Don’t use WordPress for static sites! Other poster mentioned straight up html, js, css with PHP if you’re feeling frisky. WordPress is so bloated and unnecessary for what you’re wanting to do.

Can’t speak to cheap boxes, so usb might be the way, but I use a Zimaboard. Two built in SATA ports, and a pci-e daughter card gives me two more ports. Full disclosure, i don’t do anything more than 1080p, bad eyesight…

Throw some hard drives on it and baby, you got a stew home media server goin!

Portainer for docker stuff; CasaOS for RAM, CPU usage, disk drive monitoring, samba shares.

Casa also lets you access the file system, so when jellyfin fails to clear transcodes, I can go in with the web interface and delete the folder.

Same.

Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, kavita = Media stack

Arr suite, Vpn, BitTorrent = Pirate stack

Edit:

CodeServer, git, esphome, home assistant = Code Stack

I’m not a shil for them, but I’ve been using a zimaboard as my main “server” with a raspi 4 clone running the *arr suite. 2 SATA connectors and a PCIe slot, I’ve got a daughter card with two more SATA spots, 2HDDs and 2SSDs. I’m powering the whole setup with an old pc power supply.

I can second the Zimaboard. I’ve got two HDDs hooked up to the SATA ports, and grabbed a cheap PCIE SATA daughter card for the SSDs.

I also used a PC power supply to run 12v to the board, and i use the built in SATA power cables. Look up “how to use pc psu as power supply”, it’ll tell you how to get it running without a motherboard.

Here’s my setup:

Yup, as soon as they started the mandatory login bullshit, I bounced. Companies keep adding this “feature” as a way to control your stuff: Doom on Switch, Halo Master Chief edition, nvidia, my fucking mouse(!?); all need a login for no other reason than to add a point of failure/killswitch.

I had a Netgear nighthawk r7800 with ddwrt, which finally crapped out. I went with the TP-link Deco Mesh router as a replacement, and so far it’s working better than the ddwrt router. There are versions with Wi-Fi 6, but i went with the “3 stations for ~$120” and haven’t had any problems with speed, since tht bottlenecks are usually external/cable modem related anyway.

My biggest selling point for the tp-link, it’s much easier to set a local dns, with a fallback to 1.1.1.1, something i could never get to work on ddwrt. So whenever my Jellyfin transcodes bring the Pihole to a screeching halt, it will at least fallback to external dns and not take the whole network with it.

I can also have a base module Ethernet connected to my pc in the office, another hooked up to the cable modem and zimaboard in the livingroom, and eventually, a raspi with a couple of low resource containers (pihole, home assistant, nginx). My goal is to hardwire as many things as i can for speed/signal noise purposes.