WEB WORKBENCH

My Project Workspace

A collection of systems, experiments, and builds

Self-Hosted Server Guides

This section documents my experiences building, configuring, securing, and maintaining self-hosted server environments.

The guides are written from a practical perspective and focus on real-world tasks rather than theory. Topics include server setup, web hosting, email services, WordPress hosting, security, backups, Virtualmin administration, and related Linux server projects.

Many of these guides are based on systems I have built, tested, or used myself, with the aim of creating a growing knowledge base that others can follow and adapt to their own environments.

Whether you're setting up your first self-hosted server or looking to improve an existing installation, the guides below share the steps, lessons learned, and solutions I've encountered along the way.

How-To Guide

Build a Self-Hosted Web & Email Server on a Home PC
Click to open stages ↓
How this works: Follow the stages in order. Each stage builds on the previous one.

How-To Guide

WordPress & Hosting Security Guide
Click to open stages ↓
How this works: This guide covers practical website security, hosting-level protection, WordPress hardening, and backup strategies that apply to most hosting setups (including Virtualmin, shared hosting, and VPS environments).

Contents

How-To Guide

Building an Ubuntu Postfix SMTP Relay Server
Click to open stages ↓
How this works: This guide documents the build of an outbound SMTP relay server using Ubuntu, Postfix and OpenDKIM. It covers installation, relay security, TLS, SMTP submission, DKIM signing and the final working configuration.

Contents

How-To Guide

Virtualmin Postfix DKIM Setup Guide
Click to open stages ↓
How this works: This guide documents the configuration steps required to get DKIM signing working correctly on Virtualmin with Postfix for multiple sending domains. It includes DNS configuration, WordPress sender alignment, Microsoft delivery testing and real-world troubleshooting tips.

Contents

Informational Guide

Virtualmin Backup and Restore Testing
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How this works: This guide documents testing Virtualmin backups by restoring them to another Virtualmin server. It covers scheduled backups, SFTP storage, Single Archive backups, One File Per Server backups and the differences found during restore testing.

Contents

How-To Guide

Virtualmin VPS with FirewallD and Fail2Ban
Click to open stages ↓
How this works: This guide documents hardening a Virtualmin VPS using FirewallD and Fail2Ban. It covers reviewing exposed services, checking default Fail2Ban jails, disabling unused services, enabling recidive protection and watching FirewallD rules appear as attackers are blocked.

Contents

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