Hi there, I want to check out Habitat, I have a real need for it right now. But it appears to do two things I want to handle on my own - use Let's Encrypt for SSL certs and use Caddy.

On my VPS, I already have Caddy running and I want my instance to set up the SSL certs for the front-end. So, can I remove the Docker setup use of Caddy or just tell Habitat not to enable that part of its setup?

To be clear, I am thinking I could set up Habitat to run like this:

• Front-end: https://mysubdomain.mydomain.com/
• My existing Caddy sees the request come in that way, redirects to the internal docker-based service.
• Habitat gets the request forwarded to it, on some other internal only port like 3000
• Habitat returns the normal page for the route.

Does that seem do-able? Thanks!

I've received more support from Lemmy users for Habitat than anywhere else, and I'm really thankful to you guys. You're the best! But I do want to address a sentiment that keeps coming up, and that sentiment is that Habitat will never "take off":

https://feddit.uk/post/45160222/23566364

services like that will never be successful, unfortunately. Social platforms only work if enough people you know use it. But you will never know it in the first place, as individual owners lack the proper marketing to spread around the word.

https://feddit.uk/post/45160073/23597995

Sadly it will never take off but cool idea.

https://feddit.uk/post/10485381/8624289

I agree that physical colocation of users is important for cohesive social media, but I don’t think this is how it should be done. I also don’t think it could ever take off.

I can see why this line of reasoning exists, certainly here on Lemmy. It's the fear that is echoed throughout the Fediverse. What if everyone goes back to Reddit/Twitter?

I'm thankful for these comments, because I thought this way too, at first, and it's only now that I see this being said that I can see so very clearly that it's not the appropriate line of reasoning for what I'm trying to achieve.

Habitat is not intended to be a social movement, it is a tool that I'm building to help me, and others foster enjoyable engagement in their local communities. Like any other tool, it requires an operator, and if the operator only has Habitat in their tool belt, they are not likely to be successful in that aim.

In my local community, I have joined the local historical society, and am helping them with technical issues. Over the next month, I'm planning to use the features of Habitat to put on an easter egg hunt - the photo on this post is of the "easter eggs" that I will be hiding throughout my town. I am actively engaged in my local community, and Habitat will help me with that engagement. I'm doing things that I think are going to be fun or me and others.

If you want to do the same with your local community, and I thoroughly recommend that you do, Habitat might be able to help you with that, but it will not be the community. That responsibility belongs to you.

Now all that aside, I do have plans to federate Habitat, and for that to work, it needs multiple installed and actively used instances - It would need to "take off". I want to be able to go to a place outside of my local community, open up Habitat and see what's nearby. This idea excites me, and will be a fun technical challenge. I'm going to learn a great deal in building it. It will be a success for me personally even if it never gets used. If it does, well, that will be the cherry on top.

I wish you all the best in fostering fun engagement in your local communities.

This was the post in which I was exploring the idea back in 2024.

The first instance of Habitat is for a town that you've probably never heard of! My local town of Irthlingborough.