Empowering Family Legacy: How I Transitioned to Self-Hosting with Gramps Web

For several years now, I've been maintaining a genealogy website containing information from both my and my wife's family history. One of my main objectives has been to ensure this wealth of information is readily accessible not just for our extended family, but also for our children whenever they want to look into their roots.

 Initially, I hosted this website through a paid hosting service, utilizing TNG. While this setup served its purpose adequately, my recent acquisition of a Proxmox server prompted me to explore the possibility of self-hosting. Given this shift, I decided to transition to open-source software, as it would grant me greater flexibility in making adjustments as needed.

In my search for suitable open-source genealogy software, I came across Gramps Web. Its user-friendly interface and compatibility with the Gramps genealogy desktop software caught my attention.

Setting up Gramps Web on my Proxmox server turned out to be a relatively straightforward process. I created a Linux container within Proxmox and followed the provided instructions for deploying Gramps Web using Docker.

With the basic setup complete, I proceeded to import the GEDCOM file from TNG. However, I encountered a snag as I couldn't import the version containing links to media files. To resolve this, I manually uploaded the media files to Gramps Web.

Wanting to make the Gramps Web installation accessible beyond my home network, I referred to the instructions on the Gramps Web site for setting up a Nginx Reverse Proxy. Considering that my domain name is registered with Cloudflare and its DNS servers are in use, I opted to utilize cloudflared instead.

Following the instructions provided, I set up cloudflared on the Linux container. This not only forwards traffic to port 80 of the container but also ensures HTTPS support. Importantly, this is achieved without the need for me to open any ports on our home network.