We've heard about a few people who were considering setting up their own instances, but I don't know whether any of them have done it yet. I hope people do; we didn't set out to just set up our own network of communities, but also to provide the means for others to do so.

The qpixel repository on GitHub (use the develop branch; that's what we're using here on this instance) has instructions for setting up a local instance that even I have successfully followed. (This sort of thing is not something I have much experience in.) Our production system is running on AWS and somebody contributed a Docker configuration, so you have a variety of options. As Moshi mentioned in a comment, we have a Q&A site for platform users and developers where you can find more information and, of course, ask questions. On GitHub we welcome both bug reports and pull requests.

A couple questions have come up with others, so I'll pre-emptively answer: The platform does not currently support SSO or other login integrations.^[1] It also does not support community-level privacy settings. (Within a community it is possible to restrict access to individual categories based on some coarse-grained criteria, but not an entire community.) If you need to keep an instance private from the Internet at large, we assume you'll use a VPN or have some other gatekeeping. Someday maybe we'll expand in these areas, but we're a small team with many needs, so I can't say when if ever that would change.

I hope you'll give it a try, and please do ask questions on the linked site if you run into problems. And if you put an instance into production at your school or company, we'd love to hear how it works out for you!

posted over 2 years ago

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1y ago

Monica Cellio‭ staff

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