It’s been a while since I made an update regarding the changes over the past two weeks. First, we added a new theme called Gekka. More themes are coming down in the pipeline in the future, but this is an alternative to the Sakura theme. You can change the theme on Mastodon in the user’s preferences under Flavours (Glitch Edition).
On December 8, we moved the media storage to Linode Object Storage. As we grow, media storage is increasing by 1 GB a day. Since the server can only store 50 GB before I need to upgrade the server, it can become a problem. I tried moving the media cache to block storage, but it caused issues with Sidekiq, used by Mastodon, creating a bunch of failed jobs and giving an error of “Read Only File System.” I eventually moved everything back and deleted the block storage.
I decided to move the media files to Linode Object Storage since it cost $5 for the first 256 GB of storage with 1 TB of bandwidth included. Bandwidth is not a problem since I have plenty in my allocation across the three servers. For now, this is the most cost-effective option as I don’t expect all 256 GB to get used up in a few months, but you never know.
Lastly, there is now an easy-mode web client, Halcyon, which has a similar look and feel to Twitter. If you are having trouble with the default Mastodon interface, use the easy mode to make the transition easier. Note that not all glitch-soc features are available on the Halcyon client. Also, the client is only used for this instance, and use with other instances violates TOS.
Also, if you have friends that are still on Twitter, pass this along and invite them to our instance.
The post Instance Updates and a New Easy Mode appeared first on Sakurajima.
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