Looks like a nice project if you manage to run your own gateway. People have been posting about this one on Lemmy before https://lemmy.ml/comment/376398 and maybe the software code author is on Lemmy as well : https://lemmy.ml/post/2045121
Maybe this can help after installing pi-hole : https://www.pivpn.io
UPS, good idea.
backups too.
Maybe you were using a deprecated search engine after all ? ;-) I used one of my favorite SearXNG instances and this was in the top 5 hits, a howto with happy comments from 2022. I assume the content is still legit.
There’s https://borgwarehouse.com/ Haven’t found the time to test it but looks interesting.
Depends a bit on what you’d like to achieve. I’d say play around with YunoHost on a VPS to get started and learn more. With YunoHost you will get XMPP and email server after installation, and then you can start installing other YunoHost apps.