Blind since birth, accessibility expert, WordPress blogger and Fediverse ambassador, inclusive designer, HIV awareness advocate. #accessibility #blind #WordPress #accessibility #hiv #fediverse #advocacy #activitypub #StopStigma #UEqualsU

  • 3 posts
  • 7 comments
Joined 8 months ago
Cake day: November 1st, 2025

WordPress multisite in selfhosting: one fail, one success

@selfhosted

Starting with the fail: selfhosted site doesn’t associate to the official automattic WordPress mobile app; I’ve (temporarily?) commented the “location xmlrpc.php deny all” rule on /etc/nginx/conf.d/plusbrothers.net’d/wordpress__3.conf

The app correctly generates the “application password” but then returns “impossible to load WordPress site details” (no idea if it’s the correct English word).

SUCCESS:
Ulysses and Drafts, two iPhone/iPad writing apps, successfully publish my texts on WordPress posts, as a draft; I can use those and write what I want. I’ll try to uncomment xmlrpc deny rule again, then retry.

My goal is to write contents on the app, then finalize it on the site.

OTHER SUCCESS:
site works, both with pure “plusbrothers.net” address and physical WordPress location “plusbrothers.net/wp” - applies to /english as well. Before concretely re-posting old contents and writing new ones, I prefer to have a very solid structure.

I have no idea though, about how vulnerable my website is, hostinger vps YunoHost-driven.

It’s been long, long time I didn’t work till late in the night, at the moment I’m writing, it’s 10 minutes to 3 in the morning!

I promised to my best friend (and content writer) that on July 3rd, the walls of our sentient HIV’s house, should have been ready.
And I kept the promise. 3rd July, 3 in the morning, the house stands up. Still dirty, still stinks of building, no possibility to live in it, but at least we won’t fall dead with collapsing ceiling.

Blind selfhoster journey continues.

#blind #experience #selfhost #selfhosting #website #WordPress #YunoHost

  • @bytepursuits @selfhosted I’ve tried one mini-pc about 10 years ago; what a disappointment! It was a small jewel, touching it. It ran Win10, 64GB hard disk. For a couple years it has been my emergency portable aid - I installed NVDA (non visual desktop access) screen reader in it, as JAWS for Windows, the commercial one, is very heavy. So, after a few updates from Win10, this poor machine literally became so, so slow. And, hot. It seemed to have a little oven in my hands.
    Now, I don’t find anything interesting; those machine, low-priced, sold in extra-EU e-commerces, don’t seem trustworthy. The second one I bought was bigger, about the size of an iPad mini. But it arrived with broken LCD screen. As a blind user, I was relying just on audio. But in the end, gearbest said “you have broken it” - money thrown in the toilet.

  • @selfhosted @_elena

    DONE!!! FINALLY! Multi-site works, and fun can begin!

    Our presentation page is up, and I’m impressed as the site seems super-fast. I won’t try activitypub at the moment, maybe next week.
    Content for now, no visuals, it’s still the default WordPress theme; I’ll however continue using Gutenberg block editor for site design, sighted lady will help me with styles, sizes, colors, flags, logo. For now I have what I need: my best friend in POSITIVE (pun very intended) mood ☣️ and my intermediate web dev technical skills, let me build nav bar and HIV glossary before anything else, testing new multi-language echosystem.

    Before starting involving the sighted designer I want the interface to work properly.

    ENGLISH https://plusbrothers.net/english/about/

    ITALIANO: https://plusbrothers.net/cosa-facciamo

    Detail: I had to create a solo Nginx conf file to instruct it to accept main URL, placed on /etc/nginx/conf.d/plusbrothers.net.d/; I can’t deny or hide that for this, AI helped. And precisely, the Hostinger embedded chatbot, trained with main provider base configurations.

    Unfortunately YunoHost has a limitation and wants WordPress to be installed into a subdirectory such as domain dot tld slash wp.

    And leaving it as it is, with its /wp/ at the end of each content, would have generated 404 errors to folks searching for old posts. I wanted to have at least the presentation page published, within July 3rd - the day where New York Times in 1981 talked of HIV for the first time, identifying it as an untreatable disease affecting 41 homosexual men.

    And the weird destiny is that my best friend, and content writer for this project, was born July 3rd 1975. 6 years later AIDS come out in the USA. He’s gay, and turned poz (HIV+) in 2013 due to a cheating partner.

    #selfhosting #yunohost #wordpress

Journey with self hosting for personal blog and fediverse

@selfhosted

Hello, I followed the “selfhosted” instance on LemmyWorld in order to be able to talk about my experiences having them in order, without confusing criteria into Fediverse. Hoping they can be useful to others.

Current setup: Hostinger vps kvm2 plan, Debian12, YunoHost, Hostinger’s docker manager installed.

Personal background: blind since birth, (I don’t see), I’m mostly a computer power-user, worked and studied with ms-dos since 1989 until late 90s. Basic GNU/Linux knowledge in 2002, then interrupted in 2004.

I don’t care talking about disability when discussing unrelated topics but it’s necessary in this case as my needs are quite different from others.

So, I’ve been scared by self-hosting and have had shared hosting web sites until now. Until @_elena started self hosting her digital echosystem from scratch using YunoHost.

Due to lack of drivers I stopped with Linux on my private machine, drivers for the Braille display I had, and then the uneffective (at least for my need) screen reader capabilities on Linux’s GUI based distros.

Finally in January 2026 I jumped in the dark after reading Elena Rossini’s blog about YunoHost and having explored their demo pages. At the worst, I’ll cancel the contract…

In the end I’ve managed to run WriteFreely, WordPress, CastoPod and GoToSocial, just by YunoHost; but if someone says terminal knowledge is not needed, this is a complete lie.

Where a system (such as YunoHost) can do the dirty work configuring postfix and nginx, I’ll support it but it has its disadvantages: not every app can be installed through it.

For me it’s very difficult to create and look after a config file on my own, it’s frustrating for a sighted to miss a punctuation sign, an apostrophe, an indent. Let alone for me! A single space skipped, can crash a system.

A lie even saying that AI completely helps. It does solve some small, simple, immediate tasks but it has some mistakes as well. The so-called allucinations which create a real mess if you can rely on no personal skill.

Such as “sudo yunohost tools cert-install”, or similar. AI wrote “cert-install” while the real command is “cert install”! A power user can get rid of it and correct, a beginner with no command-line knowledge, just copies, pastes, and gets scared.

My late attempt has been Madblog, a static markdown-based blogging platform with Fediverse activitypub in it, so I learned what Docker is and how it basically works. But I gave up, due to several timeouts and activitypub slow-downs. I think I’m going to use WordPress for blogging then. In case of comments it’ll be more intuitive for non-fediverse folks.

Hopefully share others’ experiences as well!
Updating this one: experience is evolving.

#ActivityPub #blind #fediverse #introduction #selfhost #selfhosting #WordPress #YunoHost