TFT Rocks Mastodon Server Move

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Jess Martin recently got in touch to kick off monthly speaker series with Tools for Thought Rocks again.

As part of that, we’re reviewing all the systems and tools we use.

We’ve used Luma as our calendaring / event app for a while. Since we’ve been with them for some long, they ditched some things (their community / chat stuff), and simplified it to be calendars with shared admin access at the center.

Jess managed to bring along all of our subscribers and past events, and our calendar is at https://lu.ma/toolsforthought. You can subscribe to it, to get notifications via email, and you can also add it to your calendar software.

Stay tuned for Jess to announce the next monthly speaker series.

Oh and we should mention - want to get involved? Curate events in the calendar, find and host speakers, and we’re going to take another run at actually using a TFT of some kind to actually host all these great talks. Leave a comment!

ToolsForThought.Rocks Mastodon Migration

I set up a Mastodon server with Spacebear, a managed hosting provider, as a spot for people to go outside of Twitter.

We’ve got about 13 active users on the server, but it’s quite a large instance, costing 42EU / month, which has been paid for by Boris so far.

And, because of the way Mastodon gets installed as a root domain, we can’t use https://toolsforthought.rocks as a landing page or a TFT to keep our own listing of events and speaker notes and so on.

I am now running an inexpensive Cloudron-powered server at https://commonscomputer.com (which is where this forum where you’re reading this is also installed). I also bought the domain toolsforthought.social and have setup a one click Mastodon server on this server at https://toolsforthought.social.

Migrating, Volunteering, Donating, and More

I’m happy to host this server at its new location and domain. Today, that just means I’m the sysadmin (control over Mastodon server admin features, as well as Cloudron which keeps the Mastodon itself app updated over time).

I haven’t really been doing any moderation – luckily, there have been very few incidents. It’s a low volume server.

What I’m looking for:

  • does someone want to volunteer as a Mastodon server moderator or admin?
  • I know there was one comment about increasing word count — any other desired features?

For discussion:

  • should we have open registration and invite more people in?
  • should we offer to host accounts for TFT projects?

After the move, I expect the server to cost very little, since it will be shared with a bunch of other things that I’m running anyway.

  • $20 per year for domain name
  • $10 per month of fractional server resources, backup, email, etc

So let’s say $150 per year. That’s 6 people at $25/year, $2/month. I’m hand waving a little between CAD and USD here.

I’ve got a dedicated page to track funds for this on the TFT OpenCollective:

If you’re interested in being on the server, you should:

  • migrate your account from the https://toolsforthought.rocks server to https://toolsforthought.social
  • leave a comment with any thoughts you have about what you’d like to see, especially on the for discussion items above
  • optionally donate (really, it’s not required — I’ll run it for a year no matter what — my servers are all paid up)

Otherwise, please backup and migrate to another server by the end of November, so I can turn off the managed hosting.

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Thanks again for everything you’re doing here, Boris. One question: in terms of the future of the new Mastodon server, is the thought that you’ll review this time next year and see where we go from there, or is it given as granted that it will be maintained as long as the associated costs are covered by contributions and the administrative load is supported, barring any other significant issues? I’ve been happy on the toolsforthought server; just trying to determine how likely it is that migration might come up again…

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Good question! Now that I’ve lowered the cost on it, then yes, as long as we have a small group who is interested in using it / sharing some of cost, I’m happy to maintain it.

On the larger server I have now, the fixed cost really is only the domain name.

And I did see you contribute, thank you!

So that’s what I meant by I’m in for at least a year.

I’m inclined to keep invite only / apply for an account as the setting — and encourage people to get involved and donate if they do use the account. What do you think @JSLR?

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I have no argument against access being granted by invitation/application. Growth of the community will be slower, but that’s more likely to lead to an active community of people who are invested in being here. And not to play the self-deprecating card, but if I managed to get in, the criteria for entry certainly aren’t excessively restrictive… :wink: This might mean that there’s some call to define the entrance criteria, if not already posted somewhere.

I guess that will come with the new landing page— a (re)statement of intent, or a “story so far” to give a brief sense of what this community has been/done thus far, which would also help newer people be clear on what they’re signing up for. If there’s already something like this somewhere that I’ve missed, please do just point me in that direction!

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All great points!

I posted invite codes to the TFT Rocks newsletter / meeting updates list. Because of the changes with the Luma platform we use it’s a bit all over the place, but there are 400 subscribers.

This is good lore that we should capture!

My other task is turning on the invite codes feature and explaining it.

Preview of Obsidian / Quartz powered site at https://notes.toolsforthought.rocks (the about page link 404s because of a quirk I need to fix).

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