According to public statistics from FediDB, there are over 19,000 different servers in the Fediverse. This includes a medley of over 61 different platforms in various states of development. In addition to general-purpose community servers, there are also servers dedicated to specific themes, like Linux, Climate Change, Urbanism, or Game Development. But perhaps you’ve come to the conclusion that starting your own instance on the network is the best choice for you. What do you need to think about, and how do you do it?

Step 1: Who is it for?

This is the biggest question to start out with. Are you trying to just host a server for yourself, a small group of friends and family, or community of lots of different people? These are important to think about, as it helps determine what policies your server follows, your preferred method of communication, and your platform of choice.

If you’re just hosting for yourself, you might not need to run a full-blown Mastodon server. However, there are a number of lightweight servers that support that Mastodon API, such as GoToSocial, Akkoma, or Takahe, which could suit your needs just fine. When it comes to larger communities with lots of posts happening in real-time, you may want to choose something else.

Step 2: Figure out your policies.

A common expectation for Fediverse servers, particularly ones open for registration by just anyone and everyone, is that the server needs to have established policies. These are usually established by setting a Code of Conduct and Terms of Service, and need to be clear enough that people can easily understand them when signing up for your server.

Here’s an example of our own server’s Terms of Service, which you’re welcome to use and adapt as needed. The main considerations we took involved:

• Acceptable Speech
• Content Policies
• Pornography
• Handling spam and illegal content
• Harassment
• Hate speech and incitement

Your policies may need to be altered depending on what jurisdiction your server falls under, and what commitments you intend to make with moderation decisions. Additionally, you might want to do a little bit of research on community blocklists, such as CARIAD by IFTAS, or the Oliphant blocklists. Rather than simply importing big lists, take the time to review the entries and decide for yourself whether the recommendations make sense to your community.

Step 3: Think about hosting.

The subject of hosting software is a can of worms for some people. Configuring your own server for the first time can feel like a daunting task, and you might not feel confident in dealing with potential issues that come up. The main thing to think about here is whether to self-host, or use a turnkey hosting service.

• Self-Hosting: Great for people who know their way around on the command-line, feel confident with tweaking Nginx or Apache configurations, and know how to stop, start, and debug services. You get more control, and can fix problems yourself as they come up.
• Hosted Service: Less control over what’s happening with the server, but you’re delegating to a company that you’re paying to handle your problems for you. Broadly speaking, hosted services are often cheaper than trying to pay for a monthly VPS.

If you’re looking for Fediverse hosting providers, there’s a handful of options worth looking at: Masto.Host, SpaceHost, Communick, K&T Host, Prometheus Systems, and Toot.io are all popular and vetted choices within the network. Each service has its own strengths and weaknesses, so review what services are being provided in addition to monthly costs. Make sure your plan covers backups!

Additionally: if you’re going the self-hosted route, you’re probably going to want to sign up with an Object Storage provider for handling media, particularly images and videos. A lot of media flows through the Fediverse timeline, and platforms like Mastodon historically mirror all remote content that passes through. Read your platform’s relevant documentation on how the Object Storage integration works, and whether you need to configure periodic clean-up jobs to reclaim space. Supposedly, newer Mastodon releases fixed the clean-up issue with Content Retention settings, but there’s no documentation, and it doesn’t always work for every Object Storage provider.

Step 4: Pick a platform.

This step can be initially frustrating, because once you commit to a choice of platform, it’s not that easy to switch to something else (unless you’re switching to a fork). There are a lot of different potential choices to consider, and the big list of names might not mean much to you in the beginning. Here are a few basic things to think about first:

• What should the service look like? Is it a microblogging platform, a photo-sharing space, a place for threaded group conversations centered around topics?
• App Support. Some Fediverse platforms support a lot of different apps, while others only support a few different ones. Further muddying the waters: a number of Fediverse platforms also support Mastodon’s API endpoints, so a lot of Mastodon apps will be compatible.

It wouldn’t be practical for us to list every possible platform currently on the network, but this guide can provide a starting point of investigation. Most Fediverse platforms are (at some level) compatible with one another, so a user on Mastodon will be able to subscribe to a Lemmy community, like a Pixelfed photo, or watch and comment on a PeerTube video.

Step 5: Set up donations

One really important thing to do is to assess your monthly server costs. A lot of instance admins happily pay out of pocket for the long term, but community contributions can help a lot. Something that I do with my PeerTube instance Spectra Video is that every new person that signs up is pointed to our Terms of Service, Code of Conduct, and a place to make donations. Surprisingly, a lot of users will happily donate towards the server fund if you make them aware of it upon registration.

There are a few worthwhile donation platforms worth using for an instance, but I recommend just setting up one place to concentrate donors towards:

• Patreon: probably the most commonly-known platform, although it tends to be used more for creative projects and software development.
• OpenCollective: really popular within the Open Source community, you might have a lot of good experience here.
• LiberaPay: also relatively popular within the Fediverse, the service itself is simple and usually a good starting point if not going to OpenCollective or Patreon immediately.
• Ko-Fi: This seems to be geared more towards individual creators. That said, the service seems to be comparing itself more and more to Patreon, so your project might find a good home here.

Step 6: Announce your service!

So, you’ve got your server put together. Your Terms of Service are complete, your donations are set up, and your platform is set up to start accepting registrations (or privately invite some people). You can promote your community in a blog post, a community forum, or in a status update to your friends. Another good idea here is to register with discovery indexes.

Generally, there are two indexes worth registering on:

1. Project Server Index: Most Fediverse project sites have a special portal for people looking to join a community. Mastodon has a pretty decent index and a documented process for getting your server added to the list. Search your platform’s site to determine if they have listed servers.
2. FediDB: FediDB is a community-facing statistics tool showcasing the growth and evolution of the network over time. Incidentally, FediDB also ships with its own comprehensive cross-platform index, which can aid user discovery.

Now that you’re up and running, it’s time to actually use your service! We highly recommend keeping your platform documentation handy as you learn the ins and outs of how your particular system works. For now, go forth and start putting stuff out into the world!

 Share