I meant to say thank you at least a day ago - so thank you very much! You’ve kindly provided a lot of detail, which I hope I can use for my own site. We’ll see how we go… Thanks again.

It’s my limited experience that nothing is easy, really, but in my case I’m looking for a solution which (a) works, and (b) is easily extendible when I add new containers.

Many thanks - but what is the issue with public facing web servers? I though that if protected using https, they would be as safe as needed. Using a VPN would add a complexity I’d be happy to avoid. And indeed all my sites are remote, hosted as a VPS. Now you’ve got me worried!

I have several issues with traefik: first is that I can’t access the dashboard. The second is that as I was given a LOT of help setting it all up (some years ago), I’ve ended up with config files that I don’t fully understand myself. When I tried, for example, to use traefik for certificates to protect my installation of mealie, I simply couldn’t. So my mealie instance is unprotected, running just with http.

I’m getting to the stage where I’m thinking about paying for some professional sysadmin time … As I said in my OP, I’m nowhere near competent as a sysadmin, especially with networking, and if I can get something to work, I’m thrilled and never want to touch it again, in case I break it.

Many thanks, that looks nice and within my limited abilities! I’ll aim to try it out.

Two things really: Dropbox as an automatic solution for file syncing and sharing; I needed to pay for an upgrade so I switched first to Onecloud and then Nextcloud.

The second was due to my work: I was an academic, teaching mathematics, and we were experimenting with online assessment systems. Most publishers provide one of their own, but then you have issues with contracts, student access etc. For example, a student could get access for one year. But many of our students were part-time, and took 18 months or more. This meant repeated calls to the publishers to issue new access codes. Since I already had a VPS, I put an open source mathematics assessment system on it and we ran it happily for a few years. I didn’t mind paying for it myself at the start, considering it experimental, but when the university refused to host it themselves I gave up on it. It was good while it lasted, though.

I now need a decent photo management system (Immich sounds good) and start weaning myself away from Google.