5 things I wish I knew before exposing my self-hosted services to the internet

I recently stepped foot into the world of self-hosting apps and services. Once I did, it didn't take me long to go down the rabbit hole of discovering new apps to host on my home network. Replacing Google Photos with Immich and using Obsidian in a web browser were all fun games until I realized that I can only access these services as long as I'm connected to my local network. So what about when I'm not at home and I want to check my notes or view my data hosted locally? I realized that to do that, I would have to expose these services to the internet. While I didn't have a problem doing that, I underestimated the security measures I would have to take into account to protect my data.