just Stripe?
johnklos · 10h ago
A few nitpicks:
* landlords aren't a good thing.
* "setup" is a noun.
* It'd be helpful to offer some context. For instance, talking about ufw without even mentioning that we're talking about Linux, or even a specific Linux distro, would make most people confused. Same with apt.
These are good guides, but it should be kept in mind that they don't try to teach you anything - they're more guides to simply follow, and if you happen to learn something along the way, great.
But it makes sense to have guides that just tell you how to do a thing and don't explain it, because that represents a good chunk of the people out there. It wouldn't be bad to have links to stuff for those who want to understand what they're doing, though.
Overall, we need more sites like these.
alexchamberlain · 5h ago
Why aren’t landlords a good thing? Is it unreasonable for people to provide a service to people seeking it?
idle_zealot · 4h ago
Depending on the service, sure.
jbstack · 1h ago
Providing a place to live is surely not one of those services though. There will always been some portion of the population that can't afford to buy a home. Without landlords, what are those people supposed to do?
milesrout · 9h ago
Landlords are an excellent thing, as anyone that cannot afford, or does not want, to simply buy a house could tell you.
Set up is a phrasal verb and omitting the space is incorrect, yes, but only an annoying pedant would point it out.
It recommends Debian and says:
>I make my guides on this site for Debian 11. If you use another OS, just know that your [mileage] may vary in terms of you might need to change some instructions here minorly.
If you were going to complain about bad grammar, that sentence is a much better target, and yet it is still quite easily understandable.
beeflet · 8h ago
What is the point of setting up your own email server if all of your sent messages go to spam for the majority of gmail/o365 users?
racingmars · 7h ago
> What is the point of setting up your own email server if all of your sent messages go to spam for the majority of gmail/o365 users?
I set up a new mailserver a few years ago and have had no delivery problems whatsoever. All messages get through to gmail and outlook/o365 inboxes I've sent to. Didn't even have to register the IP with O365, it's just worked flawlessly from day one. That was from an IP address/netblock not associated with cloud or VPS providers, so initial reputation may have been higher.
A few months ago I set up a mail server on a VM in Digital Ocean, and have had no delivery problems to gmail/Google Apps recipients.
More recently, for new IPs sending mail into O365, they appear to be blocked by default but the rejection message gives you a URL to go to where you can register your IP(s). After doing that, we haven't seen any problems.
If you end up getting an IP that has been associated with previous spam or abuse, I assume your experience will be different. But in my experience, my handful of servers have not had delivery problems. This is all, of course, with proper reverse DNS records that match what the server advertises in its HELO/EHLO, SPF and DKIM all set up, etc.
asimovDev · 4h ago
honestly I wouldn't mind an email server just to have temp throwaway emails for services that require email signup. Not sure how those that detect temp mail services would work with this though
p4bl0 · 3h ago
Many email provider let you have a virtually infinite number of aliases, you can do want you want here with that.
est · 7h ago
This gave me pre-mobile Internet vibes
Sadly in today's world, 90% traffic happens on phones. And the free app landscape is bad.
2Gkashmiri · 9h ago
I followed his email guide but installed mailinaabox. I was able to install it in one go about 4 years ago.
The salient point is right on the front page of this site:
Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change.
If that is true for someone attempting to become an "internet landlord", it is also true for all of their potential customers.
I’d probably say “…internet homeowners where, like in the UK leasehold property system, you’re still basically a tenant but without paying someone else’s mortgage, and even when you’re a freeholder the king actually still more or less owns the land”.
Admittedly this is less snappy.
Disagree with the "land ownership" portion of the title as it will be obvious to anybody following the tutorials that they don't own their web server or their domain name.
So I guess the aptness of the analogy is unevenly distributed geographically. :)
Once you have everything else set up, you can migrate to a server hosted on your own internet connection. Running your own data center is one of the more tricky parts of the equation, compared to almost-free web hosting for a 10MB site.
You're also just renting a domain name.
If you want to be a real rent-seeker (sorry, meant to say “landlord”) you’ll need to purchase an AS and become a BGP-peering sovereign citizen cutting deals with backbone networks.
No comments yet
Asking the important questions.
Setting up all these services can be tedious but it’s not the hard part. Robust backups and a strategy around them is, and there is very little information on this topic in comparison (generally)
* landlords aren't a good thing.
* "setup" is a noun.
* It'd be helpful to offer some context. For instance, talking about ufw without even mentioning that we're talking about Linux, or even a specific Linux distro, would make most people confused. Same with apt.
These are good guides, but it should be kept in mind that they don't try to teach you anything - they're more guides to simply follow, and if you happen to learn something along the way, great.
But it makes sense to have guides that just tell you how to do a thing and don't explain it, because that represents a good chunk of the people out there. It wouldn't be bad to have links to stuff for those who want to understand what they're doing, though.
Overall, we need more sites like these.
Set up is a phrasal verb and omitting the space is incorrect, yes, but only an annoying pedant would point it out.
It recommends Debian and says:
>I make my guides on this site for Debian 11. If you use another OS, just know that your [mileage] may vary in terms of you might need to change some instructions here minorly.
If you were going to complain about bad grammar, that sentence is a much better target, and yet it is still quite easily understandable.
I set up a new mailserver a few years ago and have had no delivery problems whatsoever. All messages get through to gmail and outlook/o365 inboxes I've sent to. Didn't even have to register the IP with O365, it's just worked flawlessly from day one. That was from an IP address/netblock not associated with cloud or VPS providers, so initial reputation may have been higher.
A few months ago I set up a mail server on a VM in Digital Ocean, and have had no delivery problems to gmail/Google Apps recipients.
More recently, for new IPs sending mail into O365, they appear to be blocked by default but the rejection message gives you a URL to go to where you can register your IP(s). After doing that, we haven't seen any problems.
If you end up getting an IP that has been associated with previous spam or abuse, I assume your experience will be different. But in my experience, my handful of servers have not had delivery problems. This is all, of course, with proper reverse DNS records that match what the server advertises in its HELO/EHLO, SPF and DKIM all set up, etc.
Sadly in today's world, 90% traffic happens on phones. And the free app landscape is bad.
Smooth sailing since.
This is a goldmine