💡 Self-host something new day 3 - twtxt microblog

2025-06-25 21:00

I spent ages trying to self-host FreshRSS, but I failed, so this was a super quick second option.

twtxt is possibly the lightest microblogging service out there. It's literally just a text file. I have some kind of addiction to discovering lesser-know social networks, so why not another?

twtxt itself is an installable CLI package, but I went down the yarn.social path because it just uses the twtxt format, but encourages you to host your own txt file. yarn.social has extensions and recommends clients, which I may dive into later.

My first step was creating a folder called ~/yarn/ and a twtxt.txt file with my first post:

echo -e "$(date -Is)\tOh hey" >> twtxt.txt

I then went into the file and added a recommended header.

Because I am already running a Caddy web server for notes.zkbro.com, I just edited my Caddyfile with the following lines:

yarn.zkbro.com {
  root * /home/zkbro/yarn
  file_server
  log {
    output file /var/log/caddy/yarn.log
    format json
  }
}

This points folk to my yarn directory when going to yarn.zkbro.com. But first, I need to allow that on my namecheap.com dashboard --> Domain List --> Manage --> Advanced DNS --> Add an A + Dynamic DNS Record for host "yarn".

Back in my /etc/ddclient.conf dynamic DNS client, I added yarn.zkbro.com to the list at the bottom, so my public IP address remains correct in namecheap.

I also added an index.html for yarn.zkbro.com as a bit of a landing page. I may eventually move things about here and make some kind of text-only smol website with various links. Come to think of it, smol.zkbro.com may be on the cards.

Anyone twtxting? Let me know so I can add you to my follow feed when I get a client up and running.