“Growing your own” is a common expression used by people who grow their own food and plants in a garden or allotment. This site encourages people to “grow their own” online services by setting up their own social networks, websites, personal clouds, messaging services etc.
Like gardening, some people do this just for fun, some want to build or support a community, while others have practical or philosophical reasons. Whatever your reason, it’s much quicker, easier and cheaper than you think. You don’t need to be rich or technical any more, it is now totally possible for ordinary people to make their own online services.
The easiest method by far for growing your own is to use a managed hosting company: this means you own and run the service, while the hosting company does all technical stuff like software installation and server maintenance behind the scenes.
A slightly more technical approach is to use a self-hosting OS, which turns computers into servers and lets people install new services through a graphic interface.
Most difficult is doing everything manually, which requires technical skills and prior knowledge, but allows maximum flexibility over settings and software.
Whatever method you use, why is it good to “grow your own”? Here’s a list of reasons…