If you've used products like Zapier and If This Then That, you know how powerful workflow automation can be.  n8n is a powerful self-hosted workflow automation tool that lets you do all of that and more.  In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to self-host n8n on Linux using Docker. You’ll learn how to set up the environment, configure it with a .env file, and build workflows that connect to services like Google Sheets, Google Drive, Ollama Self-Hosted LLM, and Discord.

We’ll start with a simple manual trigger, then create a scheduled workflow, and move on to a more advanced automation that pulls in data from external services and processes it through n8n’s visual workflow editor. Whether you’re just exploring n8n or ready to start building, this guide will help you get up and running with a flexible, powerful automation platform.

n8n on GitHub: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n
Video Notes: https://technotim.live/posts/n8n-self-hosted/

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00:00 - What is n8n and why self-host it?
01:23 - What You’ll Need (Ubuntu + Docker)
02:14 - Folder Setup and Permissions
02:56 - Writing the Docker Compose File
05:12 - Creating the .env File
09:34 - Creating data folders
09:59 - Starting the Docker Stack
10:07 - Checking Your Containers
11:02 - Exploring the n8n Interface
12:53 - Building Your First Workflow (Discord Message)
17:45 - Building a More Advanced Workflow (Google Sheets)
18:40 - Connecting Google Sheets (Authentication + Setup)
24:00 - Google Sheets / Google Drive Permissions
27:15 - Looping Through Sheet Data
28:32 - Posting Sheets Data to Discord
31:39 - Posting Sheets Data to Postgres?
32:26 - The Advanced Workflow - Sentiment Analysis (Google Sheets / Surveys / Ollama)
33:05 - Google Forms Surveys
34:15 - The 'Done' Output (Discord)
34:58 - Code Node (Reshaping Data)
36:36 - HTTP Request Node (Local Ollama LLM)
40:00 - Merge Node (Merging data together)
41:06 - Code Node (convert to JSON)
42:20 - Update Google Sheet
44:58 - Running the Workflow
46:55 - Like, Sub, Share, Thank you!

Thank you for watching!

YouTube

A comprehensive guide to setting up n8n, a self-hosted automation platform, using Docker Compose on Ubuntu Linux. The tutorial covers installation, configuration with PostgreSQL database, creating workflows that integrate with services like Discord and Google Sheets, and building advanced automations that incorporate local LLM models through Ollama for sentiment analysis. Demonstrates three workflow examples: basic Discord messaging, Google Sheets data processing with loops, and an advanced sentiment analysis pipeline that updates spreadsheet data using AI.

Self-Host Your Own Automation Platform with n8n + Docker