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!
@arjenpdevries @robinjanssens @Mastodon
Not 100% sure I understood the problem correctly, and I don't know anything about webfinger, but, to clarify, my suggestion was not to change the domain name, but only change the IP it points to. Changing the IP pointed by the domain name should be totally transparent to any client or instance (as decoupling names and IP addresses is the whole point of domain names).
There is also a mastoadmin hashtag by the way, they can sure answer better than me
@arjenpdevries @robinjanssens @Mastodon as far as I understand, the documentation page you are linking is for having usernames with "name@domain1" when your mastodon instance is instead at "domain2". If you are okay with having usernames ending in "@domain2", you shouldn't need that.
Apologies if that's what you were trying to do, in that case I may have answered the wrong question ("how do I migrate my server to a different host").
@lookbeavers @robinjanssens @Mastodon I want your first option - so I can move the server away without forcing a change on the instance's users.
It looks like this is addressed here but wanted to pass it by an expert!