How to Install Mastodon on Windows 10

Mastodon is a free and open-source social networking platform that is an alternative to Twitter. It is a decentralized platform, meaning that there is no central authority controlling the network. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of installing Mastodon on a Windows 10 machine.

Prerequisites

Before we start installing Mastodon, you will need to ensure the following prerequisites are in place:

  • A Windows 10 machine
  • A Bash shell environment installed on your Windows machine. You can install Git Bash or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). These will provide a Unix-style terminal environment.
  • Ruby version 2.5 or higher installed on your machine. It is recommended to use the Ruby installer for Windows, which can be found at the following link: https://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/
  • PostgreSQL version 10 or higher installed on your machine. You can download and install PostgreSQL from the following link: https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/
  • Redis server installed on your machine. You can download and install Redis from the following link: https://github.com/MicrosoftArchive/redis/releases

Installation Steps

Once you have all the prerequisites in place, follow the steps below to install Mastodon:

  1. Open the Bash shell environment on your Windows machine.

  2. Clone the Mastodon source code repository to your machine using the following command:

    git clone https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon.git

  3. Enter the newly cloned repository directory:

    cd mastodon

  4. Use the Bundler gem to install Mastodon's dependencies:

    bundle install --deployment --without development test

  5. Copy the example environment file:

    cp .env.production.sample .env.production

  6. Edit the newly created .env.production file to add your Mastodon instance's configuration options. You can use your preferred text editor to open the file and add your configuration details. Some of the options you can set include hostnames, email server settings, and database settings.

  7. Create the Mastodon database by running the following command:

    RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:create db:migrate

  8. Compile the Mastodon assets:

    RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

  9. Start the Mastodon server:

    RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails server

  10. Load the Mastodon server in your web browser by navigating to http://localhost:3000. You should now see the Mastodon login page.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Mastodon on your Windows 10 machine. You can now log in to your Mastodon instance and start using it.