If you’re interested in XMPP at all, then I have some good news for you. I’ve recently stumbled upon a project known as Snikket. While the official website will surely have a better explanation than I can provide, along with great documentation, I’m going to attempt to convince you to install Snikket on your machine.
Why do you want me to install Snikket?
Well reader, it’s very simple, the XMPP protocol is fantastic. It’s a federated protocol, which means anybody can spin up a server and communicate with anybody else using the protocol. Got banned from a server? No problem, just make your own. Privacy issues? Make your own server. There’s something really fantastic about the whole system, and I want to see it grow. My incentive in convincing you to install Snikket is to increase adoption of XMPP.
But what’s so great about Snikket?
It makes everything extremely easy. In the past, although there were a lot of choices for XMPP server software, you were expected to know a thing or two about the protocol itself, and how to configure everything. Although not impossible for somebody familiar with server administration, it was often a tedious process that was far from user friendly. Snikket solves this issue by putting everything in Docker while keeping everything very light! Snikket on my machine takes up no more than 300mb of RAM and almost no CPU usage on idle.
But I hate docker!!
I also irrationally hate docker, so trust that I know how you feel. But Snikket just makes everything SO EASY. If you have a server dedicated to Snikket, the entire process takes no more than 10 minutes. If you want to run Snikket in conjunction with a webserver, you just have to put it behind a reverse proxy. The install took me about 30 minutes with reverse proxy, and everything has been working extremely well with no maintenance or problems as of yet. I have a fully self-hosted XMPP server for 30 minutes of “work”.