Recent comments in /f/ask

devtesla wrote (edited )

I've used Feedbin since before google reader shut down, which is a great service but requires a subscription. Very nice web app, super reliable, consistently gets new useful features. It handles email newsletters too, and stuff like YouTube and podcasts is handled well. For feeds that don't have full text it can go in and grab a reader view of the site, which rules. You can set up push notifications if you really need to.

$50/year is kinda high? But I use it every day and straight up never had any issues so I'll definitely stick with it.

1

twovests wrote

Learning enough self-hosting to set up Postmill is difficult, but doable! Having some Linux experience is a pretty good start.

I don't know your exact skill level, but I figure you're at least familiar with using the Linux command line and with using Google/StackOverflow/etc.

I'd recommend doing all your learning on a Raspberry Pi (or other spare computer to install Linux on), if you have one, so you aren't paying ~$10/month to a VPS provider.

What is your main OS? (Windows? MacOS? Linux?) This matters a bit for what tools you'd use to manage your server.

If I were to recommend some "milestones" along the way to hosting Postmill, I would break down the goals like this. Except for the Postmill specific steps, you can find good guides for any of these all over the internet:

  1. Learning:
    1. Set up Linux on a Raspberry Pi (or spare computer).
      • You can go straight to the VPS if you want.
    2. Set up SSH (using key auth only) to that Linux machine, and only use SSH to manage it. (No desktop GUI!)
    3. Set up a Caddy server on that Linux machine and set up a 'hello world' page.
      • I very highly recommend Caddy because it's very "production ready" by default, easy to install (because Go compiles to static binaries) and easy to use.
    4. Set up a Postmill instance on your Linux machine using Docker and Docker Compose.
  2. Doing:
    • You'll repeat a lot of the work you did above, but it should go a lot faster once you've done all the trial-and-error. Plus, you'll have your history from the above to refer to.
    1. Set Linux on a VPS with a provider like DigitalOcean.
    2. Buy a domain from a registrar like IWantMyName, and set up the A and AAAA records to point to your VPS.
    3. Set up SSH (using key auth only -- extra important this time!) to the server, if you didn't in part 1.
    4. Set up a Caddy server and set up a hello world to your domain.
    5. Install Postmill on your VPS using Docker and Docker Compose

I luv to talk about this stuff so pls ask any questions you have :3

2

astroaron OP wrote

Hey thank you so much! I know my way roughly around linux, don't know much about self-hosting unfortunately. All my previous website work has been very plug and play haha. But I'll read over the instructions here and see how much I think I can handle.

3

neku wrote

when google reader went down someone made a clone called the old reader which is basically fine. if you need any specific features vs just a chronological list of posts its probably not quite right but for my needs its pretty much fine. the free version supports 100 subscriptions max so it might not suit you

3

twovests wrote (edited )

Hi! I'm the current sysadmin of jstpst and I recently figured out (with lotsa help from emma) how to host it!

Right now we're hosting Jstpst on a DigitalOcean VPS using Docker.

Are you already familiar with selfhosting on Linux? The whole "Rent a VPS or something, set up a domain, host a service, put it behind Nginx or whatever" and all the "sudo nano /etc/blahblahblah"?

If so, you have the prerequisite skills :D I'm using Docker to host Postmill because I've had so many pains with dependency conflicts and upgrades before. Docker's promise that I would never have to worry about that again has held true.

The repo with Dockerfiles is here: https://codeberg.org/Postmill/Postmill

The docker instructions are here: https://codeberg.org/Postmill/Postmill/wiki/Serving-Postmill-using-Docker-and-Caddy

The Docker Compose (which sets up and links the multiple Docker images which a Postmill install uses) is here: https://codeberg.org/Postmill/postmill-docker-example


For directed guidance, are you familiar with using Linux and hosting web services / sites on Linux? (I think you can do this on other OSes too, but I can't speak to BSD or Windows or whatnot)

2

twovests OP wrote

(Different cheeses are just different molds, i.e. foodstuffs which get their distinctive flavors from being highly complex lifeforms. To me, a cheese is a civilization. And our civilization is like a cheese.)

2