Submitted 6 days ago by CraigCabbage@sh.itjust.works to fediverse@lemmy.world
I want to join the Fediverse. I don’t have a computer or anything to make something like a Lemmy instance, and I found that NodeBB will easily allow you to make a forum quickly, but I have to pay to do so. Should I just pay when I can or is there a free way to make a federated instance on a software?
You’d have a hard time finding company that would just give you access to vps for free. Running a server always costs someone money.
oracle free tier
Oracle free tier is honestly not worth the hassle. Their portal is absolutely confusing, and those who figure it out will just get banned.
The question isnt easy to answer as you dont need an instance to participate. It is far better if you join an instance and spare yourself the hassle of admin and/or mod work. If you absoluteky want to have a community which you can build and mod, you can do that on any instance. If you think you can provide something that nobody else can then you could open an instance. But in that case i suggest finding people to do this with because it is a large project.
And only after all those considerations, you should think of the tech aspect. You can get a vps for 10 bucks a month and host lemmy on it, probably amongst other things. But i would probably not do it if youre not really curious about server hosting stuff. Managed hosting (which is the offer you mentioned) is another idea but it isnt worth it imo. Rarely will someone really have the need to use that and then the company provoding needs to make money so you will lose.
Thank you 🙏 Is there any way to federate a ProBoards forum? I made one once and someone said I should federate it
There are free tiers for some cloud providers, like Oracle (though personally I recommend against using anything Oracle ever).
I use Oracle fo No Lastname Needed, and it works well (although I have out grown the free tier), but I would NOT recommend them for a newbie to hosting as it’s a very complex eco-system compared to just a cheap VPS
Yunohost is pretty easy all things considered.
The software is free, but hardware is not. You could buy an old laptop or even something really cheap, like a ln Orange Pi Zero.
Best way to run an instance for cheap is on your own hardware, but I would only do that if you are experienced with self hosting since it would require port forwarding (unsecure if done wrong)
Yes, yunohost plus oracle free vps
or yunohost plus any other free vps, just look it up, idr where else has one, some places have credits if you signup with codes or off certain links like hetzner has free credits, vultr, and some others too, lowendtalk also has hella cheap vps under 10$ amonth that can support lemmy + more apps easily, the issue is space fills up fastish after a few months, and I think by default in the yunohost version theres a pictrs error that makes photo uploads crop weird you have to fix. (if you upload photos through it)
free domains available elsewhere or 1$ a year
Why?
Oracle has a generous free server offering. You will need to trust Oracle not to turn off your server because a business customer needs it, though. Availability of their good free tier also fluctuates and you need to figure out their weird IP/firewall/security config.
You need a domain name to effectively federate, too. There are free options available for those too, but they’re not very reliable.
Goretantath@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It costs money to send electricity through wires.
CraigCabbage@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Fair enough