just to be sure, when setting up nextcould i need to purchase a domain name?

It can be an ip address, if you have a static ip. If you’re planning to host this on the open internet and have a dynamic ip (home internet is most likely for this), or static and don’t want to pay for a top level domain you can use a service like noip.com for a free address like “test.ddns.net”

You can also change this after the initial setup in Nextcloud’s config.php as well as as additional domain names/ip addresses that can reach the server.

You can purchase one, or as a first step you can use duckdns.org which is entirely free! Then when you think you want your own domain name you could just switch :-)

If you only need nextcloud on your local network, a quick and dirty way of assigning hostnames to machines is the hosts file. Obviously, this has to be done on every computer from which you wish to access nextcloud. Also, nonrooted mobile OSs don't let you edit the hosts file.

Alternatively, you can set up a local DNS server. Pihole also has that capability (I personally had mixed results with Pihole, not sure if I did something wrong). Some routers may have that too.

If you need it public on the internet, yes, you need a domain name. Some providers offer free domains (but it will be a subdomain of the provider). Something to keep in mind is that your IP is probably dynamic. When you connect to the Internet, the ISP assigns you a random IP address from their pool of IPs. To keep the domain up to date, you will need to setup a dynamic DNS solution. This is a simple script/program that periodically checks your IP, and if it changes, updates that domain automatically.

You can also use Tailscale Tunnel which will give you an subdomain to access for free.

Or full hardcore and use Tor .onion domain. Completely free with additional privacy.

Hi,

What is the reason you do not want a domain? it is not that DNS-domains are that expensive these days. The cheapest option I found is .ovh (which is one of the major cloud-providers in France), which is 3 euro / year (+VAT). You can then put as much hosts or subdomains under it, and it supports dynamic IP.

Agreed, .ovh is not the most "professional" looking domain, but it depends on what you want to do. If your goal is simply to have something for yourself / family / friends, then this is good enough.

BTW. Having your own domain for a nextcloud instance has additional advances: you can get a real https/tls certificate from letsencrypt, and -if you put a reverse proxy in front of your NC- it shields you from people who just scan the complete IP-space of the internet but who do not know your domain.

Depending on what you are trying to do, not necessarily. NextCloud itself doesn’t really care, as far as I know, as long as it’s address doesn’t change. AIO on the other hand is setup in such a way that it needs a resolvable domain name and a valid certificate for https.

This could be done by spinning up your own certificate authority and dns server, but that is a lot of extra work and would be local network access only.

Another way would be to use a free domain and a free certificate from let’s encrypt. The downside here is that the domain authority could yank your domain at any time, for any reason (as happened to all of the free .ml domains recently). At which point your certificate would also stop working resulting in a situation where you may have to nuke and pave.

If you want to be local access only, I would pick an install path other than AIO. If you want to be able to access NextCloud remotely, purchase a domain name.

A VPN, such as TailScale would be considered local network in this situation.

Plenty of free hostname providers. I use Dynu

Don’t go with AIO then

You can use this with tailscale or local only.

https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/nextcloud/

version: "2.1" services: nextcloud: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud:latest container_name: nextcloud environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=Etc/UTC volumes: - /path/to/appdata:/config - /path/to/data:/data ports: - 443:443 restart: unless-stopped

You don't need to especially not in your local network, but if you want to expose it to the internet then it would definitely make sense since you need a domain in order to use SSL encryption.

I'm not very familiar with NextCloud but you can use something like duckDns to direct traffic to your ip for free. Still an actual domain is a bit nicer if you want to share the URL.

DuckDNS

Someone linked linuxserver.io docker image that you can use with local IP. Then if you want nextcloud for yourself or just a few family members, you can setup VPN and still use local IP from anywhere. No need to buy a domain, but you need some (free) service like duckdns that tracks your public IP so you can connect to your home network anytime. You can also set your custom domain using reverse proxy (made up domain name for local use, still not payed one), but you will have to allow it in your nextcloud config

Buying domain and setting up certificates is what Im going to do just to get rid of cert warnings in a browser on my phone

Just buy a real domain name from Cloudflare. They’re incredibly cheap dude. And you can use cloudflare’s dns stuff for free

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

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I'm not sure how nextcloud handles it, but as long as you can resolve the domain then you can put whatever you want.
You usually purchase a domain so it appears in the internet with the major DNS', but if you only have the site in your internal network then you can put whatever you want as long as you update your internal DNS.

Usually you can do this by manually updating the hosts file in your machines.
But a better way is to have something like PiHole, in which you can set your local DNS to resolve to your own IP.
After that the only annoyance are the SSL certificates which will be selfsigned since browsers show a warning but some services don't have a way to work with them.

I run my Nextcloud behind Tailscale, and Caddy handles theTailscale https certs.