Good morning Fedi friends!
I'm finally ready to test if my new self-hosted Ghost blog can withstand the infamous "Mastodon hug of death".
Here's a quick blog post about what I've been up to: news.elenarossini.com/what-im-…
(Apparently Mailgun thinks I'm a spammer, so I couldn't send it as a newsletter - that's a whole other story).
Wishing you all a lovely day + weekend 🌸
#MySoCalledSudoLife #selfhosting
What I’m up to: March - April 2025 edition
A post detailing the things I'm focusing on right now (March-April 2025)Elena Rossini
Mathi Gwithyas
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •jramskov
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Impressive how much you have done, great job!
Your server responded quickly too 😎
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to jramskov • • •jramskov
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Ike
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •well done!
It is uncommon for someone without a tech background to learn the tech and do all the hands on work that you did.
Especially, and I mean no offense, someone in the arts like film studies.
You seem unusually intelligent, curious, and motivated!
I cant guess how incredibly angry(?) at big tech you must have been to do this project. Lots of people are, but they dont do what you did. Why were you so motivated to act and learn something so seemingly unrelated to film?
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Ike • • •@ike haha thank you! I didn't technically start from 0 – I had developed websites in Wordpress as a side gig for many years. But yeah, all my tech knowledge was some HTML and CSS and the most daring thing I ever did was tweak something in PhpMyAdmin 😆
The way Instagram negatively affects the self-image of millions of girls and women around the world - coupled with how Space Karen destroyed my favorite online community (RIP) were my two biggest motivators. Plus I'm the mom of a young girl...
Ike
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Ah yes - I am very aware of how motivating it can be when thinking about the future of my own young child. Im much more willing to learn things I never would have considered otherwise. As much for practicality as for role modeling.
Though I have a boy and have a different set of concerns about the influence of online media...
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Ike • • •@ike something that fired me up lately was the superb memoir "Careless People" about the morally corrupt, greedy people running Meta.
And yes, I can see how concerns for boys are really different. The Netflix miniseries Adolescence must be a really hard watch
Ike
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •I have Careless People on hold at the library and will add Adolescence to my list. :)
Congrats again - looking forward to more content about your self hosting journey!
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Ike • • •@ike wonderful! Careless People is a phenomenal book... Adolescence will be a tough watch 🥲
And thank you for the words of encouragement for my self-hosting journey 😊
Scott Starkey
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Hi Elena! I really like this series, as I was thinking about doing #selfHosting myself one day. My primary worry in doing so was parenthetically brought up by you, about backups. You said, "moving all my files to an offline system with 4 backups including 2 outside my home". My biggest fear with self-hosting is losing all my data in a disaster.
Do you have a couple of "cold-storage" machines outside of your house, at friends' or family's houses? Can you please elaborate?
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Scott Starkey • • •@ScottStarkey thank you Scott.
I'm not self-hosting on a Raspberry Pi or old computer, but rather via a VPS.
They automatically do weekly backups for me. For the VPS hosting 3 Fediverse profiles (GoToSocial, Friendica, Pixelfed) I am even paying 2.99 a month for daily backups. Hostinger (the Lithuania-based company of my 2 VPSs) has servers in different countries to ensure backup security.
My offline system is for all the other stuff: docs, photos and videos. At my in-laws' & my parents' 🤗
Scott Starkey
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Perfect! I was also considering a solution like that!
Right now I am using Koofr koofr.eu/ which is reasonably priced, but not truly automatic.
I would be very interested in a future article about how you did it! And thanks for blogging about your journey!
Koofr - One storage for all.
KoofrElena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Scott Starkey • • •@ScottStarkey interesting!
For a cloud solution similar to Dropbox - but open and self-hosted - I have heard amazing things about nextcloud.com
You could get a 5 Euro/month VPS, install YunoHost and then NextCloud... I know many people doing just that. I'm personally not doing it because I like to have immediate physical access to all my files...
Nextcloud - Open source content collaboration platform
Nextcloudsleepy silhouette
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to sleepy silhouette • • •@silhouette thank you!!!
I'm incredibly grateful to the awesome tech support I got on here - especially @renchap 's suggestion to change the cache maxAge...
and people's encouragement to install Varnish cache, which is truly incredible 🚀
Renaud Chaput
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Renaud Chaput • • •@renchap @postmark thank you Renaud! 🙏
I will definitely keep Postmark in mind... but for now I will have to sort out this problem with Mailgun because they are the sole company integrating with Ghost...
Seth is a Perpetual Startup ⁂
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Seth is a Perpetual Startup ⁂ • • •@phillycodehound thank you Seth! ❤️ May I use you as a character witness? 😆
I already used the joke with someone else but I'm half serious in a way... my account is completely frozen and I can't do a thing. Apparently they have a big backlog for their support chat, so it doesn't look like my issue will be resolved anytime soon. What a rollercoaster ride 🎢
Seth is a Perpetual Startup ⁂
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Seth is a Perpetual Startup ⁂ • • •Sebastian
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Update: my toot with the link to the blog post ended up on Explore (thank you!!!) and yet my self-hosted #Ghost blog is still standing.
Mastodon hug of death, it appears I have defeated you this time!
Special thanks to everyone who recommended I install Varnish cache and to @renchap who suggested I tweak the maxAge in my cache settings. I owe you big time! ❤️
Off I go pick up my little one from nursery school. I hope I didn't jinx myself 😆
Michael Mathy
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Michael Mathy • • •michael
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to michael • • •@michael super easy even for someone like me who knows nothing. It just requires installing Apache too (also very quick).
This is the guide I used: hostadvice.com/how-to/web-host…
lgsp
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •>super easy even for someone like me who knows nothing.
Writes the person managing self hosting an ever growing number of fedi and non fedi services 😆
And in fact suggests to "install apache which is super easy"
You are being too humble here!
@michael
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to lgsp • • •@lgsp you’re very sweet but I swear I’m only copying and pasting commands in Terminal following written tutorials. I truly know very little.
Like last week I couldn’t understand why I kept getting error messages when I typed “restart ghost” - it took me a while to realize it should have been “ghost restart” instead 😅
@michael
lgsp
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •> I swear I’m only copying and pasting commands in Terminal following written tutorials.
who doesn't this? I bet that Linus Torvalds himself does this from time to time 😄
By the way I envy your energy for doing all this stuff 🙂
@michael
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to lgsp • • •@lgsp haha you're making me smile from ear to ear. Thank you for the kind words and encouragement 😊
I'm just a mommy on a mission against Big Tech
Isadora 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Isadora 🏳️⚧️ • • •kersnazzle
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to kersnazzle • • •David Bureš
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to David Bureš • • •@davidbures thank you! I bought the theme on Themeforest: themeforest.net/category/blogg…
I'm using Wavy :)
Ghost Blogs and Ghost Themes from ThemeForest
ThemeForestBradley
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •loading and working great from here.
Love the bit about your motivations! The de-googling is so difficult for me. I've escaped the Gmail but the photos and phone are very difficult.
Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Bradley • • •@bradley Maybe you could keep the phone and De-Google with GrapheneOS?
Although banking on it (as in virtual cards) is a bit tough / disabled by many banks
Bradley
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to Bradley • • •@bradley I wonder if one solution to this would be to carry a second phone (maybe a previous generation that you didn’t resell) only for mobile payments.
Apple Pay works even on Airplane mode… (I literally use it on flights all the time to buy snacks, etc). So you wouldn’t need a SIM card on an old device to use it for payments. It’s just not that convenient…
Bradley
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •Sebastiaan Ammerlaan 🇳🇱
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •