As you're already aware if you've been reading my blog posts for the past couple weeks, I've been getting into self-hosting. fanfiction.lol has passed 200 users and is running smoothly (knock on wood) on hardware that's old enough to legally drive in some provinces. And somewhere in the process of watching Caddy serve requests through Cloudflare Tunnel on a machine I built myself, something clicked into place. I realized I had more capacity and no good excuse not to use it.

And so I want to put my hardware where my mouth is.

I've been writing about the IndieWeb for a while now. The philosophy, the principles, the slow deliberate act of building a web that belongs to people rather than platforms. How romantic and noble.

But blogging about it only goes so far. At some point you have to actually weave the gossamer. You have to contribute to the infrastructure itself, not just advocate for it.

So, I registered folk.zone. And I'm going to build something there.

what it is

folk.zone is a collection of free (both as in speech and beer), community-run internet services. This includes but is not limited to: federated social media, a git forge, a writing platform, a wiki, an IRC server, a pastebin, a link shortener, a bookmarking service, an RSS reader, and more. All self-hosted. All open-source. All run by one person (me) on four machines in my living space.

The name is brief and simple. This is infrastructure for the common folk. Not for enterprise and not for scale. For people who want a home on the internet that isn't surveilled, sold, or enshittified.

I'm taking inspiration from Adam Newbold's brilliant infrastructure project, omg.lol which I adore and suggest you go sign up on it! The idea that you can build a warm, human corner of the web and actually make it worth inhabiting.

folk.zone isn't trying to be omg.lol (I don't have the resources or Adam Newbold's brain for that); but it is trying to be rooted in the IndieWeb and the Fediverse, rougher around the edges, and open about what it is and what it costs to run.

what it's running

At launch, folk.zone will include:

• social.folk.zone — a Mastodon Glitch instance
• write.folk.zone — WriteFreely, for long-form writing
• git.folk.zone — Forgejo, an open GitHub alternative
• pics.folk.zone — Pixelfed, federated photo sharing
• lemmy.folk.zone — a Lemmy instance for community discussion
• wiki.folk.zone — community documentation and guides
• paste.folk.zone — a simple pastebin alternative
• go.folk.zone — a URL shortener
• irc.folk.zone — IRC, for the people who prefer it
• ...and more rolling out over the coming months

Registration will be invite-only or application-based at first. I've learned from launching fanfiction.lol that unthrottled open registration can exhaust email quotas very quickly! The plan is to open things up as capacity allows.

why?

I want to try. That's the honest answer.

The IndieWeb only works if people who believe in it are willing to do the actual work. Not just write about it and attend the virtual meetups, but host the services, manage the servers, and deal with the 3am crashes. I'm in a position to do that now. I have the hardware. I have the skills. And most importantly, I have the quixotic drive for such projects.

I also think there's something worth preserving in the idea that a single person, with a few old computers and a good broadband connection, can run meaningful internet infrastructure for a community of people. That used to be normal and I want it to be normal once again.

folk.zone is an experiment. It might get DDoS'd. It might get discovered by ten thousand people and immediately fall over. It might run quietly for years serving a small group of people who like it. I have no idea. But I have to try, because it's the next thing. The next logical step in this project of taking the internet back.

stay tuned!

The homepage is live at folk.zone. The wiki will explain the project in more detail, including the technical choices, the policy framework, and how to request an account.

If you want to be in the first wave of users, send me an email, or find me at @brennan@social.lol. I'll announce invite availability there first.