How to become a multiuser solid pod provider

Hello! Could anyone please guide me on understanding how to become a multiuser Solid provider? Is it sufficient to install the Community Solid Server package and deploy it, or are there additional changes or configurations required beforehand? How can I deploy it, and based on your experience, which cloud provider is preferable (such as DigitalOcean, …)? Are there any free options available for testing purposes?

Also, I’m curious whether I must use a cloud provider, or if I can set up the server on my own machine to keep it running? I would greatly appreciate any assistance from someone who has experience with this or can provide documentation to follow. Thank you in advance!

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You can install CSS as is and deploy it, but it would be better to look at the configurations. For example, the default CSS template uses in-memory storage. For multi-users, you would want to use a configuration that uses the machine’s filesystem. So, you would want to handle those changes as necessary. You’d want to look here to learn more about CSS configurations at runtime.

You can deploy it on a local machine using an Apache or NGINX reverse proxy configuration, though I believe you can also deploy using Docker and porting to a cloud provider like DigitalOcean Droplets, though I haven’t tried this before. This link also provides more context on how to deploy using Docker. And lastly, this page with some modifications is what I used to set up a server on an endpoint I use locally.

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a) you may want to have a look into the recipes (the frontend or the surface / SolidOS/Mashlib or penny) GitHub - CommunitySolidServer/Recipes: Example configurations for the Community Solid Server

b) I am running a public CSS and have documented it here Documentation CSS config solidweb.me v0.3.md · GitHub

c) it is possible to use a Docker, have done that for redpencil.io and used those configs
c)1. tryanderror · GitHub (Dockerfile)
c)2. dc · GitHub (docker-compose.yml)

d) finally I can provide a working docker image on Docker Hub (6.0.1)

maybe I done that manually and more complicated than necessary. I just can say, too, take good care of the certificates.

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