Because you don't have a lot of experience with this type of stuff, I would not recommend exposing all your applications to the open web unless you also are willing to install and maintain some sort of security dashboard or traffic analyzer with alerts in case someone is trying to do something malicious to your services. You can always tunnel in with a VPN at the flip of a switch. This would only expose the VPN to the open web, which is a much smaller attack surface than all your services. You could also use something like Tailscale to keep all the devices connected but not exposed to the open web.

I would recommend going this route as a beginner hobbyist just so you don't have to be worried about the security of your server as much. Hope that helps!

Nextcloud is fine without Anubis since everything is behind a login.

Yes, you need a reverse proxy. Also you need a public IP which not all ISPs offer. If you have one, you have to forward port 443 to the reverse proxy in your router config. That means someone who tries to connect to your router on port 443 will be forwarded to the reserve proxy who checks which domain was looked for and forwards to the actual Nextcloud.

You'll need a domain pointing to your public IP. That IP may change, so you need an automation that updates the DNS records (known as dyndns). When you're selecting a registrar, look for one that has dyndns support (you can use different nameservers but that's unnecessary extra steps).

When I was a newbie, my first project was also Nextcloud. Honestly, Nextcloud is overkill if all you need is to host a calendar. You can probably find something that meets your needs (like Radicale ) at Awesome Self Hosted.

If you are getting started in self hosting, you should spend a little time learning Docker . It's a tool for hosting software in individual containers on your local computer. You will find that many self-hosted apps have installations for Docker container versions in their documentation.

For me, once I understood docker, and also Portainer , a web UI for Docker, I got over the learning curve and was able to install most Foss apps I found online. Good luck!

Screenshot of Portainer, showing a list of Docker containers running various Foss apps

The main thing is to set up a Linux server and connect it to the internet. I do it without a fixed IP, just a dynamic DNS domain.

Nextclod will tell you it's specific requirements then (e.g. php, database) and it has the specific instructions too.