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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if I could join the fediverse with my own mastodon (Or diaspora or whatever) on my own domain, just like a personal email server. Or would that be much more complicated? Never looked into it but if I do I I'd like to be totally self-managed.

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For sure you can, and also you really should if you are able to. If you are going to use the server by yourself only, you may also consider going with something easier on resources like GoToSocial instead of the fully-fledged Mastodon server.

Thanks for the heads-up on GoToSocial! I'll try it.

Thanks for mentioning GoToSocial! I didn't know this one.

I just setup a mastodon instance on a vps with my own domain. It was a fun evening project, I just followed mastodon's documentation along with a few supplemental searches. I'd say initial setup is pretty simple, tbd on upkeep ;)

Plenty of people do exactly this. I think one side effect is you wouldn't be as discoverable, if you cared about that. No less than just hosting a blog site of your own, but even that has SEO possibilities.

Yes you can. That’s one of the main ideas of it

Absolutely doable and it's a fun exercise. Mastodon is probably overkill for a single-user instance, there are other ActivityPub services that do not need Postgres+Redis+Ruby etc (pleroma, microblog...).

ps: as I found out while setting up my own server, diaspora is its own thing, it can't federate with ActivityPub services.

Oh I thought diaspora was part of fediverse. It's listed on https://fediverse.party so I assumed it could do ActivityPub. Guessed wrong, thanks for correcting me!

Yes, you definitely can, however running your own instance is not an out of the box process currently.

I just wish you could have you own domain while not hosting an instance, like just pointing your DNS records at an email server hosted by somebody else.

Unless I'm reading your reply incorrectly, you absolutely could do the same thing. (You are referring to managed hosting solutions, right?)

https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server...

This website has some instructions and pointers that might be helpful.

The way I read it it's more like wanting to be able to present as user@mycustomdomain.com without having to have your own instance and retaining the ability to move between providers. Sorta like pointing your domain at Google Workplace for a few bucks a month.

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