my adventures in #selfhosting - day 112 (scary Ghost edition)

Hello Fedi friends!

I'm currently putting the finishing touches to a post on my brand new, self-hosted #Ghost blog (https://news.elenarossini.com).

Very soon, I will test two things:
1) the newsletter integration (hoping everything will run smoothly)
2) the "Mastodon hug of death" - aka I will post a link to it on Mastodon and I will see what happens when the article's preview card will be fetched by hundreds of Fediverse servers.

I need to go pick up my little one from nursery school in 90 minutes so pray for me everything goes smoothly ​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 111 (quiet edition)

Good morning Fedi friends!

I hope you had a nice weekend.

After backing up my two VPSs I am now staring at my #YunoHost dashboard thinking: now what?

It feels a little odd not to have to tackle any pressing self-hosting issues. Everything seems to be working well, including my manual installation of Ghost on a second (Ubuntu) VPS.

I'm now in maintenance mode.

I must confess in the past 24 hours I have spent some time browsing @yunohost 's app catalogue. So many fascinating things in there! But I am exercising restraint (for now, LOL!)

I'm very grateful for all the software I'm currently self-hosting.

On Debian (via YunoHost):

• #Fail2Ban
• #Friendica -> https://elenarossini.fr/profile/ele/
• #GoToSocial (this account!)
• #LinkStack -> https://elena.social
• #Pixelfed -> https://photos.elenarossini.com/ele

On Ubuntu:

• Fail2Ban
• My #Ghost blog/newsletter -> https://news.elenarossini.com
• #Varnish cache

I'm highly aware of my privilege and how lucky I am to be doing all this. But can I confess I'm a little bored? Thankfully I may have another big project on the horizon: upgrading my VPS and installing / self-hosting #PeerTube. But that will be for another week. Resting now and enjoying this sense of empowerment / digital sovereignty. Very grateful to be in this position.

Wishing you all a fantastic week!

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 107 (sleepwalking edition) ​

Hello Fedi friends!

I'm lucky I didn't have to do any coding today... my little one woke me up at 4:50am, so even if it's only 3:30pm I've been wide awake for 11 hours now. Running commands in terminal would have been... risky I think ​

It feels really strange to be past a HUGE self-hosting hurdle. Now my self-hosted Ghost blog is fine... up and running wonderfully, with perfectly working TXT and DMARC records (knock on wood).

What will my next big challenge be? I'm thinking self-hosting PeerTube... but I will enjoy this peace and sense of accomplishment for a little while longer before taking that on.

Thanks for all your help and encouragement throughout my self-hosting adventures ​

Hello Fedi friends! This is a routine reminder that I've just migrated my Ghost blog to a self-hosted instance.

If you follow #TheFutureIsFederated via RSS, please update the feed's URL:

https://news.elenarossini.com/rss/

And if you had bookmarked any of my old posts, they'll still work if you refresh the page... or else just swap "blog" with "news" in the address bar.

This is my proudest moment in #MySoCalledSudoLife as I installed everything with commands. I've learned so much these past 4 months!

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 106 (email edition) ​

Good morning Fedi friends!

I'm DELIGHTED to report that my self-hosted Ghost blog is fully functional and it withstood the "Mastodon stampede" (so far, knock on wood).

TWO challenges remain:

1) fixing mail DNS records (TXT & DMARC) so that people who sign up for my newsletter won't get a warning that the email "failed the domain's authentication requirements" - thank you for the heads-up @KitsuneVixi!

For some strange reason the warning appears for email signups but not newsletter sends. So I will investigate this morning and add some code to the Ghost config file too (in addition to triple-checking DNS records). Thank you @mdileo @shom @luca for the brilliant tips and guidance ​

2) The announcement I shared yesterday on my Mastodon account (5000+ followers) with the link to my new Ghost blog didn't overwhelm the VPS. But! The toot didn't contain a link with a preview card that had to be fetched by hundreds of servers. So, the real test will be publishing a new blog post and seeing how it holds up when it's shared on Mastodon. My heartbeat accelerates just thinking about it ​

Advocating for FOSS also means contributing to projects with feedback, etc. (as someone eloquently said to me here a few months ago - sorry if I can't credit you, it's been a while). Anyway, all this to say that I will write to Ghost devs today (and John) to tell them about the buggy code that's on their Configurations page. And to suggest a tweak that may help other self-hosted sites withstand sudden traffic from Mastodon. It worked for me, so I feel like it's important to spread the word, since many people have been struggling with the same issue.

Anyway, a HUGE thanks once again to @ticho @jana @leberschnitzel @jpoesen @scammo @moonshinebrigade @mkj @aarRJaay who helped me debug the code yesterday. Infinitely grateful to you for all your advice and help! I was THIS CLOSE to giving up... and now I'm thrilled to be self-hosting my Ghost blog.

Wishing you all a wonderful day!

UPDATE: I just tweaked the config.production.json file in Terminal adding Mailgun SMTP credentials... and now I don't get the warning anymore WOOHOO!

And don't worry, I'm not getting too cocky with this. I kept typing "restart ghost" in Terminal and couldn't figure out why I would get an error... so I kept checking the JSON code... till I realized that the right command was "ghost restart"

#MySoCalledSudoLife

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 105 (​ edition) ​

Good morning Fedi friends!

I just spent 3 hours tweaking Ghost caching configurations in Terminal. It was a lot of A/B testing, with JSON error messages. I asked for advice on Mastodon, sharing a screenshot of the buggy code and got a solution within ONE minute. I'm just so grateful! ​

Now I have "JSON Parser" in my bookmarks bar. What have I become, LOL? Honestly, I'm having so much fun learning all this.

Anyway, I was successfully able to change the caching maxAge from 0 to... 600. I'm hoping that when I share a link to my new self-hosted blog on Mastodon, the whole VPS won't go down within seconds (as it happened multiple times over the past week).

So, trying out a little experiment here because on GoToSocial I have fewer followers. Here is my self-hosted Ghost blog, my pride and joy (and source of occasional headaches). Let me know if it works for you:

https://news.elenarossini.com

Wishing you all a lovely day!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Good morning Fedi friends!

I had to delete the toot I published earlier because sharing a URL to my new self-hosted Ghost blog overwhelmed the server & took the whole site down (even with powerful caching in place).

This is apparently a common problem: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/23662#event-12625986130

Anyway! I spent the past few months learning some basic coding & I was able to manually install Ghost, edit Nginx configs & do other dev magic. It's super empowering!

As they say: link in bio

And my Mastodon <-> self-hosted Ghost curse continues...

I just shared on Mastodon the URL of my new blog. I thought I was being clever by adding a photo showing the URL change (so that no link preview card would be fetched).

But still, within seconds my new site https://news.elenarossini.com became unresponsive. I deleted the toot and poof! the site was back up.

It's kind of wild that this would happen - with "only" 5000 followers. I don't know how @molly0xfff does it.

Varnish cache already sped up my super fast site... but maybe I will have to look into a powerful CDN too. I'm not giving up after getting this far
For reference / similar problems reported: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222067

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 104 (pride edition)

Good morning Fedi friends!

Aw pride is a powerful thing.

I'd like to think that I'm pretty zen and detached and successfully suppressing my ego... but when it comes to things I'm passionate about (read: tech, self-hosting) I cannot let things go.

I had a very very sweet shout-out on a Fediverse podcast last week... but said shout-out mentioned my self-hosting issues and that maybe self-hosting isn't for everyone. I felt that I had to correct the record (even if the mention came with the nicest intention)... because I have ZERO issues self-hosting #GoToSocial, #Friendica and #Pixelfed (thanks to the magic of #YunoHost). All my troubles had to do with #Ghost. (And Ghost is wonderful, it's not related to it, just external circumstances).

So, determined to defend my honor (ha!) on Friday I achieved the impossible: all by myself, following guides I found online, I managed to install #Apache and #Varnish on my VPS and connected Varnish to Ghost. My site was already fast, now it's BLAZING fast.

So I'm giving it another go, moving from Ghost (Pro) to my self-hosted Ghost installation. I turned off subscriptions on https://blog.elenarossini.com... next step is disconnecting the subdomain DNS (a CNAME record) from Ghost... and redirecting traffic to my new blog (https://news.elenarossini.com).

I know how to code things in NGINX for the redirect to work (I think, via guides I found online).

My big question is: how do I tweak my old DNS records for https://blog.elenarossini.com so that NGINX on my self-hosted site https://news.elenarossini.com will correctly pick up the traffic requests? Do I need to set up A and AAAA records for the subdomain blog to point to my VPS with the self-hosted Ghost blog? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! ​

Oh and I learned my lesson and - unlike last time - I am making big changes on a Monday morning, when I have the whole workweek ahead of me (instead of a Friday afternoon 1 hour before picking up my child from nursery school). You live and learn! ​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

About to install Varnish on my Ubuntu VPS - wish me luck!

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 101 (perseverance edition) ​

Good morning Fedi friends!

I'm putting the finishing touches to a blog post about #PeerTube - from the POV of creators. I look forward to publishing it soon so I can devote the rest of the day to fixing my self-hosted Ghost blog issues.

Yes yes yes I know I keep going back-and-forth on this, so I apologize for the "flip-flopping" but I recently got an amazing shout out on a Fediverse podcast... but that shout-out mentioned my self-hosting woes so as I matter of pride I wanna fix them with code. I'm not done yet! I'm a fighter by nature.

I rebuilt my entire Ghost blog (33 posts and counting) from scratch TWO TIMES this year. After stepping away from the problem for 5 days, I'm ready to dive back in.

Disabling the Mastodon preview cards (for links) would fix all my problems but first I wanna see what happens when I tweak my NGINX config file.

I'm in the self-hosting game for the LONG HAUL! Undeterred, ready to learn. Let's do this.

(And THANK YOU FOR YOUR AMAZING SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT throughout all my stumbles).

Wishing you all a lovely Friday.

#MySoCalledSudoLife

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 100 (milestones edition) ​

Good morning Fedi friends!

Today I'm filled with gratitude as I think back about all the ways I have changed - and become more empowered - since I installed @yunohost on my VPS on December 17, 2024.

The biggest difference is my state of mind. For example, yesterday I started using #PeerTube, after setting up an account on the instance MakerTube. I am enjoying it IMMENSELY. I uploaded a couple of my videos there but then immediately thought: I should set up my own instance!

If you had told me 4 months ago that one day I would be a couple of clicks away from setting up my own PeerTube, I would have thought you were hallucinating. But #YunoHost has given me this power and confidence – for which I am infinitely grateful.

Since early February 2025 I have also gotten a bit of experience installing things on a separate VPS with command lines. Even if my self-hosted Ghost blog has given me lemons so far (Mastodon Hug of Death, you're to blame for this!) I am undeterred. I will try tweaking my NGINX settings next week, to set up a reverse proxy and increase my cache. Or heck, I could block Mastodon preview card requests and all my problems would go away. (If someone knows how to do that, please let me know!)

100 days of self-hosting, wow! I feel like a completely different person. Digital sovereignty rocks.

What are my goals for the next 100 days?

1) solving my self-hosted Ghost blog troubles
2) getting an education in caching, reverse proxies and the like
3) setting up my PeerTube instance

Thank you for encouraging me to go on this journey and for all your incredible advice and generous offers to help. This is truly the best community

#MySoCalledSudoLife #YunoHost

Good morning Fedi friends!

It's been 99 days since I started self-hosting my own Fediverse instances. Crazy how time flies!

I've been a bit absent from here this week because I started exploring the world of #PeerTube from the POV of a creator.

I just set up my own account on #MakerTube - so that I can write a guide that is accessible to many (as opposed to skipping this step and going straight to self-hosting).

Anyway, here is my PeerTube account: https://makertube.net/a/elena/video-channels

I have been able to follow it from #Mastodon and #Friendica without a problem, but I keep getting an error message when I try to subscribe with my #GoToSocial username. The exact message: "Cannot fetch information from this remote account." Does anybody have the same issue? (as in: people on GoToSocial, can you subscribe to PeerTube channels?)

Wishing you all a lovely day ​

P.S.: about to go offline for the rest of the day because... there's no pre-school in France on Wednesdays and the garderie keeps my little one up until 12:30. So apologies in advance if I'm slow to reply to messages.

#MySoCalledSudoLife

my adventures in #selfhosting - day 95

Saturday morning, I naturally wake up at 6:20am (as usual) and proceed to spend almost an hour researching reverse proxies, caching utilities and CDNs for my self-hosted Ghost blog… to prevent the “Mastodon Hug of Death”.

I’m now scared at the idea of sharing a link to my blog that comes with a preview card, because it’s like I’m “DDOS’ing” my own site (words from someone’s blog about this issue, sorry I can’t properly quote them).

I thought that once my site was up and running, it would be smooth sailing from there. Aw how naive I was

It’s worth pointing out that I have 3 Wordpress sites - all federated - and even when I share blog posts that get popular on Mastodon, I never run into server issues. So this is a little moment of gratitude for my web host, its native CDN and my Wordpress caching plugin. Ouf. This self-hosted Ghost blog is a little cursed I tell you!

I still have a paid Ghost(Pro) plan and I’m having serious second thoughts about keeping it / dumping this whole self-hosted thing. Again.

It’s not a good feeling to be afraid that a popular blog post could take my whole site down… especially when I’m away from my computer (aka half the day, when I’m with my child) or when I’m asleep. This never happened on my Ghost (Pro) plan, even when I had 100+ boosts on a blog post.

Silver lining: I’m learning new things.

Oh and I don’t mean to be a downer on a Saturday morning. I’m sorry. On the upside, I’m super grateful for all your supportive messages, your bug reports and your links to solutions. This is truly the best community