I’ve acquired a new domain, but why?

Up until now, my projects have been hosted using Strato.nl’s services. That setup worked fine, but I wanted more control and flexibility. I also wanted an excuse to try out Coolify.

So, I bought a new domain, picked up a VPS from Hetzner, installed Coolify on it, and now larsvanholland.dev is live!

Coolify comes with a bunch of nice features. If you’re curious, check out their docs to learn more.

What is Coolify?

Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable Heroku / Netlify / Vercel alternative that makes it easy to deploy and manage your own applications, databases, and services, on your own servers.

Here’s some of what it can do:

• Git-based deployments: Connect a GitHub or GitLab repo. Coolify can build and deploy it automatically.
• Docker support: It uses Docker under the hood, so you can deploy pretty much anything.
• Built-in reverse proxy: Automatically provisions HTTPS certificates using Traefik, no need to mess with nginx or Let’s Encrypt manually.
• Simple UI: A clean dashboard for managing apps, logs, environment variables, and more.

Wrapping up

I hope using Coolify will help me learn more about self-hosting, servers, Docker, and other cool technologies as I move my stuff away from Strato.

So, for a probably more up to date version of this website, go to the .dev domain version instead :-)