What is Mastodon? It's decentralized social media, and it's fun.
You can click on the link here - https://pureheart.page
Now, I will explain the boring (well, not boring for me, I love this geeky stuff) guide on how it was installed. (Because I think it's great to have notes for this in the future).
History: A few years ago I found out about Mastodon social media and felt really inspirited to host my own mastodon server since it was possible. I did and then invited some family members, but due to the cost back then, it was over my budget. Fast forward to November 2024, I got inspired again to re-build a Mastodon server, why, well, I love the little elephant, and I love how you can host your own stuff and not really have to follow rules. I guess I'm a rebel. I don't know.
These are the guides I followed and used to get the initial server setup, and such.
Here is the first guides
I learned that my VPS (Virtual Private Server) had to have swap space because it error ed out on installation. Lessons Learned.
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-add-swap-space-on-ubuntu-22-04/
I learned that I needed to add a user to the admin group and configure a basic firewall on the server (separate from the firewall on the hosts virtual server control panel)
This is basic security, but username and password logins should be disabled and SSH keys should be used and enforced. This next articles explains that.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-ssh-keys-on-ubuntu-20-04
The SMTP relay has to be setup, here is a guide I used for this. (key part is that in the .conf file, the SMTP relay = the url of the SMTP server, in my case, I used brevo)
https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-mastodon-server#1_Set_up_a_relay_SMTP_server
Now that these are set, I'm ready to install 🐘 Mastodon
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/prerequisites/
By the way, I'm using ionos.com for my VPS. They have small package at $3.00 a month for the first three months and then $5.00 per month after this. I found it was affordable for me. https://www.ionos.com/
The blog I'm using for this is Blogger, and the SSL cert and sub-domain are also free.
My domain is hosted on squarespace and this domain is only $20.00 per year
