The 🐈​ is out of the 👜​:

[elena@aseachange.com]

The 🐈​ is out of the 👜​:

My Ghost blog is now federated – @ele – thanks to the wonderful Magic Pages (@hey) by @jannis@jannis.io.

My latest post, which also mentions some of my self-hosting exploits from this past year:

🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-rebellion-will-be-federated-2025-edition/

This is what I referred to when I said that "I got a big blue whale off my back" a few days ago. I don't have to worry about #Docker anymore, as I put my blog in the expert hands of Jannis at Magic Pages. My big lesson from this year has been: self-hosting is empowering and a lot of fun... but sometimes it makes more sense to turn to experts and pay them to manage your essential stuff. Like in this case.

And I will be saving money too (it's a lot cheaper than paying for a basic plan at Mailgun + my VPS). I'm just so relieved. And Ghost v6 is incredible. I will write more about this soon...

#blog #Ghost #MySoCalledSudoLife

[ricmac@mastodon.social]

@elena @ele @hey Congrats on a successful year, Elena! Interesting to hear about Magic Pages; I think less expensive options for Ghost (and indeed other Substack alternatives) is much needed in the open web. I am using the official Ghost org for @feed, but it's rather pricey, as is Buttondown (which I use for Cybercultural.com). So hopefully in 2026 we see more vendors like Magic Pages coming in to help lower prices. Competition is good!

[elena@aseachange.com]

@ricmac @ele @hey @feed thank you Richard.

I actually moved from Substack to Ghost (Pro) in January 2024... then I set up my self-hosted Ghost blog this spring, learning a bit of Linux to be able to do that.

But Docker proved to be too hard to learn for a newbie like me... and I really wanted to enjoy Ghost v6's new features. So: Magic Pages.

Jannis is a total rock star and moved everything super quickly. I could not have done it on my own.

Sometimes it is much better to turn to experts 😅​

[mkj@social.mkj.earth]

@elena "sometimes it makes more sense to turn to experts and pay them to manage your essential stuff" Yes!

And you know what? *That's fine!*

The key is to have and maintain data and service portability and some kind of exit strategy, ideally including automated recurring, easily importable backups. That way, if the provider turns bad at some point, your loss is limited to at most any pre-paid amount plus the time to set up shop somewhere else and re-import whatever you had stored with them.

[elena@aseachange.com]

@mkj 1000% 🙌

planning to do weekly manual backups…

at the end of the day I’d like my self-hosting adventures to be empowering and fun.

Moving my Ghost blog to Docker without any assistance would have been 1000% pain and fear of doing something wrong that could have damaged my site. Plus being in constant fear about security holes in my Docker system.

I couldn’t be happier with my decision to move to Magic Pages 😊

[mkj@social.mkj.earth]

@elena IMO too many people (perhaps especially on Fedi?) take the absolutist approach that if you aren't running it on hardware you put together yourself starting from sand, physically at your home, you are not self-hosting. I firmly believe that's counterproductive. The goal of self-hosting for most in practice is control and choice, and it's possible to have both even if you're paying someone to do the boring stuff for you. We can get like 99% of the value for maybe 10% of the effort.

[mkj@social.mkj.earth]

I don't remember off hand who said it, but there's the oft-repeated quote along the lines of that to make apple pie from scratch, you first have to invent the universe.

It is valid to skip a few steps, and you can still end up with a delicious apple pie. 🙂

@elena

[elena@aseachange.com]

@mkj I love this ! 🙌