You added a relay to your Mastodon instance to boost visibility and bring in posts from other servers. But your local timeline remains quiet, and you are not sure if the relay is actually working. A relay is a server that acts as a middleman, forwarding public posts from one instance to another. This article … Read more
Mastodon instance administrators and active users often rely on trending tags and relay servers to discover new content across the fediverse. Trending tags show which hashtags are most popular on a local instance or across the federated timeline. Relay discovery uses dedicated relay servers to pull in public posts from many instances at once. These … Read more
Mastodon is built around decentralized servers called instances, which means posts from a niche community on a small instance may not appear in your home or federated timeline. Without a direct connection between instances, you miss discussions about specific hobbies, professions, or interests. Mastodon relays solve this problem by acting as centralized hubs that forward … Read more
When you run a Mastodon relay, you may see inbox authentication errors in your server logs. These errors prevent the relay from properly forwarding public posts between instances. The root cause is almost always a mismatch in the relay’s authorization token or a misconfigured HTTPS connection. This article explains why these errors occur and provides … Read more
Running a Mastodon instance for a topic network means you want to see only relevant posts from other servers. Without a relay, your instance must manually follow each remote account or hashtag. A filtered relay automates this by receiving public posts from participating instances and forwarding only those that match your chosen keywords or hashtags. … Read more
You published a post on Mastodon with the local-only visibility setting, expecting it to reach users on other instances through relays, but the post never appears outside your home server. This behavior is by design: local-only posts are intentionally blocked from being forwarded by relays or any other federation mechanism. Mastodon relays are server-side tools … Read more
Mastodon instance administrators often need to understand how much network traffic relays generate. Relays distribute public posts across multiple servers, which can consume significant bandwidth and storage. Without regular audits, a single misconfigured relay can degrade instance performance for all users. This article explains how to audit relay traffic volume using built-in Mastodon tools and … Read more
You can use Mastodon on the web without installing any desktop or mobile app. Many new users think they need the Mastodon mobile app to post, but the web interface offers the same core features. This article explains how to access your Mastodon instance through a browser and post updates, reply to conversations, and share … Read more
Mastodon posts, called toots, have a character limit that varies by instance. Unlike Twitter’s fixed 280 characters, Mastodon allows each server administrator to set their own maximum. This flexibility means a toot on one instance might be cut off or rejected on another. The default limit is 500 characters, but some instances allow 1000 or … Read more
When you post an image on Mastodon without alternative text, screen readers and text-only clients cannot describe what is in the picture. The Mastodon interface shows a warning icon next to images that lack alt text, and some instances may block the post entirely. Adding alt text ensures your images are accessible to blind and … Read more