Journey with self hosting for personal blog and fediverse
Hello, I followed the "selfhosted" instance on LemmyWorld in order to be able to talk about my experiences having them in order, without confusing criteria into Fediverse. Hoping they can be useful to others.
Current setup: Hostinger vps kvm2 plan, Debian12, YunoHost, Hostinger's docker manager installed.
Personal background: blind since birth, (I don't see), I'm mostly a computer power-user, worked and studied with ms-dos since 1989 until late 90s. Basic GNU/Linux knowledge in 2002, then interrupted in 2004.
I don't care talking about disability when discussing unrelated topics but it's necessary in this case as my needs are quite different from others.
So, I've been scared by self-hosting and have had shared hosting web sites until now. Until @_elena started self hosting her digital echosystem from scratch using YunoHost.
Due to lack of drivers I stopped with Linux on my private machine, drivers for the Braille display I had, and then the uneffective (at least for my need) screen reader capabilities on Linux's GUI based distros.
Finally in January 2026 I jumped in the dark after reading Elena Rossini's blog about YunoHost and having explored their demo pages. At the worst, I'll cancel the contract...
In the end I've managed to run WriteFreely, WordPress, CastoPod and GoToSocial, just by YunoHost; but if someone says terminal knowledge is not needed, this is a complete lie.
Where a system (such as YunoHost) can do the dirty work configuring postfix and nginx, I'll support it but it has its disadvantages: not every app can be installed through it.
For me it's very difficult to create and look after a config file on my own, it's frustrating for a sighted to miss a punctuation sign, an apostrophe, an indent. Let alone for me! A single space skipped, can crash a system.
A lie even saying that AI completely helps. It does solve some small, simple, immediate tasks but it has some mistakes as well. The so-called allucinations which create a real mess if you can rely on no personal skill.
Such as "sudo yunohost tools cert-install", or similar. AI wrote "cert-install" while the real command is "cert install"! A power user can get rid of it and correct, a beginner with no command-line knowledge, just copies, pastes, and gets scared.
My late attempt has been Madblog, a static markdown-based blogging platform with Fediverse activitypub in it, so I learned what Docker is and how it basically works. But I gave up, due to several timeouts and activitypub slow-downs. I think I'm going to use WordPress for blogging then. In case of comments it'll be more intuitive for non-fediverse folks.
Hopefully share others' experiences as well!
#ActivityPub #blind #fediverse #introduction #selfhost #selfhosting #WordPress #YunoHost
Link at end but I mean, frankly, this is why I stick with a simple SSG. I don't even attempt #ActivityPub integration because I actually don't want comments on my blog, ever! Got something to say? People can send an email, and if you can't be bothered to send me an email, then your words aren't of any weight to me whatsoever. I don't want to make it *easier* for the web to talk to me. That's why that friction exists, but I do have to applaud you for giving it a shot and I actually fully understand your decision! If I didn't have help with my blog I'd have used Bearblog. https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/community-built-blog/ @elettrona @selfhosted @_elena
@WeirdWriter @selfhosted @_elena Already heard about that Eleventy but never tried; well, I have never had so many comments around my web site but sometimes it happens and I want people to choose - now I'm still planning my new web site version, but in the earlier one which is still on line on shared hosting, I've decided not to place a real contact form because they anonymously wrote bad stuff.
In this case though, having the comment ability (and until last year we had the facebook public page as well), before telling me and my best friend "HIV pervs", they had to keep in mind nothing was private, IP addresses logged, and overall those hater folks' destiny was to be mocked into "the agony ass" space (a parody of the agony aunt).
And, overall, with ActivityPub every dirty person would go public all over fediverse making a fool of themselves.
Guess what? No one had guts to say bad things as soon as I took private contacts away