Mastodon Free Blogging Platform
Ruby Based Globally Interconnected Microblogging Community
Mastodon is the most popular microblogging platform. It is an open-source decentralized network of communities that provide microblogging social media experience
Overview
Mastodon is a free and open-source most popular microblogging platform based on ActivityPub which allows users to create their own private networks. On Mastodon, users can follow friends, publish small updates to a stream of updates like posts, links, pictures, text and videos etc. Mastodon is a network of thousands of communities where users can communicate with users from another one with strict codes of conduct and discover new friends among more than 4.4M people.
Mastodon is the best microblogging platform and ad-free microblogging social media network with a React.js front-end and released under AGPLv3 license. It follows standard practices of Rails or React.js frameworks. So, if you are already familiar with these frameworks then you can deploy these easily. The best way of working with Mastodon blogging tool in a development environment is installing all the dependencies on your local system environment. You will need Ruby, Node.js, PostgreSQL and Redis, which is a pretty standard set of dependencies for any Rails applications.
System Requirements
The following key dependency packages are required to install Mastodon best microblogging site:
- Ruby 2.5+
- Rails 6.1.3
- PostgreSQL 9.5+
- Redis 4+
- Node.js 12+
- Email delivery service
- RubyMine editor
- Git
Features
Some of the great features of Mastodon self hosted social network are listed below:
- Real time and chronological timeline updates
- Media attachments to the updates
- 500-character text posts
- Private posts
- Locked accounts
- Phrase filtering
- Reporting and moderation system
- OAuth2 and REST API
- Open source
Installation
Install Mastodon On Ubuntu
Mastodon open source social media platform is based on ActivityPub which is easy to get started. The best way of operating with Mastodon in a local development environment is installing all the system dependencies in your local environment instead of using Docker or Vagrant tools. Install standard set of dependencies for Rails applications like Ruby, Node.js, PostgreSQL and Redis etc. You can download the latest stable release of Mastodon microblogging tool by running commands in terminal:
git clone https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon.git mastodon
cd mastodon
git checkout $(git tag -l | grep -v 'rc[0-9]*$' | sort -V | tail -n 1)
Next, install Ruby and JavaScript the lastest dependencies by running the bundler in project directory:
bundle install
Now update the database.yml and run the interactive setup wizard with following command:
bundle exec rake mastodon:setup
There are multiple processes that need to be run for the full set of functionality of Mastodon. You can install and start Foreman to run all of processes with:
gem install foreman --no-document
foreman start
In the Mastodon directory, this will start processes defined in Procfile.dev, A Rails server, a Webpack server, a streaming API server and Sidekiq schedular. That’s it.
Congratulatiopns! you have successfully installed Mastodon most popular microblogging site on your Ubuntu system. Enjoy!
FAQs
What is Mastodon used for?
Mastodon is an open source and most prominent decentralized microblogging community network. It is simple tool that works like any other Twitter application.
Is Mastodon free?
Mastodon is free to use and download micro blogging platform, released under an open-source free software license.
Is Mastodon open source?
Yes, Mastodon is an open source microblogging website. Mastodon source code repository is available at Github.
In what language is Mastodon written?
Mastodon self-hosted social networking service is written in Ruby language.
Is Mastodon better than twitter?
Mastodon open-source is much better than Twitter platform and keeping chronological timelines, no advertising and monetizing make it more better to use. Moreover, mastodon new social media tool short messages, followers and hashtags are lot like Twitter.
