You might notice my Mastodon instance name, futurist.info
It's just me here. I decided early on I wanted my own 'identity' ; my own instance. Just like I got my own email address back in the 90's (under jimcarroll.com)
I think over time :
- you might find your current Mastodon home doesn't fit your future - it might become like a HotMail or AOL email address
- you might want to know how Mastodon actually works by having your own setup
- in the months to come, we will see a LOT of paid self-hosting options that might let you set up your own identity for a small fee.
With all that in mind, here's the story of how I did it.
https://jimcarroll.substack.com/p/creating-my-own-mastodon-instance
@jimcarroll
Thought about using my VPS but what it seems to require is to be run from one of my web domains. Which would you recommend just to test. VPS is small 2gm ram 30gb storage and monitored transfer. Web hosting servers are similar but unlimited transfer (not that i use much) but many of the per-requisites are installed on domain, mainly the SSL i think
@LeeFromVT You need to link it to a domain to work; I don't think you can hack it to just an IP address. I'm running fine on 2GB, 50Gb storage, one month of transfer is barely 22gb as seen below.
The key is you have to configure an AWS for media - either Amazon AWS or a block storage AWS from Vultr or someone else. You can do 1TB at Vultr for $5 a month. My AWS storage right now is about 80 GB from 3 months, pruned back a bit. I have a lot of followers and follow a lot so that's where the media comes from. That way, none of the media - images, etc - ever hits your server.
If I were you, just fire up a Vultr server like mine, link it to a domain you have, and give it a go. A referral code if you want to try. I just found I've learned so much more about the architecture of Mastodon by running one.