A free and open 💕 Small Web hosting platform.
(Think of it as a batteries-included Digital Ocean in-a-box for Kitten-based apps.)
Getting started
Running your own Small Web host involves setup in three areas:
For organisations to serve individuals
Organisations can use Catalyst to provide Small Web hosting services to their communities.
These services can be:
A commercial activity (e.g., our not-for-profit Small Technology Foundation is planning on charging ~€12/month for small web places on small-web.org in order to fund ongoing development of Kitten, Catalyst, Yarn, and our other work.)
For the public good (e.g., a municipality could provide free Small Web places to its citizens via tokens. (Small Technology Foundation actually prototyped such a system with the City of Ghent a few years ago.)
A hyperlocal or more personal initiative (e.g., providing Small Web places for your neighbourhood or your own family via a private instance).
Individuals can use Small Web hosts to set up their own Small Web places without any technical knowledge.
Small Web places
A Small Web place is a peer-to-peer web site/app hosted on its own server. The server is owned and controlled by the owner of the site/app.
A Small Web place is reachable at a Web Number.
Coming soon. Will be available once Let’s Encrypt rolls out TLS certificate support for IP addresses.
Catalyst also has support for setting up Small Web places at Small Web domains (i.e., as subdomains of a domain that is owned and controlled by the Small Web host). This support exists to enable the deployment of legacy (non-peer-to-peer) web sites and apps.
A Small Web domain is, for all intents and purposes, like a top-level domain but:
It is a second-level domain (e.g., small-web.org),
Where Small Web places are registered as subdomains,
And, unless it is being run as a private instance (e.g., for your family), where the second-level domain is registered on the Public Suffix List.
If a person wants to move their place to a different Small Web domain or to a Big Web domain (i.e., their own second-level domain), they should be able to do so at any time.
Apps
Catalyst installs Small Web apps and sites written for Kitten.
By limiting to scope to apps written in Kitten we enable the following properties:
Generation of a secret that only the person who owns the site being commissioned knows, which they can use both within the app they’re installing and to administer their hosting relationship with the Catalyst instance of their Small Web host (e.g., to cancel their hosting, etc.)
Integrated server administration functionality in the Small Web app via server-to-server communication between the Small Web host and the person’s Small Web place.
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Small Technology Foundation is a tiny, independent not-for-profit.
We exist in part thanks to patronage by people like you. If you share our vision and want to support our work, please become a patron or donate to us today and help us continue to exist.