tomspark wrote:
Good question, and the order's more flexible than it looks. Install SparkBox itself first (the one-line install) and you get the dashboard. After that each piece is independent, so order barely matters, but for a media center I'd go: turn on the Media Centre module first (that's your goal, and it walks you through the VPN the download apps need), then add Pi-hole whenever you want network-wide ad-blocking, then Remote Access (Tailscale) to reach it from outside. On securing: it's already locked behind a login with nothing exposed to the internet, so the big things are just keeping it updated (sudo sparkbox update) and using Tailscale for remote access instead of opening ports. Full step-by-step walkthroughs live at tomsparkbox.com/docs.html.