I'll second this for the most part. Once you get the basic framework of a docker host set up it's pretty simple with only a couple containers holding it up so if you can understand the workings of virtual machines/containers it's pretty 'easy' to set up. That said, an ugly XSS vulnerability has been out there causing problems and as a whole it's very much an unpolished product so there's a lot of work in understanding 'why the heck is it doing this now??' things.
I'll recommend my own instance at endlesstalk.org. There you can create a community, if you want.
lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works might also allow creating of new communities, but I haven't checked.
It looks like you’re on lemmy.world. That instance let’s you create communities. If you’re viewing the site in your browser, tap the hamburger menu on the top right (3 horizontal lines) and select “Create Community”.
Hey.
I did this, I self host a lot of stuff and at some point it just became my default setting.
In this case though I dont think its really that valuable unless you're planning on hosting your own communities and moderate users and whatnot which comes with its own admin burden.
Not to deter you or anything.
I used a modified docker compose, so you'd need some way to host lemmy, lemmy's UI server and a database backend, and a reverse proxy in front.. DNS and SSL certificates...
Its kinda intermediate to highly technical to host your own I guess?
Would I recommend it to someone not technical? No, unless you were really keen and looking for a project to expand your skills a bit. 😉
I'm certain you could figure it out if you're interested, but IMO there's not much benefit to individual users running instances unless you want to gather a community.