My last edit removes the markdown interpreter from messing up the text. I'm not sure if you saw it before I added the escape to make it more readable.

Anyway, I hope it goes well for you!

• I ignored the thing about kbin.localhost and everything on https://feddit.online is working well, also in my test environment. So, you can probably skip it too.

• The "var" folder will not be found in the kbin folder so the chown will not work. What I did, and from other comments that I've read, I think this is what it should have been, "sudo chown 82:82 /var"

Here's my .env file without the secrets.
Where I mention a long secret, you can use this Linux command to generate a strong 32-character secret
openssl rand -hex 32

kbin variables

SERVER_NAME="feddit.online"
KBIN_DOMAIN=feddit.online
KBIN_TITLE=/kbin
KBIN_DEFAULT_LANG=en
KBIN_FEDERATION_ENABLED=true
[email protected]
[email protected]
KBIN_JS_ENABLED=true
KBIN_REGISTRATIONS_ENABLED=true
KBIN_API_ITEMS_PER_PAGE=25
#Frankly unsure if the next line does anything
KBIN_STORAGE_URL=https://media.feddit.online
KBIN_META_TITLE="Kbin Lab"
KBIN_META_DESCRIPTION="content aggregator and micro-blogging platform for the fediverse"
KBIN_META_KEYWORDS="kbin, content agregator, open source, fediverse"
KBIN_HEADER_LOGO=false
KBIN_CAPTCHA_ENABLED=true

Redis

REDIS_PASSWORD=password_here_that_you_make_up
REDIS_DNS=redis://${REDIS_PASSWORD}@redis

S3 storage (optional) THIS DOES NOTHING. TURNS OUT IT ONLY WORKS WITH AWS S3 AND I WANT TO USE WASAB

SO THESE SETTINGS ARE NOT USED

S3_KEY=<key>
S3_SECRET=<secret>
S3_BUCKET=media.feddit.online
S3_REGION=us-east-1
S3_VERSION=latest

oAuth (optional)

OAUTH_FACEBOOK_ID=
OAUTH_FACEBOOK_SECRET=
OAUTH_GOOGLE_ID=
OAUTH_GOOGLE_SECRET=
OAUTH_GITHUB_ID=
OAUTH_GITHUB_SECRET=

###> symfony/framework-bundle ###
APP_ENV=prod
APP_SECRET=427f5e2940e5b2472c1b44b2d06e0525
###< symfony/framework-bundle ###

###> doctrine/doctrine-bundle ###

Format described at https://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-dbal/en/latest/reference/configuration.html#connecting-using-a-url

IMPORTANT: You MUST configure your server version, either here or in config/packages/doctrine.yaml

==========

POSTGRES_DB=kbin
POSTGRES_USER=kbin
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password_here_that_you_make_up
POSTGRES_VERSION=13
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://${POSTGRES_USER}:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@127.0.0.1:5432/${POSTGRES_DB}?serverVersion=${POSTGRES_VERSION}&charset=utf8"
###< doctrine/doctrine-bundle ###

###> symfony/messenger ###

Choose one of the transports below

RABBITMQ_PASSWORD=password_here_that_you_make_up
MESSENGER_TRANSPORT_DSN=amqp://kbin:${RABBITMQ_PASSWORD}@rabbitmq:5672/%2f/messages
#MESSENGER_TRANSPORT_DSN=doctrine://default
#MESSENGER_TRANSPORT_DSN=redis://${REDIS_PASSWORD}@redis:6379/messages
###< symfony/messenger ###

###> symfony/mailer ###
#MAILER_DSN=smtp://localhost
###< symfony/mailer ###

###> symfony/mailgun-mailer ###

MAILER_DSN=mailgun://KEY:DOMAIN@default?region=us

#MAILER_DSN=mailgun+smtp://[email protected]:key@default?region=us
MAILER_DSN=smtp://[email protected]:<password here>@smtp.dreamhost.com:587
###< symfony/mailgun-mailer ###

###> symfony/mercure-bundle ###

See https://symfony.com/doc/current/mercure.html#configuration

The URL of the Mercure hub, used by the app to publish updates (can be a local URL)

MERCURE_URL=https://feddit.online/.well-known/mercure

The public URL of the Mercure hub, used by the browser to connect

MERCURE_PUBLIC_URL=https://feddit.online/.well-known/mercure

The secret used to sign the JWTs

MERCURE_JWT_SECRET=long_password_here_that_you_make_up

Docker

CADDY_MERCURE_URL=https://feddit.online/.well-known/mercure
CADDY_MERCURE_JWT_SECRET=long_password_here_that_you_make_up
###< symfony/mercure-bundle ###

###> nelmio/cors-bundle ###
CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN='^https?://(kbin.localhost|127.0.0.1)(:[0-9]+)?$'
###< nelmio/cors-bundle ###

###> symfony/lock ###

Choose one of the stores below

postgresql+advisory://db_user:db_password@localhost/db_name

LOCK_DSN=flock
###< symfony/lock ###

###> lexik/jwt-authentication-bundle ###
JWT_SECRET_KEY=%kernel.project_dir%/config/jwt/private.pem
JWT_PUBLIC_KEY=%kernel.project_dir%/config/jwt/public.pem
JWT_PASSPHRASE=
###< lexik/jwt-authentication-bundle ###

###> meteo-concept/hcaptcha-bundle ###
HCAPTCHA_SITE_KEY=<key>
HCAPTCHA_SECRET=<secret>
###< meteo-concept/hcaptcha-bundle ###

I agree with all that you've said

For others reading this, there are 2 others that I know well: https://feddit.online and https://fedia.io

You can find bunches here: https://kbin.pub/en

RE: it seems like the only way to have a reasonable chance of getting decent results for hashtag searches is to be on the biggest server

Well, yes, and no. You can relay with other Mastodon instances and they will share there traffic with you so that people on your instance will have the same content as on their instances PLUS the traffic from all the other instances that are relaying with them as well. So, your server will see a ton of stuff. No shortage of stuff coming in

There's a number of good relays. I recommend these two at a minimum:

https://relay.infosec.exchange/inbox
https://bigrelay.social/inbox

In the Administration section, there's a Relay page where you can put these in.

For the first one, @Jerry is the person to contact if it doesn't enable for you. Not sure how many instances relay with him, but it must be a large number.

For the second one, which currently has 328 instances connected together, you can get more information at https://bigrelay.social/

Hope this helps

kbin.social must still be having severe problems. Ernest posted this a day ago:

    [email protected]

    We're experiencing massive delays on the queues today. We're actively working on a solution,
    and I think we're getting really close. Just wanted to let you know ;)

One thing you might try doing is switching to a different KBIN server. The smaller ones are probably Federating just fine with Lemmy and the other KBIN instances, although everyone will have trouble Federating with kbin.social.

I wonder why Ernest doesn't turn off new sign ups on kbin.social and ask people who want to join KBIN to do so on a different instance so the problems there aren't exasperated?

1. Before joining an instance you can go to their /terms page and see if they will tolerate you because you're just making stuff up and your ignorance will hurt and endanger people. Most KBIN and Lemmy servers will, fortunately, not willingly host you because of this.
2. I won't tolerate you, so don't join my instance. So, 1 down.

I think you perfectly got it right. Everything that you wrote includes exactly the same questions and conclusions I've come to.

"It seems like it’s trying to be a link aggregator and a microblogging software"

I think too this is its purpose; To to be a link and content aggregator plus a microblogging platform. Therefore it confusingly has both Reddit-like and Mastodon-like behavior.

It's almost there. If it automatically aggregated magazines and communities into one place on a server as well, I think it would achieve its purpose as an aggregator. For now, there could be a dozen magazines and communities with the same subject that aren't connected because instances have no automated view of what is on other instances and so redundant magazines get created.

Whether we need what it's trying to be, I don't know. For me, I use Mastodon and so I haven't used anything on KBIN except the magazines, at least, so far, in my one week of experience.

I was hoping to store the images directly in an S3 bucket at Wasabi, which is what I do for Mastodon, Calckey, and Peertube. However, this is not yet supported in KBIN. I think only AWS is supported as a hard-coded option.

I tried setting up a FUSE drive connected to Wasabi and I used a symbolic link to point public/image to it, but, alas, the Symfony framework does not support symlinks. Until external S3 is supported, I have to store the images locally. Ernest did post today that external storage for thumbnails is on the horizon. So maybe all media can be externally stored.

Until then, I'm storing them on the local disk. This weekend I'm going to see if I can set up rclone to automatically synchronize the public/image directory to a Wasabi S3 bucket so at least it will be constantly backed up.

When external S3 becomes an option, I'll move the media folder to the S3 bucket and hook it up.

Congratulations! Good job!

Lemmy as well. For example, https://beehaw.org/communities

It uses PostgrSQL. I'm paying an extra $2/month to keep the database on an external drive. So far, it's only using 151 MB of the 20 GB. I don't think I'll run out of space for a while. But, this weekend, the larger server I move to will come with an 80 GB drive so I don't think I really need an external drive. Currently, the DB doesn't cost anything extra.

But, you reminded me, there is a cost to keeping a database backup. My server is in NYC1. I have an S3 bucket in NYC3 that will be use to hold 5 days of daily database backup, compressed. I pay $5/month for the 250 GB Digital Ocean S3 bucket, I believe.