Mastodawn

Want to have complete control and host your own Mastodon server?

I learned a lot about how to host my own Mastodon server, migrate my account and everything that entailed, so I wrote the most comprehensive guide on hosting Mastodon yourself:

https://paulstamatiou.com/hosting-your-own-mastodon-server/

In it I show two ways to host your own server (using a fully-managed Mastodon host, and using a VPS provider). I go into everything from scripts to backup your database and run media clean up tasks, to advanced settings to optimize your server.

I also talk about what to do when things go wrong, and what to expect when first running your new server. If you enjoy this, please share, this one took two months to write.

Hosting your own Mastodon server

Join the Fediverse on your own terms

PaulStamatiou.com

Adam Chandler Mar 7, 2023

@stammy always appreciate your long form posts. I save and read them on planes.

Adam Chandler Mar 7, 2023

@stammy do you have a full length RSS? Looks like it went excerpts only.

Stammy Mar 7, 2023

@AdamChandler i've had RSS excerpts for ages. Originally because too many spam farms were just reposting my content via RSS. Later because I used some JS approach to lazy loading/resizing. Been meaning to address it

Adam Chandler Mar 7, 2023

@stammy Sorry to be a complainer. I enjoy your writing and was just curious. Many of my favorite sites have moved to excerpts only. It's a minimal inconvenience unless it's a blog with a lot of trackers & ads in which case I prefer the pure-RSS experience to clicking through. Your blog is a pleasant design in native or RSS form.

Stammy Mar 7, 2023

@AdamChandler no I get it! Just something I haven’t gone back to fix yet. I would need to have my template rewrite some html on the fly to get it to display properly in all rss readers

Brett Elliff Mar 7, 2023

@stammy I went with masto.host after trying to run my own. I agree that it is a mush easier route! I was actually writting something up about this as well but now I'm not sure if it is needed.

Zachary Hamed Mar 7, 2023

@stammy this is amazing! thanks for putting this together 🙌🏽

🙃 ɐıunp zsɐɯoʇ Mar 7, 2023

@stammy thank you! Appreciated! 😉

Claudio Cicali Mar 7, 2023

@stammy Fantastic guide, thank you for your time!

Bradley Mar 7, 2023

@stammy I am excited to read this through

Blorbo Admin Chicken Mar 7, 2023

@stammy
I am so happy to see this! It's exactly the guide I'd been hoping for. I'm going to test out your instructions on a spare domain and see how it goes.

Joshua Mar 7, 2023

@stammy @joe here’s your guide

Jordan Borth Mar 7, 2023

@stammy damn🔥

neville park Mar 8, 2023

@stammy thanks, adding it to my list! https://codeberg.org/nev/awesome-fediadmin/

awesome-fediadmin

A collection of awesome resources for running your own federated social media website.

Codeberg.org

Matt Alexander Mar 8, 2023

@stammy so much good info in this post!

Olav Mar 8, 2023

@stammy extremely well put together!

I did a diaspora* pod for a bit until I started having ethical (& potentially legal) questions around the lack of moderation there, & still run several WP sites on a VPS that are (or will be) federating.

So my thinking is that if one is planning on running any instance of scale, a managed host is probably the best option. That allows multiple admins that don't have to know LAMP, & hopefully gets around the masodon.lol problem, as well as moderator burnout

Stéphane Bortzmeyer Mar 8, 2023

@stammy About the issue of domain names: things are more complicated than just picking a cool name and a cheap registrar. The domain name is also a control point for many. Not all registries protect freedom of speech in the same way https://www.eff.org/wp/which-internet-registries-offer-best-protection-domain-owners Same thing for the registrars. Also, it depends on the country: most registries are managed in the US and subject to US laws, which may not suit the user.
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Which Internet Registries Offer the Best Protection for Domain Owners?

In the Internet’s early days, those wishing to register their own domain name had only a few choices of top-level domain to choose from, such as .com, .net, or .org. Today, users, innovators, and companies can get creative and choose from more than a thousand top-level domains, such as .cool, ....

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Stéphane Bortzmeyer Mar 8, 2023

@stammy And the issue of the DNS hoster is not neutral either: it would be strange to choose Mastodon to have freedom and decentralization, then to host the domain name at Amaon or Google as you suggest.
In summary: please spend some time thinking and studying bvefore choosing a domain name.
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Bergrübe Mar 8, 2023

What is your experience with the data usage.
I heard from others who runs there own Mastodon Server, that the disks fills up quickly with profile images and other stuff you just watched once.

I’m sorry if you answered this question in your blog, I will need to take more time to read the whole article. - Holidays are coming!

Heloise F. S. 💻

@stammy @wakatara check this out!

dj2mn Mar 11, 2023

@stammy fantastic thank you - I've been waiting for a good guide to self-hosting, because I'm too lazy to figure it out myself :)

Aidan Fitzpatrick May 30, 2023

@stammy Thank you for putting this together -- it's a great resource!

Jake Nelson May 30, 2023

@stammy @afit totally agree, great resource thanks for sharing!

To add on a tiny bit, I’ve had a really good experience using https://masto.host to run closed instances for both @radiant and testing purposes! They also do offer username aliasing so you can have Mastodon on a subdomain but have your username show up at the root domain 😊

https://masto.host/mastodon-usernames-different-from-the-domain-used-for-installation/

Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

Masto.host was built from the ground up to make running a Mastodon instance easy.

Masto.host

Brian Sletten Jul 19, 2023

@stammy Thank you.