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Thoughts on Gemini hosting

After a lot of time spent trying, I've had to give up: I don't think I can run my own Gemini server with my current set-up. I'm currently making use of a shared-hosting web host for my personal site, so I had thought to try Molly Brown, but *after* spending a couple of hours struggling and failing to get it configured I found, buried in my web host's FAQ, that they block all outside requests except HTTP(S) ones. (Believe me that I'd tried searching for such information, but they decided to say "services" instead of "protocols" and that thwarted my FAQ-search-fu.) Soooooo that pretty much killed my struggle dead. Gemlog.blue it is, for publishing my thoughts to Gemini space.

I won't say it's all been wasted effort: I learnt some new skills, gained some new knowledge, all that stuff that you can't really complain about. There's no denying, though, that it's a bit of a bummer I can't have a Gemini capsule up alongside my regular website :)

The other day, I read a Solderpunk post that I thought made some good points that are relevant to me now (at the bottom of the link):

SSH apps and accessible Gemini publishing

It highlighted the difficulty that there is at present of posting to Gemini space if you neither a) know how to run your own Gemini server or b) know anyone willing to offer you some space on their own Gemini server. Of course there are projects like Gemlog.blue and Flounder.online that are fantastic at making participation more accessible (if not, I'd have to be a mere outside observer right now :)) but it seems like it would be nice to have some middle ground. Like, I can get web hosting for my website – as Gemini stabilises as a protocol and a community, it might be nice if services popped up offering Gemini hosting, like, that I could SSH or SFTP into and manage the way I do the HTML files that make up my website. Of course I also see the counter-argument, that Gemini works better as a community-oriented, non-commercialised space (although Gemini hosting wouldn't have to be commercial – it could work more like Mastodon instances which are free to use but often welcome donations, and enforce community expectations). There are probably spaces like that existing already, in fact, I just don't know where they are :)

But there are also reasons why I'd prefer the "web hosting" model myself, like the greater ownership/control offered over my own space that way, and the greater stability and durability you'd expect of a "web host" vs someone's hobby server. I'd like to be able to make a subdomain of my existing domain and point it at my Gemini capsule, for example. (This is apparently, as of a couple of days ago, possible with Flounder.online! Maybe I should switch to that, but I feel awkward about the automatic HTTPS mirror when I'd rather use my existing site for HTTPS. That's really a very minor drawback, though.) Having said all this, I know it's still very early days for Gemini and probably every currently-existing server is really a hobby project! I guess I'm just brainstorming and thinking ahead. It just drives me bonkers that my current web hosting can do all this complicated stuff but I can't use it for something so simple as a protocol of lightly-formatted text and links.