# Are you in Diaspora? If not, give it a try



## bizzard (Sep 28, 2014)

For those who don't know what Diaspora is, its a decentralized social network, a collection of servers(pods) which runs the Disapora software (https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora), and communicates with one another using open standards.

What makes it special from other social networks is that its not owned by anyone and you can host your own pod if you like to keep your data.



Diaspora is maintained by a community, Diaspora Foundation. It uses a handle similar to email([email protected]) to identify users. Those who haven't joined, I welcome you all to the #Disapora community. Don't forget to add me when you are there. You can find my profile from the signature.

Apart from being a user, I also help in maintaining the diaspora pod poddery.com, which is run on a KnightSwarm VPS. 

List of active pods can be found at http://podupti.me/. You can signup on any pods with registrations open. There is no such thing like real name policy to get an account.

A beginners guide by Diaspora user Birch: http://earthandspirit.livejournal.com/38361.html


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## Kayaba Akihiko (Sep 28, 2014)

Wait how does this work? If I sign up on one pod, do I sign up for every other pod?


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## blergh (Sep 28, 2014)

Just the hostname "earth and spirit" along with the howto being posted on livejournal put me off.


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## MannDude (Sep 28, 2014)

Not a member, or at least I don't think I am. If so, I have no idea what pod I 'joined'. What happens if I join a pod and it disappears, does my account disappear too?


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## bizzard (Sep 28, 2014)

Kayaba Akihiko said:


> Wait how does this work? If I sign up on one pod, do I sign up for every other pod?


No. Each and every pod communicate with one another using open standards. So, you can connect to any person in any pod but just creating an account in one. Moreover, since it uses open standards, it can connect to other networks like Frendica too.



blergh said:


> Just the hostname "earth and spirit" along with the howto being posted on livejournal put me off.


I am not so great in writing long sentences. So, just pointed to one post which I found good enough. 



MannDude said:


> What happens if I join a pod and it disappears, does my account disappear too?


Most of the pods are run by volunteers. Pick a pod which has active users. Even if the pod maintainer has financial issues, we could run a croudfunding campaign or accept donations from its users to keep it running.

Poddery.com was in a similar situation. We ran a campaign at indiegogo.com and raised enough money to sustain it for 3 years (may be even more). Afterall, what it needs is a good VPS/Server and some effort to keep the software upto date.

Development is still going on and we will have the feature to migrate between pods sometime in near future.


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## tonyg (Sep 28, 2014)

The name sounds like a disease...man, I came down with Diaspora.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 28, 2014)

@MannDude - I was actually kicking around running a pod myself, if you don't want to deal with the hassle of setup and don't want to worry about it vanishing.  I had one running before for some time, just never had enough free time to really get into it.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 28, 2014)

Hell, in fact, if there's enough users interested, why not setup a diaspora.vpsboard.com pod?


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## MannDude (Sep 28, 2014)

Aldryic C said:


> Hell, in fact, if there's enough users interested, why not setup a diaspora.vpsboard.com pod?


Another thing that sounds good, will be cool for a week and then forgotten about.

Sort of like the vpsBoard git server and vpsBoard image hosting server that I continue to pay for despite it being very very rarely used


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## trewq (Sep 29, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Sort of like the vpsBoard git server and vpsBoard image hosting server that I continue to pay for despite it being very very rarely used


Because everyone that uses git either has their own server or pays for one. Image hosting is also the same deal, plenty of people already provide it.


I would be interested in joining this if vpsBoard had a server. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.


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## MannDude (Sep 29, 2014)

trewq said:


> Because everyone that uses git either has their own server or pays for one. Image hosting is also the same deal, plenty of people already provide it.
> 
> 
> I would be interested in joining this if vpsBoard had a server. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.


I'll consider it, if someone else wants to manage it... I've got an idle VPS or 2 somewhere.


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## trewq (Sep 29, 2014)

MannDude said:


> I'll consider it, if someone else wants to manage it... I've got an idle VPS or 2 somewhere.


I'll put my hand up for it. I don't have any projects happening at the moment. However if someone with Diaspora experience puts their hand up too, probably better to pick them


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## MannDude (Sep 29, 2014)

I've got a spare openVZ box with AnyNode. Solid company, really enjoy their service. 256MB RAM and 20GB storage, will be happy to use it for this if that's enough for the project. Couldn't find the system requirements at a glance, but 256MB should be enough for about anything. vpsBoard runs in 256MB~ of RAM and will be much more active than the Diaspora server.


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## trewq (Sep 29, 2014)

MannDude said:


> I've got a spare openVZ box with AnyNode. Solid company, really enjoy their service. 256MB RAM and 20GB storage, will be happy to use it for this if that's enough for the project. Couldn't find the system requirements at a glance, but 256MB should be enough for about anything. vpsBoard runs in 256MB~ of RAM and will be much more active than the Diaspora server.


https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/FAQ_for_pod_maintainers#What_are_the_general_system_requirements.3F


1GB RAM recommended. I'll do a test install in the next couple of hours and have a play and see how it turns out.


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## MannDude (Sep 29, 2014)

trewq said:


> https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/FAQ_for_pod_maintainers#What_are_the_general_system_requirements.3F
> 
> 
> 1GB RAM recommended. I'll do a test install in the next couple of hours and have a play and see how it turns out.


Hmm, that's a big box in my eyes  Most things I use are 512MB or less.

I'll see about it later this week, may seek a deal from a provider outside my normal list of go-to providers to test them out.


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## trewq (Sep 29, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Hmm, that's a big box in my eyes  Most things I use are 512MB or less.
> 
> 
> I'll see about it later this week, may seek a deal from a provider outside my normal list of go-to providers to test them out.


It is pretty big, it's because it runs heaps of different programs that work together instead of just one.


I've been using Vultr quite a bit lately, they are one of the two providers I use. XVMLabs being the other.


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## bizzard (Sep 29, 2014)

Glad that there is interest in putting up a pod. With Diaspora, decentralization is the key. As the number of pods, whether it be big or small, the network expands.

I am always happy to help, but guys here are more knowledgeable than me , moreover, we(FOSSCommunity.in) are planning to start a pod, hosted in India, and is in search of a good provider, who could work out a subsidized rate. There are always opportunity to put non-intrusive ads as a compensation for the rate reduction as what KnightSwarm did for poddery.com



Aldryic C said:


> I had one running before for some time, just never had enough free time to really get into it.


@Aldric Is it still live? If its public and you are ready to accept new registrations, I can send some users your way 



MannDude said:


> 256MB RAM and 20GB storage, will be happy to use it for this if that's enough for the project.


256MB is too low for Diaspora, as it runs on Ruby on Rails and the Sidekiq processes takes up lots of memory. Also, it required a database; MySQL or PgSQL, which also needs memory, if you are not offloading it.



trewq said:


> I'll put my hand up for it. I don't have any projects happening at the moment. However if someone with Diaspora experience puts their hand up too, probably better to pick them


Its not that hard. I am willing to help too. You can ping me on IRC or guys @ #diaspora in freenode.net are always ready to help. I'll suggest to go with PgSQL, if you are planning to run it in the same server. Easy to scale than MySQL, when the users increase.


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## bizzard (Sep 29, 2014)

MannDude said:


> Another thing that sounds good, will be cool for a week and then forgotten about.
> 
> Sort of like the vpsBoard git server and vpsBoard image hosting server that I continue to pay for despite it being very very rarely used


With git and image hosting, there are so many alternatives and people stick to the ones they like.

For Diaspora, if one creates an account, he can connect with all other pods and there is no need to change pod, unless there is some issue. So, I believe it will be more actively used.


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## Vijay (Sep 29, 2014)

@bizzard... Thanks for this... Have been meaning to create a pod for a long time... Got it installed in under 30 Mins.. cool...

Vijay


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## bizzard (Oct 5, 2014)

Just bumping the topic. Was not active on internet for the last few days due to health issues.

Did the interest to setup a pod just vanished into thin air?


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## MannDude (Oct 5, 2014)

bizzard said:


> Just bumping the topic. Was not active on internet for the last few days due to health issues.
> 
> Did the interest to setup a pod just vanished into thin air?


Do you want to manage it?


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## bizzard (Oct 6, 2014)

Well, I am already managing one. Willing to share responsibility, if there is interest from other members.


I just love to see more pods coming up and more people being active there.


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