What is ourch.at, and how does it work?

When I decided that I wanted digital independence from billionaires for myself, I decided that I wanted to self-host my federated accounts instead of depending on someone else's server.

I chose the name ourch.at because it's short, the domain name was cheap, and it's basically conveys the meaning that this is something for us, a community I want to help catalyze but not ultimately own. It's supposed to read as "Our Chat", although I recognize it's a little imperfect and clunky. Whatever, I bought it on impulse and it's good enough.

I pay for server space through Infomaniak, a Swiss web hosting company. Switzerland has some of the best web privacy and security protections in the world. Right now, it doesn't cost all that much, but eventually if we all use this enough, I might someday ask for voluntary donations to help keep the server alive as things get more expensive.

This server runs something called "Yunohost", which basically makes it easy to self-host stuff on a webserver. All the applications I have installed today are compatible with Yunohost user accounts, meaning you can use just one log in for any of the apps installed on ourch.at! If you actually go to ourch.at, you'll see a little dashboard of applications. That's Yunohost!

The different apps are each installed on their own domain. Mastodon (twitter-like) is installed at mic.ourch.at, FunkWhale (Spotify-like) is installed at aud.ourch.at, Element (Discord-like) is installed at msg.ourch.at, and you're currently on wiki.ourch.at!