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A noob asks: ?any strong feelings on how (and with whom) a noob should host kbin
TLDR: I can just about manage to spin up a home server using yunohost, but I have no idea if it's secure, I just know I mostly followed a how-to guide online and it seems to all work. I now reckon it might be a laugh to start a social media server, and I want to replace reddit in my life. I don't mind it being open to other humans signing up, but if I got bored of paying for it I'd have to be able to support it with ads (don't worry; the advertisers would be limited to plain text/markdown). I realise I'd have to pay some web design types, at that stage, a hoofing amount of money to integrate advertising into it. I just want a host for it that would scale up automatically if needs be, so it didn't collapse in a heap. I understand the biggest threat is a single user becomes popular, and the server gets effectively DDOSed by all the other servers requesting the funny memes they posted. I'm also a tightfisted scrooge (well, when I'm spending money on my personal pleasure anyway). So my question is: with which hosting service do LowEndTalkers think I should go?
I completely appreciate the answer may be "stick to your crayons, thicko!", but I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't ask the question.
Background:
- mine is a mean understanding; I apologise if anything here is incorrect
- federated social media seems to be gaining ground; especially via the Activitypub protocol. The largest network of activitypub servers that agree to federate with one and other are often referred to as the "fediverse".
- examples of server-side open-source software include mastodon, pixelfed, peertube, lemmy, and kbin
- lemmy & kbin have a 'threaded' model that is more akin to reddit (specific 'communities' united by subject-matter, and the ability to up/downvote). Activitypub servers that observe such traditions and federate with one and other are sometimes called the "threadiverse".
- kbin also has ready support for microblogging to permit straightforward interaction with mastodon and other activitypub social media that is, for want of a better word, 'uncatalogued' (I.E.: excepting replies to the posts of others, everyone publishes their posts into a great continuous book, as opposed to having separate magazines for different subjects)
My goal in asking the question:
- No one has 'too much' free time (if they do, send 'em my way
, I've a full time job, a house that needs fixing, and exams to study for completely unrelated to computers. I expect the prospect of grokking how to run &/or moderate kbin efficiently will thoroughly max me out. I want to devote as little time as practicable to scaling the endeavor up, if such should ever be required. - I know there are companies like Amazon and DigitalOcean that do that automatically, but I realise they mightn't be as cost-effective as other services, and my money is like my free time (alas, all ear-marked!) so I'm keen to try to be abstemious to start with, if it's possible without being glacially slow.
So then the question: with which service do LowEndTalkers think I should go?
If I'm asking the wrong question, please do tell me that too! I totally realise the most dominant part of this equation could be how I schedule cleaning jobs, or the expectations I set with users regarding uploaded image size or duration of data retention, or any number of things I'm too ignorant to think of.
This all might be a stretch, but I do think one ought to be the change one wants to see in the world, and I'd quite like an alternative to reddit that doesn't rely on charitable donations, so here we are.
My thanks to anyone who reads all of the above rambling, and any thoughts you care to transmit in reply are gratefully received.
Moar links:
- Kbin's codeberg repository
- an example of a kbin instance
- Activitypub on wikipedia
- a geezer who moved their 10 user mastodon instance to amazon s3 wrote a short blog post
- another geezer who works for amazon blogged about their self-hosted mastodon instance running costs on AWS
- Linode's guide to deploying mastodon via the linode marketplace
Comments
"Stick to your..." j/k
A middleground is people who do hosted mastodon (or whatever) instances. Sort of mastodon-as-a-service. Rabbit Computing is one example.
Maybe @m4nu 's PikaPods will start offering something like this...
Holy smoke, that's fantastic, I hadn't realised this was going beyond mastodon hosting, and those prices are firmly cheaper than those I've seen elsewhere.
Thank you so much!!!