this post was submitted on 21 May 2025

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Is there any fundamental difference between an instance and a formal website ? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by Docker@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

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[–] javiwhite@feddit.uk 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I've read through your comments on this thread, and it sounds as though you need a better understanding of the fundamentals of website hosting, so I'll try my best to give you some research topics to start from .

I'll make a few assumptions about your use case:

you want to setup a website as a project to learn more networking skills
you want to spend as little money as possible on this project.

1 - DNS (Domain Name Servers):
The core of how we access websites is something known as DNS; DNS is essentially a giant phonebook of all different public IPs, and the domain names associated to them. All website names, are really just human friendly aliases, for the IP address they're assigned too. It is technically possible to host your own public DNS servers, but 99% of the internet will not trust your DNS servers, and as such it's usually best to sign up to an established DNS provider.

If you look to purchase just the domain name, you will have access to the DNS records. Alternatively, there are free DNS providing tools such as DuckDns which will give you a free subdomain, if you're really strapped for cash but domain registration is really cheap, so worth considering imo.

2 - VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting:
Okay, so you've got curious-mind.org all purchased and now you need somewhere to point it! You could point it towards a self hosted server at home, but you should really consider spinning up a free VPS with a cloud provider. A free tier vps will be tiny (something like 1 core, 20gb space and 2gig ram if you're lucky) but the knowledge you will gain from working remotely with a server, rather than locally; will help you progress a lot faster... You will force yourself to learn ssh, and how to master bash functions for admin work.

AlaVPS have a permanent free tier VPS that could get you started. AWS also offer 12 months free on their micro EC2 instances. Once you have a VPS purchased; you can then go to your DNS provider, and update the DNS record for your website to point to the VPS IP address.

3 - CMS (Content Management System):
What is with tech and 3 letter acronyms eh?

The next piece of the self hosted puzzle, and the part you're referring too when you talk about a proper website is likely the CMS. CMS' are modern tools that allow websites to build a theme, and then dynamically apply it to content. This allows for blogs, webpages etc.. to be written in plain text, and have all the sites formatting applied rather than you having to apply it manually to each html document.

Wordpress is the most used in the personal sector, and it's very popular in the business sector too, though personally I've seen a real surge in Drupal usage over the last decade or so. Find the CMS that works for you, some are drag and drop; others are more code oriented.

The above should hopefully serve as a good starting point for if you're looking to not do this the easy way. (The easier method is to just pay a DNS provider to host a wordpress instance for you; but where's the fun in that?) Make sure you read up on each of the acronyms; maybe in watch a Tutorial on each to get a basic understanding of what they are, and why you're looking to use them. Good luck 👍

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hard to answer without some context. Got any examples for "formal website"?

In the fediverse an "instance" is any server which is running the software in question. For example, fosstodon is an instance of Mastodon. mastodon.social is also an instance of Mastodon.

[–] Docker@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Here's one for you to consider as an example :

https://zessa.in/

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So just a website?

Websites of all types are hosted by servers. These servers can run any kind of software they want in order to serve web pages to users. There are countless different options for server software (see just some of the options on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_server_software?wprov=sfla1), and they can run on different operating systems (Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, macos, ...). Two servers can serve very similar or even identical websites but run completely different software, and similarly, two servers can use the same software but serve totally different websites.

Basically it's a free-for-all.

[–] Docker@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then l need to focus on the server aspect. But from where to get a relevant software, since you say it's a free for all ?

Here are a couple of more websites :

https://urthy.in/

https://1ness.in/

If you study these two and the one l've shared before, they all have similar goals.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I really can't explain more than I already have. If you want to learn more, Wikipedia is a great resource for this. The article I linked and other articles linked within it would be the place to start.

[–] Docker@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

Okay 👍👍 Thanks 😊😊😊

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

When you're using lemmy or mastodon, you don't have to use the website. You can use an app that goes from your fingers to the server without needing a browser and a website to exchange the information.

So most if not all the instances of the fediverse are also a website if you need to use it. But not every website is an instance of the fediverse.

[–] Docker@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

In this regard, can a singular website function like a unique instance of the fediverse ?

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 19 hours ago

To explain federation (I am terrible at explaining things),

Every user/group on an instance has an inbox and an outbox, for example, yours is https://lemmy.world/u/Docker@lemmy.world/inbox and !nostupidquestion@lemmy.world's is https://lemmy.world/c/nostupidquestions/inbox .

When a post is made, its sent a group's inbox, and then the group sends it to the inbox of every user subscribed to it. If I send you a direct message, my server sends it to your inbox.

If you go to a post in your browser, it shows it in the web interface, but if you set whats called a header (some small bits on information sent to a server when you request a page) saying that you're a server, it gives you a machine readable representation of it.

For example, your comment here looks like this:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://join-lemmy.org/context.json",
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"
  ],
  "type": "Note",
  "id": "https://lemmy.world/comment/17178560",
  "attributedTo": "https://lemmy.world/u/Docker",
  "to": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  ],
  "cc": [
    "https://lemmy.world/c/nostupidquestions",
    "https://startrek.website/u/FriendOfDeSoto"
  ],
  "content": "<p>In this regard, can a singular website function like a unique instance of the fediverse ?</p>\n",
  "inReplyTo": "https://startrek.website/comment/16837450",
  "mediaType": "text/html",
  "source": {
    "content": "In this regard, can a singular website function like a unique instance of the fediverse ?",
    "mediaType": "text/markdown"
  },
  "published": "2025-05-21T09:55:42.214962Z",
  "tag": [
    {
      "href": "https://startrek.website/u/FriendOfDeSoto",
      "name": "@FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website",
      "type": "Mention"
    }
  ],
  "distinguished": false,
  "audience": "https://lemmy.world/c/nostupidquestions",
  "attachment": []
}

So, you could make a post or page of a website like one of these, and then manually send it to everyone's inbox, but you won't be able to handle incoming messages.

[–] naught101@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Instances are websites. Federation just means that they can automatically communicate directly between multiple intakes, and share information without requiring user interaction.

All this happens via APIs. Any website that implements ActivityPub APIs properly can federate with other sites as part of the fediverse.

[–] BeefPiano@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Yes, WordPress and Ghost websites are able to share their posts via ActivityPub, so people can follow them through Mastodon-like Fedi apps.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

"Instance" is programmer lingo. Roughly, it's when you have the same piece of code running multiple times with different values (as part of the same system). More narrowly, "instance" is used in the context of classes. All lemmy instances run the lemmy code but with different users, admins, and so on. The expression makes perfect sense, but it is not used in a formal way.

A lemmy instance runs a web server. Wikipedia says that when you host a web page under a dedicated domain name, you have a website.