Hello self-hosters! Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a self-hosted Microsoft Visio alternative, or something at least very similar. I’m basically looking to create infrastructure diagrams for my self hosted server and apps. I already have WikiJS as a wik/documentation solution, but don’t mind migrating to something else if there are better solutions and/or integrations for diagrams

  • Jérôme FleschAEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    It is “hosted” on your workstation. There is no need for a server-client relationship for self-hosting.

    By requiring a server-client relationship, you’re making self-hosting uselessly hard to deploy and enforce a very specific design when others (P2P, file sync, etc) can solve the same problems more efficiently. For example, in my specific case, with Paperwork + Nextcloud file sync, my documents are distributed on all my workstations and always available even if offline. Another example is Syncthing which IMO fits the bill for self-hosting, but doesn’t fit your definition of self-hosted.

    • @beeng@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      I getcha now. However I think it would be leading us a stray if we called everything we installed, “self hosted”, if I said I self host a game, what would you think of? More like a game server ie through the network.

      Also doesn’t syncthing have a Web UI I can access through the network? Granted it’s been a while but I think I remember that.

      OP wants something to be shared on the network… Managed centrally, hence they came here for advice

      • Jérôme FleschAEnglish
        2•10 months ago

        Yes I would count this game as self-hosted (as long as you don’t need a third-party service to start it). And yes I agree it is a pretty wide definition. But at the same time, I really think there are a lot of good reasons to not dismiss it:

        • I think it is the simplest form of self-hosting you can do and it is doable by anybody without much technical expertise. For people with little to no technical expertise, it’s the perfect gateway to self-hosting. All you need to start is a backup drive.
        • For a single person, it’s actually the approach that often makes the more sense.
        • And even for technical people, sometimes you just don’t want to deploy and maintain yet-another-service.
        • And finally, you can still access your data when you’re offline.

        To be honest, when it comes to self-hosting, I can’t shake this feeling that a lot of people are dismissing desktop apps immediately just because they are not cool nor hype anymore.

        Regarding Syncthing, if I’m not mistaken, the Web UI can be opened to the network (most likely for headless servers) but by default it is only reachable through the loopback.

        Regarding OP, for me, it wasn’t entirely clear at first whether they wanted network access or not. They clarified it later in comments.