Out of curiosity I’m currently considering to self-host a Lemmy and a Mastodon instance. Just for me (and maybe 2-3 close friends) privately. The proposition of having full control over my social media sounds appealing to me.
However, I’m not a software developer and I have next to no experience in self-hosting anything. Also, I don’t plan to make self-hosting a hobby of mine.
Given these circumstances - how much time investment do you think is needed to keep everything running smoothly. I wouldn’t mind spending 1-2 hours a week, but if it’s more like 1-2 hours a day, I would stay clear.
Also, are there resources for troubleshooting available? I found the installations guides and some seem to be quite good for a layperson, giving step-by-step advice, however where to go if it doesn’t work?
I’m trying to make up my mind if it would be worthwhile to try or if I set myself up with wasting a lot of time :) So, any advise is welcome.
I have been looking into Mastodon a while back but found it way too complex for my single user use case. I ended up with Akkoma running on Docker which seems to be a much better fit for this requirement. I also set up Lemmy on Docker a week ago or so which seems to run fine as well. I noticed the comment here that the Lemmy documentation for Docker is incomplete, which I noticed as well. But I figured it out, so if you hit a road block I may be able to help.
Honestly, if you don’t feel like self-hosting could be a hobby, just don’t do it.
If done correctly, it can take up quite some time, but that can definitely be worth it (privacy, freedom, hobby/fun, etc). But if not done correctly, that can cause problems in security, performance, compatibility and perhaps even financials.
Just find an instance you like (read the rules about privacy, allowed languages, allowed content, etc) and create an account there.
