FINALLY - setting up a #Mastodon instance. Can't be arsed going DIY so I've headed to a hosted option.
There's 2 great options I've seen available - MaaStodon and Mastohost.
Know of any others?
If you use any of these, what's the experience been like? Any glaring problems with federating and discoverability on a small #instance?
Especially keen to hear from those who'd consider yourself non-technical.
@david_ross I think Eldritch.cafe is on MaaStodon, you can ask @Sylvhem for some feedback :)
@eliotberriot You are right, with @Sylvhem we run Eldritch Café on Maastodon ;)
@david_ross I'm not a non-technical user but Maastodon is pretty easy to use. I'm happy of our provider choice and our instance is running fine (for a little over a month now).
@david_ross
@milia I remembered you were (at least) two persons involved in the project, but I had not your username in mind, and I could not find it on the about page of Eldritch.cafe (@Sylvhem) is not, either.
I'm really sorry I keep on forgetting mentionning you like that :s
@eliotberriot Don't worry, it doesn't bother me at all. 
I only said I was also behind Eldritch Café so my opinion about Maastodon could have some context.
The only place where the staff is listed is Barmaid's followings.
@david_ross Avoid federation bots, they are quite random in following and you'll get a global which has nothing to do with you or your instance :)
Since you already been here for a while, your follower list is probably a good start for federation, but you can invite some people you like to maybe create an account and add their follower list so that you'll have some extra stuff too :)
Good plan! Mastodon is not a very smooth thing to run. Or I guess you could try out Pleroma as the back-end?..
@david_ross there is a third option in japan.
I use masto.host for tabletop.social and have good things to say about the service.
You can @ me if you have particular question.
@david_ross I went with @mastohost for a small local instance toot.si. The setup was a total breeze, and there was no noticeable hickups for the whole year (we're up since June). @hugo is amazing - responsive and very fast.
@david_ross quite easy.. just start following people from all different instances :) and automatically it will start federating.. we are only 8 on our instance for now.. 🙃
@david_ross I'm using @mastohost and I'm very happy with the service.
I think that having a small instance isn't always a great thing. The federated timeline is roughly the same as your timeline, because you drive it basically. So it can be harder to discover new sources on the Fediverse. If you already have an established base though, it might be a lot easier.
@ted @david_ross @mastohost - Have you thought of setting up a follow bot account just to expand your fediverse feed?
@tinker @david_ross @mastohost yeah, but that feels like just introducing randomness. I'd really like the feed to be more useful, not just bigger.
AI is hip. Perhaps I need to train a bot on my feed and have it search out matches.
/me starts raising VC funding
@ted @david_ross @mastohost I just went through the list of people the first people I followed followed. Actually it was just one person who followed a lot of people. That was enough to bootstrap it.
So, have you started hosting it?
@officialcjunior setting things up
@david_ross Might be interesting for your research re:maastodon https://social.coop/@nev/99961393323895711