I’ve run a Jellyfin server for several months now. It’s been a huge help in cutting down on streaming costs, especially for comfort shows I fall asleep to. After all, who wants to pay a subscription just to watch Friends? Optimizing and maintaining the server has been a learning experience, but the great thing about Jellyfin is that anyone, even a complete beginner, can start a server and learn the ins and outs of it over time. That said, there are a few lessons I learned the hard way that I wish I had known before I set the server up. The time I spent figuring out the cause of the problems could have been better spent watching multiple movies.