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The Lemmy app we are using on our phones needs to download content from Lemmy so it can be displayed to us. Lemmy might just have one big file full of links, but that’s annoying to have to write code to handle. Or it might have a folder full of files where each file is a post, but that’s also a bit annoying to write code to manage.
It (probably) uses a local SQLite database to store all of the cached posts.
Conceptually, a database is just a place to store things, just like a big text file. The database just handles a lot of the grunt work for you and makes it easier to search, organize, and filter the data.
So anywhere there is data, there could be a database.
Many registrars let you buy a domain and set up dynamic DNS for it within their system so you can own a domain and get dyndns on it.
Otherwise you could accomplish it with a VPS but you’d only need the smallest one available because it would just need to run nginx to forward to your home ip (and a small tool to update that IP when it changes). So you could probably get something for less than $5/mo.