I don't understand how it's suspicious if I am sharing my address with a custom port to people I know. I even take time to explain why I do it and in a way a nontechnical person would understand

The connection is still encrypted because I have a proper domain cert. There's no warning or any other issue. I have spent more time securing my hardware/operating system/software than anything else, often taking priority over hosting more services

Do I really need to take all these extra steps like a VPS or a login for a basic blog generated from markdown files and a basic file server that has copies of my git repositories? Seems excessive when I already found a solution for myself that takes less effort and works to my satisfaction

I think there's value in experimenting outside the current set standards and norms. Especially since corporations and states are obviously abusing the trust of these standards and norms for their own personal benefit

I personally feel like a small web/indie web can find their own their place again on the internet with a little creativity and a will to break away from the current norms. Trying to do more of the same will eventually lead to issues like burnout or ever growing frustration

I'm doing this for fun and for myself above all else. Experimenting with different, low effort approaches to the crawler/scraper issue is fun for me. Involving more outside services or adding more internal software does not sound like fun to me. It doesn't sound like much fun for other people in this thread or by the original blog post either