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Everything that is about the wild life in https://abnormalbeings.space/
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
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25/04/05 A proper backup plan, Mastodon update + learning experience, PeerTube changes, looking for mods - State of abnormalbeings.space
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)
Since the last update, there haven't been any sweeping changes, but enough for a report, including one that should put people at ease: Yes, you won't be raw dogging these services no longer, thanks to greater financial security from the donation mentioned in the last update, I was able to start this month's budgeting by booking a separate storage for:
REGULAR BACKUPS
Until now, my backup "plan" was, "I upload a backup image to a local NAS here at home, that has very old second hand HDDs, whenever I manage to remember". That was.... not acceptable, really.
I will now have borgbackup running for incremental backups to a separate storage box by Hetzner (in Germany instead of Finland, for one more degree of separation). There will be separate, complete, incremental backups daily/weekly/monthly, starting today. It won't guarantee data security on the same level as even more professional services, but I think anyone using this instance or others can rest a little more easily.
MASTODON UPDATE
Another thing people can probably rest a bit more easily about: There was a minor update for mastodon, which I applied to toots.abnormalbeings.space, bringing it up to date to version 4.3.7.
Beyond just quickly giving a heads-up to report any potential issues, this is noteworthy, because it came with me learning a very important lesson about environment sanitising, that more experienced folks probably though to be self-evident. You can check out my learning journey here if you are interested.
Having the opportunity to learn about what are best practices - one of the Achilles heels of, I wager, not just me as a self-taught admin - is great, especially if the learning process and answers can add to the fund of knowledge within the Fediverse!
PEERTUBE CHANGES
Videos.abnormalbeings.space saw some changes, too. I, sadly, had to change up the registration process to manually confirming users again, as I had several accounts registering - sometimes avoiding bans with throwaway mail addresses - and uploading at best highly suspicious content that I was not able to moderate due to language barrier, or just videos outright against the rules.
Additionally, I updated the about info, structured it more, removed redundancy of the rules, clarified moderation policy and added more contaft info. Changes can be viewed here.
There's also been some changes to the landing page - now sporting current livestreams, as well as a separate small section for trending local videos:
Alongside this, I will now start to weekly rotate the recommended channels list, rotating the last row into first place, as to make it a fairer system for channels that ended up at the bottom before. There really is little rhyme or reason to the way I sorted them, so this seemed like a good compromise to me.
Also, in good news: the amount of accounts on videos.abnormalbeings.space has ballooned up to 30+ (including 3 accounts created by myself). This is some great growth, and I am happy to say, that there has been some legitimate content appearing on there, beyond my silly meme videos and that one trailer for my by now very old game. Thank you all for putting your trust in me, server resources still allow for a lot more users! (This goes even more so for Lemmy and Mastodon, of course).
LOOKING FOR MODS
Realising the user growth on particularly PeerTube, I'd also be very interested in people applying as volunteer moderators. You'd have to have a local account on at least the service you want to mod, plus on matrix for behind-the-scenes discussion. Applications are welcome on matrix, in the Applications channel!Bonus points if you speak other languages than English and German, which I have covered!
Currently, it would 100% be a volunteer position. Long term, if this project ends up getting more in donations than the server cost, I'd think it would be cool to share any excess with an established mod/admin team - but that sentence right here should be, at this point, treated as "a random thought I am having." I can neither promise that amount of donations ever happening, nor promise that being possible easily whenever it were to happen.
And that is that for the newest state of the server update. Thank you for reading, thank you for using the Fediverse, stay awesome!
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25/03/29: [ISSUE SOLVED] Gmail has started rejecting mail from mail.abnormalbeings.space
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)
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25/03/28: Beginnings of a unified design, new fancy (resource-hungry) landing page, money!!! and more - State of abnormalbeings.space
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)
So, a lot of visible things got done today, and I am at a point, where I think an update makes sense. Also, starting now, I will not create annoncement/update posts for every change, but bundle them in "State of the Website"-posts like this.
BEGINNINGS OF A UNIFIED DESIGN
As you may have noticed, the favicon, icon and banner for the instance have changed, and there are now links to the other two fediverse services in the sidebar:
This is part of creating a more unified design for all three services and the website as a whole. You can also follow the links here:
The one service lacking behind is mastodon - I have not yet been able to easily figure out a way to easily put images via Markdown or otherwise into the frontpage - but eventually, I will find a way. If you know how - feel free to answer the question here, for me and any future people stumbling over Fediverse search results.
As a long-term-goal, creating more unified theming with custom CSS along all three services is what I will be aiming for. That, however, is in the "one day, probably, maybe" phase of things at the moment.
NEW CUSTOM PEERTUBE LANDING PAGE
If you follow the link to the PeerTube instance co-hosted here, you will see, that it no longer defaults to putting you into the "Browse Videos" tab - instead, there is now a custom landing page, with trending videos and recommended channels. There is no thought put into the order of channels, so, if your favourite is appearing further down, that is not me valuing it less.
Some screenshots how it should look like:
NEW OVERALL LANDING PAGE (WARNING: NOT RESOURCE EFFICIENT)
So, I am not good at CSS. Not good at HTML either. Really - not good at other programming languages, really, but maybe more adequate there.
I had been wondering what best to use for a landing page when people visit abnormalbeings.space directly. Then I remembered: One tool I do have some experience with is Godot!
So, behold, if you follow the link in the paragraph above, you should get a first version of a huge flashback to resource inefficient old flash sites (but in HTML5 and Godot, instead):
As of now, there has been no testing of, or optimization for, mobile clients. Also, the legal disclaimer section is empty, as of this post. Really, the landing page should only be reached if you look for it, or as a link in my games (where I will add them later this week, and in any new releases)
Some optimizations should follow eventually, but it isn't the highest priority.
MONEY!!!
I'm trying not to beg too much and create pity-donations, but one reality of my life is, that I am living on subsistence-level disability payments, paying for this server out of pocket. Mind you, that is subsistence-level in a European country with a not-yet-completely-gutted social system, so I will survive, and the server will stay up indefinitely, and any and all of my services/games will always remain free to access.
But any donations are of course always welcome, so I am really happy to announce, that the project got its first one:
Thank you so very much! It is highly appreciated, and will keep me afloat a little more securely! Donations are only possible through Liberapay - I am genuinely not in this for the money, and I don't want to ever lock features behind donation ranks like on Patreon, also, I am all-in on FOSS and the Fediverse. So other platforms will not be added any time soon.
If you want to support me as well, I'd of course be very thankful, just click the link below:
Anyway, that is that for this update - thank you for reading, thank you for using the Fediverse, and here's hoping you'll have a great day!
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This is a test post to double check if image upload works again (Why is this getting upvoted?)
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)
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25/03/15 - Mastodon open for Applications, public Status page in planning stage
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)
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25/03/13 - Mail service now working for Lemmy, switching to email-verification for users instead of manual approval
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)
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25/03/11 - Mail service working and integrated into PeerTube, registrations opened
(lemmy.abnormalbeings.space)