This is a throw away account, in case I end up working with someone that reads this post.
I've been lurking on this community with my main account for a few months now. I have ideas on what I'd like to self-host but between my ADHD, perfectionism, and anxiety, I'm frozen.
I need help selecting and implementing an initial set up. I'm not an IT professional but I'm a reasonably advanced user, so I'm confident I can do the setup work and ongoing management myself. I just need someone to:
- Discuss the big picture of what's involved in self-hosting and help fill in gaps in my understanding;
- Help me decide on the best initial setup for my needs and skill level;
- Hold my hand during the setup phase and make sure I'm not doing anything stupid;
- Ideally be available long term for the occassional question.
I'm willing to pay a fair hourly rate for this assistance. If someone in this community is interested, please dm me. You might want to use a throw away for that too, assuming this work can't be done anonymously.
Alternatively, any suggestions for good websites to find a consultant, and what skills I should be looking for, would also be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading. Wishing you all the best for 2026.
Edit: I appreciate all the offers for free help on this forum.
I perhaps didn't explain well enough that what I really need is a knowledgeable coach, who can get me moving and provide guidance. I bought the Official Pi-hole Raspberry Pi 4 Kit a few months ago and it's still sitting on my desk gathering dust. Embarrassing but true.
Even if your router acts as an DNS proxy it shouldn't overload any pihole installation unless you have a crapload of devices doing millions of queries per hour. My pihole manages all my devices (20-30 individual things) without any problems and even if I hit some rate limit it's going to be a change to default configuration, not a immovable object on your way. Based on quick glance over that reddit thread a new router might be a good option, but that's another easy-ish task to accomplish. I use mikrotik device and I'm pretty happy with it but there's a ton of good options.
For hiring someone to coach you I can see quite a few of potential issues. People who claim to know what they're talking about but don't really have the knowledge, straight up scammers obviously, mismatch in personal chemistry which will make learning unnecessarily difficult or even impossible, some people just aren't good at teaching even if they do know their stuff and so on. By all means, use your money however you like, but I personally strongly advice against it unless you can get some courses on (preferably local) reputable vendor. You can look for online courses too, cisco has a ton of courses on networking, redhat has plenty of linux courses and other big players have their own training and even certificates if you want to go that far.
You're right, those risks do exist. Nothing in life is risk-free, and for me, the risk-reward ratio is worthwhile. I'll be careful though, and I'm definitely going to keep learning from online sources, If it's a disaster I'll be back, then you can tell me "I told you so" ๐