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.
A Mastodon Mastodon instance, or just something to interact with Mastodon-compatible services? For the later maybe have a look in GoToSocial, especially when you host it as single-user instance just for you.
It needs very low resources and fits in a single Docker container with a single volume. All you need to keep in mind is that it is alpha software and not every single feature is fully supported yet. You also need a client because GoToSocial is just a server/back-end.
For GoToSocial it took me around a weekend, including learning how to use Docker and trying things out a lot.