Hi friends, I’m continuing to dive into the world of the Small Web and alternatives to big tech. I’ve slowly come up with a goal, or at least intention, of setting up an XMPP server for my neighborhood friends to use as an alternative to Discord. After chasing a few rabbit holes, I’ve found myself here: https://apps.yunohost.org/app/prosody
I like the words “easy to set up” but frankly I’m baffled from there. I assume I need some kind of dedicated PC for this? And phrases like “BOSH” “LDAP” and “coturn” are all (so far) meaningless to me. (Don’t worry, I’m googling like crazy.)
So my question is, do I need to go to college for developers to be able to understand all this, or is there somewhere else I can start? 'Cause I’m pretty sure this isn’t the beginner level XD Should I just focus on setting up my own personal website before I start thinking about a big project like this one, or is this not as complex as it looks, or like I said, do I need specialized training?
Yes you can try Yunohost on an old laptop but it will replace the existing OS.
Prosody (xmpp) specifically is meant to be used with a domain name etc, and the setup to run it on a local network only isn’t so easy (and relatively pointless as it is a communication tool).
Oooh okay so not installing it on my laptop, got it. What do you mean a domain name, like do I need to purchase a .com from Porkbun or something like that? And what do you mean by local network, like my wifi?
You can run Yunohost on you local wifi and access it via the internal IP address that your main router assigns to your device.
But xmpp is not very helpful in such a setup as external access from the outside internet is not possible that way. You would need to configure it to be accessible on a public IP and also buy a domain name for it.
As a beginner it might be easier to rent a VPS somewhere as a lot of the technical details will be solved already.