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lemmy - Link to source

GoToSocial empowers you to have your own home on the Fediverse - with unique controls

Setting up and running your own Fediverse instance is an incredibly empowering thing. A good analogy for it is: imagine you have been renting apartments your whole life and then purchase a home. Your home, where you make all the rules, customize it to your liking and take great care of it because it's YOUR home. That's precisely what I have been doing for a digital home - on the Fediverse - with my GoToSocial microblogging instance: @elena@aseachange.com.

If the thought of self-hosting makes you immediately tune out, thinking: "oh my, this sounds so complicated and unattainable for a regular, non-technical person" well, I can understand. I had that exact mindset as recently as November 2024. Heck, even December 2024. But then I took the plunge and never looked back. I'm here to tell you about my journey of tech empowerment, made possible by YunoHost and GoToSocial.


GoToSocial empowers you to have your own home on the Fediverse - with unique controls

An overview of GoToSocial: a fast, lightweight, security-focused server that makes self-hosting on the Fediverse easy
Elena Rossini
in reply to breakfastmtn

Remy Rose
piefed - Link to source
Remy Rose
• •
I've always wanted to do this, but I can't afford a VPS. And everytime I look into self-hosting on hardware at home, I just get the impression that it's nearly impossible... My ISP forbids it, and even if I can evade their notice, people say having a public facing setup at home is bound to get you attacked eventually
in reply to Remy Rose

Ulrich
lemmy - Link to source
Ulrich
• •

Your ISP forbids what, exactly?

It is complicated but Yunohost does make it a lot simpler.

don't like this

in reply to Ulrich

Remy Rose
piefed - Link to source
Remy Rose
• •
Running a web server on my residential connection is against my ISP'S terms of service.
in reply to Remy Rose

BakedCatboy
lemmy - Link to source
BakedCatboy
• •
Yeah if you aren't down to publicly expose your IP address / port forward, the cheapest way I can think of still involves a several $/mo VPS that just reverse proxies home to a more powerful PC. That's what I do since I'm behind CGNAT.
in reply to BakedCatboy

suoko
lemmy - Link to source
suoko
• •
I hosted it on a 1€/month vps at ionos.
An instance with multiple users actually, and it runs just great. Not a lot of space but hey, that's 12€ per year
in reply to suoko

BakedCatboy
lemmy - Link to source
BakedCatboy
• •
Wow that's impressive! I tend to be very value oriented, and at the sub $5 price, you're getting so little that I feel like you're mostly paying for a public IP and bandwidth. And of course selfhosting your compute is usually a win, especially if you already have something laying around. So I just pay the public IP tax for a reverse proxy and home host it all. I would probably go with a cheaper VPS for my reverse proxy but I need the confidence it'll hold up to multiple friends Plex streaming.
in reply to suoko

β“‚3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
β“‚3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
•
And if that kind of tiny VPS is not enough, you can selfhost a pretty big server at home on cheap hardware and use the VPS as a reverse proxy ;)
in reply to Remy Rose

β“‚3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
β“‚3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
•
If you don't mind a man-in-the-middle Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale and alike is a good solution to ISP carrier NAT and port blocking
developers.cloudflare.com/clou…
tailscale.com
in reply to Remy Rose

Sundray
lemmy - Link to source
Sundray
• •

It's not a perfect solution (and I know people don't love Cloudflare) but their Tunnels project is free. Hides your personal IP from the world, and provides some protection against known exploits.

But a VPS is quicker and easier, for sure.

in reply to Remy Rose

Feathercrown
lemmy - Link to source
Feathercrown
• •
Self-hosting isn't too bad. With a properly configured router (not as hard as it sounds), if you're hosting something like a lemmy instance, the worst people can do is spam you with too many requests. An ISP that disallows self-hosting is a bummer though... having a static IP is pretty essential.
in reply to Remy Rose

Dil
lemmy - Link to source
Dil
• •
racknerd 60$ a year 3core 6gb ram can run a lot, littlecreekhosting 3.50 a month 4core 8gb or 7 amonth 8core 16 (you gotta comment on their post on low end talk for littlecreek or you get half ram)
in reply to Dil

Dil
lemmy - Link to source
Dil
• •
The annual deals good for just not worrying about paying for it and forgetting about it sometimes
in reply to Dil

Dil
lemmy - Link to source
Dil
• •
or free oracle vps , domain is around 12$ a year but porkbun has most domains for half off first year or less, .ing is half off, .buzz is like 1$
in reply to Dil

Dil
lemmy - Link to source
Dil
• •
I got into webhosting rabbithole like a month ago if it isnt obvious, those are the best deals ive found, hetzner, 5$ a month, pay by the hour, is my favorite for testing stuff for cheap if you remember to delete it, invoiced 3rd of the month
in reply to Remy Rose

Dil
lemmy - Link to source
Dil
• •
Runtipi plus any vps, easy to setup and has gotosocial (stays more up to date) , or yunohost is easier with more options
in reply to breakfastmtn

CarbonBasedNPU
lemmy - Link to source
CarbonBasedNPU
• •
I really just want a single person instance so I can not sorry that mods go crazy one day and I can just be a control freak.
in reply to breakfastmtn

Rimu
piefed - Link to source
Rimu
• •
How do we feel about the idea of reply controls on Lemmy threads? Limit replies to members of the community, same instance, etc...
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