Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs)
How can I support development of Catalyst?
Catalyst is being built by Small Technology Foundation, a tiny, two-person not-for-profit based in Ireland.
We donāt take venture capital or money from surveillance capitalists. Weāre funded by inviduals like you.
You can support us by becoming a patron or making a one-time donation.
Thank-you for helping us continue to exist.
Is this ready for use?
No, Catalyst is under heavy development.
Why the name?
Because it helps you get on the Small Web and it has ācatā in it.
What does it take to run a Small Web Host?
A Catalyst instance only has one required third-party service you need to integrate: A Virtual Private Server (VPS) provider for settings up servers.
Optionally, if you want to take payments for servers, you must integrate a payment provider.
Finally, if you want to be able to set up servers at domain names, you also have to integrate a Domain Name Service (DNS) provider. If you are doing this, it is highly recommended that your domain is registered on the Public Suffix List.
What is the token payment type?
The Small Web aims to be a bridge between the capitalist centralised web and a post-capitalist humanscale web of individually-owned-and-controlled single-tenant peer-to-peer web places. As such, we have the unenviable task of trying to design a system that is both sustainable under capitalism and viable for post-capitalist use.
Supporting both money and tokens as a payment type is an example of this.
A token is simply a secret code that you can enter in place of traditional payment with money.
For example, a municipality might decide that its citizens having their own place on the Small Web is good for human rights and democracy and might budget to provide them with this service from the common purse, for the common good. As such, it might create codes that get mailed out to all citizens. They can then use these codes in place of payment. (We prototyped an early version of this with the City of Ghent several years ago. Unfortunately, a conservative government came into power and our funding for the project was cut off.)
Traditional/token payment doesnāt have to be mutually exclusive. The municipality in question might, for example, enable both so that people can sign up for more than one Small Web place or if it wants to enable others (e.g., people who are not residents of their city) to sign up.