Mastodon provides an optional feature called “Full-text search” and that allows you and the users on your server to: search posts the user made search posts the user has favourited search posts in threads the user was mentioned search posts in direct messages to the user This is pretty handy but it requires a significant amount of resources and the … Read More
Changes to the Terms of Service
I have added the following to the terms of service: ——— I will not accept to host Mastodon servers that promote or that become a gathering of users around the following topics: Sexual content involving minors, including artistic depictions Gore and extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions National Socialism Nazism Holocaust denial Racism Alt right, including under the disguise of … Read More
Sidekiq and Web limits
Both Sidekiq and Web limits only limit the concurrency, meaning how much “work” they can do simultaneously. As an example, a limit of 2 Sidekiq threads will only allow at any given time a maximum of 2 Sidekiq jobs to be running. The same goes for the Web process but the Web process allows for multiple workers. In theory a … Read More
New Masto.host Plans
I decided to stop offering Dedicated Hosting plans and to make a new Pricing structure for Masto.host Shared Hosting Nothing will change for current subscriptions and you can use them at the same price and conditions you have up until today. In the future, if you have a subscription that started before this change, you will still be able to … Read More
DNS provider change + starting the CDN testing
Since my last post, I got some questions and concerns from admins and users of Masto.host hosted instances and as I was also having second thoughts about the testing, I decided to take a couple more days to think about it. About the DNS provider, it was simple. I just ended up moving to ClouDNS and I am happy with … Read More
Testing CDN for media files and changes to DNS provider
For the past weeks, I have been thinking of implementing a CDN solution for Masto.host shared hosting media files. This could speed up image/video loading on countries that are far from Europe and could also reduce the requests/downloads from OVH Object Storage. As I pay per GB downloaded having a CDN (cheaper than OVH) and that could speed up the … Read More
I had to block some external instances
There is a bug that in a very specific situation, instances running version 2.3.x (not sure if others) can get a stuck Sidekiq request to /users/___username___/collections/featured This causes an endless loop of that request and could bring my servers to an halt. So, I had to make the decision to block several instances that were causing a massive amount of … Read More
Cookie Consent
As I was starting to look into GDPR, I went back to the basics, cookie consent. It really annoys me to see the cookie consent notices whenever I enter a website. As such, I decided to forego some cool features (like Analytics and other tools) to make Masto.host cookie free. There is one exception, when you click Buy Now you … Read More
Masto.host Year One
When I started Masto.host I was thinking that I could help a couple of people, learn a bit more about sys-admin and just have fun with it as a side project. One year later, Masto.host has become something else, it is almost a part time project and it has been requiring a lot of my time. It was fun to … Read More
New website
I finally managed to get around and do a better website for Masto.host. As all things with Masto.host it is still a work in progress but I think it looks much better. Also, the old website was just an HTML theme I found online and that I adapted to the service I wanted to offer but without any experience on … Read More