Server Compass Blog
Guides, tutorials, and release notes for the self-hosted generation.
Jun 3, 2026
Move Render Apps to Your Own VPS Without Rewriting the DockerfileServer Compass v1.26.0 connects to your Render API key, pulls env vars, domains, secret files, and build commands, and generates a Docker plan you can deploy in one click — plus firewall lockout protection for custom SSH ports.
May 29, 2026
Rename Your Docker Apps Without Breaking ThemServer Compass v1.25.3 introduces friendly Custom App Display Names — replace cryptic project slugs with human-readable labels across every view, while containers, volumes, and folders on the server stay exactly where Docker expects them.
May 23, 2026
Never Lock Yourself Out of Your Server AgainServer Compass now protects your SSH firewall rule from accidental deletion, blocks duplicate port 22 entries, and adds per-config backup passphrases — so critical access paths can't be removed by mistake.
May 22, 2026
150+ new self-hostable apps just landed in Server Compass v1.25.0Server Compass just tripled the deploy catalog: 428 one-click templates, up from 239. AI tooling, productivity, finance, dev tools, storage, monitoring — the gap between 'I want to try this self-hosted app tonight' and 'it deploys' just shrank dramatically.
May 15, 2026
11 New App Templates and a Redis Admin Built Into Your Database TabDeploy GoatCounter, Linkding, CyberChef, and eight more self-hosted apps in one click. Plus, browse Redis keys and run commands without leaving the Database tab.
May 12, 2026
Stop Blind Pushes to Your GitHub ReposServer Compass now shows you exactly what files will be committed to your GitHub repository before any deploy push happens — so you never get a surprise commit on the wrong branch again.
May 10, 2026
Per-app metrics on every Docker app — without standing up Grafanav1.24.0 puts request rate, p50/p95/p99 latency, status-code distribution, CPU/memory traces, and a top-slow-paths panel on every Docker app — directly in Server Compass, no observability stack to maintain. Plus a one-click Container Shell and a system tray for live deployment status.
May 3, 2026
Encrypted Backup Files Without Leaving Plaintext Behind: Atomic Temp-File HygieneYou decrypt a backup, work on it, re-encrypt, delete the temp file. Three weeks later you find the unencrypted version still sitting in /tmp because the script crashed on step 2. Here's the cleanup-guaranteed pattern.
May 2, 2026
Why Your *arr Stack Keeps Failing to Import (and the One Path Setting That Fixes It)Sonarr says "file not found". qBittorrent says "download complete". The file is right there. The fix is almost always the same: container path mismatch between downloader and media manager. Here's the model that works.
May 2, 2026
A $40/Month Kubernetes Lab Architecture (Without the Cloud Markup)Real Kubernetes for $40/month using cheap VPSes — not a single-node toy, not a managed-K8s wallet drain. Here's the topology, the distro choice, and what it can and can't do.
May 2, 2026
The Monthly Homelab Health Checklist: 12 Checks in 30 MinutesHomelabs degrade quietly. A 30-minute monthly check covers backups, disks, certs, security updates, and the dozen other things that fail catastrophically when you stop watching them. Here's the checklist and the commands.
May 2, 2026
The Preflight Script: 60 Seconds That Save a Two-Hour OutageMost proxy and SSL outages are silent regressions, not new failures. A 60-second preflight script that captures current state — then compares after — catches them before users do.