Journey with self hosting for personal blog and fediverse
@selfhosted
Hello, I followed the "selfhosted" instance on LemmyWorld in order to be able to talk about my experiences having them in order, without confusing criteria into Fediverse. Hoping they can be useful to others.
Current setup: Hostinger vps kvm2 plan, Debian12, YunoHost, Hostinger's docker manager installed.
Personal background: blind since birth, (I don't see), I'm mostly a computer power-user, worked and studied with ms-dos since 1989 until late 90s. Basic GNU/Linux knowledge in 2002, then interrupted in 2004.
I don't care talking about disability when discussing unrelated topics but it's necessary in this case as my needs are quite different from others.
So, I've been scared by self-hosting and have had shared hosting web sites until now. Until @_elena started self hosting her digital echosystem from scratch using YunoHost.
Due to lack of drivers I stopped with Linux on my private machine, drivers for the Braille display I had, and then the uneffective (at least for my need) screen reader capabilities on Linux's GUI based distros.
Finally in January 2026 I jumped in the dark after reading Elena Rossini's blog about YunoHost and having explored their demo pages. At the worst, I'll cancel the contract...
In the end I've managed to run WriteFreely, WordPress, CastoPod and GoToSocial, just by YunoHost; but if someone says terminal knowledge is not needed, this is a complete lie.
Where a system (such as YunoHost) can do the dirty work configuring postfix and nginx, I'll support it but it has its disadvantages: not every app can be installed through it.
For me it's very difficult to create and look after a config file on my own, it's frustrating for a sighted to miss a punctuation sign, an apostrophe, an indent. Let alone for me! A single space skipped, can crash a system.
A lie even saying that AI completely helps. It does solve some small, simple, immediate tasks but it has some mistakes as well. The so-called allucinations which create a real mess if you can rely on no personal skill.
Such as "sudo yunohost tools cert-install", or similar. AI wrote "cert-install" while the real command is "cert install"! A power user can get rid of it and correct, a beginner with no command-line knowledge, just copies, pastes, and gets scared.
My late attempt has been Madblog, a static markdown-based blogging platform with Fediverse activitypub in it, so I learned what Docker is and how it basically works. But I gave up, due to several timeouts and activitypub slow-downs. I think I'm going to use WordPress for blogging then. In case of comments it'll be more intuitive for non-fediverse folks.
Hopefully share others' experiences as well!
#ActivityPub #blind #fediverse #introduction #selfhost #selfhosting #WordPress #YunoHost
Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •p.s. If you want an easy way to discover reliable good servers, there are human-curated server lists at fedi.garden and joinmastodon.org/servers
All the servers listed on these sites have to comply with certain standards of technical reliability and moderation.
p.p.s. If you want help with moving there's a guide at fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma…
Fedi.Garden – An easy way to join Mastodon and the Fediverse
puutarhamestari (Fedi.Garden - An easy way to join Mastodon and the Fediverse)reshared this
Oblomov e Joe Vinegar 🏳️🌈 reshared this.
Humphrey Archer
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •I just moved there with my non-fiction accounts
This is so tiresome
Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Humphrey Archer • • •@screwturn
Oh no, really sorry to hear 😞
Hopefully the human-curated server lists can help reduce this kind of situation happening to people.
Ari Sovijärvi
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •I wonder if anyone has reported it to the providers higher up the chain? 🤔
There have been reports via Mastodon's own moderation tools but these have AFAIK all been ignored.
Ari Sovijärvi
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •:awoo: :100awoo:
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •Plutarch
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •Just report them to Amazon, does that work?
whois.com/whois/pawoo.net
EDIT; oh, and Cloudflare, for mastodon.cloud, actually: whois.com/whois/mastodon.cloud
Whois pawoo.net
www.whois.comAri Sovijärvi
in reply to Plutarch • • •@plutarch Amazon doesn't give a fuck. I reported a huge botnet, got a reply that they could not verify the claim. I went through an internal contact I had to to escalate it. I heard that they basically had laughed at it on their internal chat, with the mentality being that I was some home hosting n00b who got scared when someone scanned them and that I shouldn't expose services unless I wanted them knocked all the time.
Just to bring some context, I set up my first public net connected services when these guys weren't not born yet and only reported it as a courtesy and only because it was relatively big botnet.
Plutarch
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •Lucky ✨
in reply to Plutarch • • •Alison Meeks
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •Let them burn! Good of you for trying to give them a courtesy heads up.
Ari Sovijärvi
in reply to Alison Meeks • • •Wendinlondon 🇺🇦
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •Ari Sovijärvi
in reply to Wendinlondon 🇺🇦 • • •Wilm
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •Cadu
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •the same admin was responsible for mstdn.jp and pawoo.net, both of them also abandoned and running with outdated and unsupported versions.
(It's what I infer from mstdn.jp/@Sujiyan/109564291832…)
Suji Yan (@Sujiyan@mstdn.jp)
Suji Yan (mstdn.jp)Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!
in reply to Cadu • • •@cadusilva TIL those are all the same admin... and also this:
blocktribune.com/former-employ…
mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!! • • •Rob Landley
in reply to mirabilos🐈⬛ • • •@mirabilos @cadusilva @lina I back up regularishly and If it goes down I'll probably actually start using my bluesky as something other than read-only with occasional replies.
Sites come, sites go.
(Realm of the Dragon. 596-4835. The sysop wrote his own C128 bbs software and I wrote my own C64 terminal program to talk to it.)
mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to Rob Landley • • •Rob Landley
in reply to mirabilos🐈⬛ • • •@mirabilos @cadusilva @lina If the site stays up, it stays up. If it goes down it goes down. If another pearl clutching homeowners association decides to shun it while it's still up, oh well.
(I've already gotten the "How dare I not have abandoned my wife and moved out of the USA yet." speech from more than one person, thanks.)
Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!
in reply to Rob Landley • • •FWIW pawoo got defederated by ~everyone (including my instance) after it became a CSAM hellhole (actual CSAM, not lolicon). That's why I'm worried about those owners...
Also .cloud is having a spam issue as we speak and being (hopefully temporarily) limited by other instances too.
mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!! • • •https://mstdn.jp/@Sujiyan(and the company they created) and still active… but not on a good path…Rob Landley
in reply to mirabilos🐈⬛ • • •mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to Rob Landley • • •Rob Landley
in reply to mirabilos🐈⬛ • • •@mirabilos @lina @cadusilva Oh hey, my instance has an "announcement" tab now, which says:
バージョンアップについて
平素より mstdn.jp をご利用いただき、誠にありがとうございます。
mstdn.jpではシステムのソースコードはオリジナル版から一部改修が入っていましたため、アップグレードの作業は遅れております。
現在、運営チームにてサーバーバージョン更新の実現可否を検討しております。
これから進捗については、またお知らせます。
今後ともmstdn.jp をよろしくお願い申し上げます。
Roughly "Thanks for using the site, we're behind on version updates because our local source code has lots of mods we'd need to port, we're looking at it and will keep you posted, thanks again."
Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!
in reply to Rob Landley • • •They say "considering whether an upgrade is possible or not"... that's... not a great sign...
Meanwhile mastodon.cloud seems to be down entirely?
Rob Landley
in reply to Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!! • • •Hoshino Lina (星乃リナ) 🩵 3D Yuri Wedding 2026!!!
in reply to Rob Landley • • •@landley @mirabilos @cadusilva Having gone through this myself (I run two instances), it's harder to backport security fixes after a while than it is to rebase your own patches.
I would not trust they're keeping up on maintenance if they can't upgrade.
stux⚡️
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Hm.. I believe they are part of some other instance, maybe pawoo?
I remember a company being behind .cloud and another big instance
stux⚡️
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •Ah yes!
Sujitech, LLC.
stux⚡️
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •So yeah, a lot
Mastodon Belgium Admin
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •This might explain why I have a user from Japan and why they didn't join on mstdn.jp
stux⚡️
in reply to Mastodon Belgium Admin • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •@stux
Same. And I had no idea they were associated with pawoo. Thanks for mentioning this.
@admin @FediTips
mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •Skwerlgyrl 🐿️
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Sam Nabi
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •@crimini
🥑 Yours Truly! Unruly 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦🌻
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Thanks! Will try and block it too.
schuh
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •gunstick
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Plan-A̵̛͈̬̥̿͋̓͛̕
in reply to gunstick • • •Jerry on Mastodon
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •I see many legitimate accounts there. I've decided to limit the server, but not block it. This way people can continue following each other, but hear-me.social is protected.
If anyone here does have a follow relationship with anyone on .cloud, please let them know the ship has no captain and it's vulnerable to attacks, and they should jump onto a new one.
If the owner has no interest in having anything to do with the site, why do they keep it going? Why don't they seek a new owner? They should at least let people on their instance know.
Codewizard
in reply to Jerry on Mastodon • • •Jerry on Mastodon
in reply to Codewizard • • •Yep. This is my personal account for posting things not specifically related to the server.
Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Unknown parent • • •@coloco
They had suggested adding the fediblock hashtag, so I did. Then they deleted their own post because it was no longer needed.
Rycochet
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Rycochet • • •@Rycochet
Yeah, it can be tricky to know where to sign up 😦
For what it's worth, I'd recommend using a human-curated server list where someone has checked the servers before listing them. I run one at fedi.garden and there's also one run by the Mastodon developers at joinmastodon.org/servers
Just out of interest, do you remember how you found out about .cloud?
Fedi.Garden – An easy way to join Mastodon and the Fediverse
puutarhamestari (Fedi.Garden - An easy way to join Mastodon and the Fediverse)C_Chell
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Alexander Bochmann
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •Jigme Datse
in reply to Fedi.Tips 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ • • •