Technical #question to @Mastodon experts!

Looks like I can get to host an instance at the uni, at least temporarily - but they want me to be able to move the instance easily to a machine outside our domain, later on, if necessary.

From the user guide:
https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Serving_a_different_domain.md

Do I understand this correctly as that running a server on a different subdomain keeps the actual subdomain mostly hidden, and users will not notice nor have to relocate if I end up having to move the actual server?

@arjenpdevries @Mastodon should be easy, as long as you use a domain/subdomain that you will have control of indefinitely

@robinjanssens @arjenpdevries @Mastodon
robinjanssen is correct. I don't know for mastodon specifically, but in general, you don't want your domain to change. The easiest thing to do is obtaining a domain name that is not bound to the specific machine (e.g. mastodon.myuniversity.com versus computer1.myuniversity.com). Then when you switch server you can keep the domain name as it is, and only change the DNS record so to point to a different server.

@lookbeavers @robinjanssens @Mastodon Thank you already!

So if the webfinger acct: URI corresponds to a domain that is under my control "indefinitely" -

then the mapping to an author/actor URI is transparent so that modifying the subdomain does not affect the users?

I would like to get this right before setting things in motion!

#question