🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 210 (viva #FOSS edition) 🎊​

A "micro" blog post about how grateful I am for the ability to self-host essential digital services.

🔗​: https://elenarossini.com/2025/07/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-210-viva-foss/

#MySoCalledSudoLife

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 204 (experimenting with Wordpress edition) ⚗️​

A "micro" blog post about how I'm turning my federated Wordpress site into a social hub - thanks to the amazing plugins by @alex :

🔗​: https://elenarossini.com/2025/07/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-204-experimenting-with-wordpress-edition/

#MySoCalledSudoLife #Wordpress #ActivityPub #longform

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 203 (am I doing POSSE right? edition) 📖​

Experimenting with the #POSSE method by posting on my federated #Wordpress site first and then syndicating elsewhere.

🔗: https://elenarossini.com/2025/07/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-203/

Not sure if I'm doing things the right way but it feels empowering to have these posts on my site - it will be so much easier to organize them and find them in the future.

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Dear Fedi friends,

Would you like a visual representation of the "Mastodon Hug of Death"? AKA your site immediately going offline when you post a link on Mastodon... because thousands of servers are trying to fetch the preview image?

I have talked about it in the past and I feel like several people didn't believe me.

I experienced it twice with my self-hosted Ghost blog, before I had Varnish cache protecting it.

Well well well, a few minutes ago I experienced the Hug of Death (also known as the "Mastodon stampede") after posting a link to my Wordpress site. I had made a landing page for my Fedi promo video where you can download shorter clips and stills.

A few SECONDS after posting a toot with the link on Mastodon my Wordpress site went offline.

I immediately deleted the toot and went to check out the dashboard of my web hosting site, so I could clear the cache.

This is the image I saw - I GASPED OUT LOUD: nearly 4000 requests in seconds. That's how you DDOS yourself 🤪​

I just re-posted the toot by adding an image from my computer so that thousands of servers wouldn't try to get the cover image from the post itself (media from a toot overwrite cover images from blog posts)

Just a regular Tuesday afternoon 20 minutes before I need to go get my child from pre-school 😅​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 198 (summer project edition) 🏖️​

Hello Fedi friends,

I hope you've been having a nice week so far.

I've been in childcare mode, thus the silence. I've been thinking about something and I would love to get your advice.

#AskFedi: is there a way to export one's #GoToSocial archive of posts (but not replies to other users)? Like something with command lines that doesn't require tedious copy and paste operations?

I wanted to gather up all the posts about the first 6 months of my self-hosting journey, to neatly organize them on my website (either in multiple blog posts or pages) so that they could be more easily searchable. It's not really ideal to go on an infinite scroll quest in reverse chronological order to see the evolution of my self-hosting journey.

Like, I'm curious to see what I was up to in January but going back in time loading old posts takes forever. And I cannot really search for keywords.

I'd like to keep things organized and easily searchable. And implement a POSSE system going forward... publishing on my site first and then syndicating elsewhere.

It's my summer of POSSE inspired by @molly0xfff 🤗
https://www.citationneeded.news/posse/

If you have any ideas about how I can easily export all my #GtS posts, I'm all ears.

If not, I suppose I will start copying and pasting everything and do monthly installments of my self-hosting journey (aka "month 1" etc.). After all I have 1125 posts (sigh).

Anyways, I hope this finds you well and that you're keeping cool in this scorching heat (especially fellow Europeans).

have a lovely morning/afternoon/evening wherever you are ❤️​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 175 (video launch day) 🍿​

Dear Fedi friends, you may have noticed that 20 minutes ago I made the announcement about the release of my Fediverse promo video on here. Why? 5000 character limit, so I could credit/thank everyone who helped. It really took a village to make it.

Today is not only the video's release day, but also, from the POV of a new self-hoster:

- a stress test for my self-hosted #PeerTube instance (worry level: low, they have P2P)
- a stress test for my self-hosted Ghost blog (it should hold up just fine with Varnish cache)
- and a test to see how far and wide a message posted on my #GoToSocial goes. If you're a fan of #GtS you may be pleased to see it mentioned in the video 🤗​

I was afraid of the infamous Mastodon Hug of Death (with hundreds / thousands of servers trying to fetch the video cover image) so I ended up uploading it as UNLISTED on my PeerTube and embedding it on my Ghost blog... this way Ghost (protected by Varnish cache) will take most of the hit. I also provided an alternative video location for it.

Curious to see how all these self-hosted services will do today.

Have a great day everyone!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 128 (a bit Clueless edition) 🎬​

Bonjour Fedi friends!

I'm having a really interesting week: 4 adult caretakers in a house with 3 little children... as I admitted to someone on here, self-hosting is FAR easier than being a referee in fights about LEGOs 😅​

Now, whenever the cousins are busy playing in the garden, I try to do a bit of work, namely: figuring out #PeerTube from the POV of a self-hoster.

Yesterday I finally understood how I could create a user account (other than "root" - the superuser created during the PeerTube installation).

Today I'm busy trying to solve another problem: how do you tell your followers you've moved to a new instance? Because yes, PeerTube is powered by #ActivityPub, but it doesn't support the MOVE function.

I rarely posted on my MakerTube account and only have 150 subscribers, who followed me when reading about it on my blog post about PeerTube.

But I have to admit, the whole "following" thing is really convoluted on PeerTube because you can follow an entire account or specific channels. And I'm a little lost regarding how I notify my followers about the change.

If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears!

Oh and some news for you first... here is my new PeerTube home: https://videos.elenarossini.com/a/ele/video-channels

Special thanks to ​
@yunohost
for empowering me to set up my own instance ❤️​

#MySoCalledSudoLife #video

Good morning Fedi friends!

In case you missed it, on Monday I was able to successfully send a newsletter from my self-hosted, manually installed #Ghost blog. So it appears to be fully working now.

🔗​: https://news.elenarossini.com

I don't have any new #selfhosting anecdotes to share. I thought I would be able to relax for a bit and enjoy this milestone. I spent the day yesterday writing a blog post for #TheFutureIsFederated on the topic of resistance to the digital coup.

In the meantime, my 4-year-old spotted some vintage #LEGO panels in the attic. I identified them as belonging to LEGO's King Castle and she demanded I "BUILD IT RIGHT NOW." I'm not even sure I have all the pieces required... I remember that a couple of years ago I found stacks of old LEGO boxes and organized pieces by color in transparent drawers. I found an old manual online for the castle set and so far so good (sort of). I made it to step 10 out of 43. The real test will be building the retractable bridge.

All this to say: no more self-hosting adventures for me this week, I'll be tackling a complex LEGO project (and I can't use code to get out of hurdles...)

#MySoCalledSudoLife #MyLEGOLife