@design_RG @freemo Thanks man! My friend group is interested in Mastodon and we are considering our own server. You folks seemed to be doing good stuff, so I thought I'd join in and see how the cool kids are doing it. Plus, STEM stuff is my jam.
If you are starting from scratch, do not fall into the vanilla Mastodon fold; the progress on that is rather glacial, if I may say so.
A much nicer option is the Glitch-Social project, a fork off the vanilla people, who produce a much richer experience. I love it.
And there's Pleroma, which is more cutting edge yet, although less common. Light resource usage, very fast servers. Easier to install and maintain.
I wrote a Blog page that has some reasons why I consider those superior, as well as links to each project, manuals and references.
https://write.tedomum.net/rgx/muensterland-social-a-new-instance-joined
@design_RG story checks out, given the company, though I guess that ship has sailed.