Pixelfed is a decentralized, open-source photo-sharing platform similar to Instagram, but part of the Fediverse.

Pixelfed is a decentralized and open-source photo-sharing platform designed to prioritize user privacy and control. It offers a familiar experience similar to Instagram, but without ads or data tracking. As part of the Fediverse, it allows users to interact with people across other federated platforms like Mastodon.

Alternative to: Instagram

✅ Full control over your data

✅ No extensive data collection and mining

✅ Can be administrated from web interface

✅ Android app available (could not test)

❌ Higher responsibility for security and backups

❌ The installation process (if you install into your instance of operating system) is not straightforward

• Usage: ★★★★★
  • The AJAX-based web interface is very well-designed and user-friendly.
  • Management is possible via the command line interface (CLI) and a web dashboard.
  • The task queue system is well-implemented as a system service, which I like.
  • There is an Android mobile app called PixelDroid, but I was unable to connect using version 1.0.beta39 on Android 15. Apache logs showed no connection attempts from the app, but I did not have time to investigate further.
• Federation: ★★★★★
  • I have not tried connecting to the federation, but according to the documentation, Pixelfed supports sharing activities across federated Pixelfed servers.
• Installation: ★★★★★
  • Installing Pixelfed on a self-hosted system is relatively complex.
  • Additional resources are often needed to be read to properly configure various components.
  • For comments and likes to work correctly, running php artisan passport:install after installation is required, but at the time of writing, this step was missing from the official installation documentation.

Prerequisites

Let's assume a clean installation of Debian 12 (using the netinstall medium).

Dependencies and PHP

apt -y install software-properties-common ca-certificates lsb-release apt-transport-https git wget unzip redis-server ffmpeg python3-launchpadlib cron curl sudo

Add Ondřej Surý repository for the latest PHP 8.3:

curl -sSL https://packages.sury.org/php/README.txt | bash -x
apt update

Now install new PHP 8.3 and other dependencies:

apt -y install php8.3 php-cli php-zip php-gd jpegoptim optipng pngquant php-bcmath php-curl php8.3-xml php-intl php-mbstring php8.3-mysql

Install Composer

wget -O composer-setup.php https://getcomposer.org/installer
php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
composer self-update

Install MariaDB

apt -y install mariadb-server

Run this command and change root password; answer yes to all the security questions:

mariadb-secure-installation

Start MariaDB terminal:

mariadb

And create the database and set the password:

create database pixelfed;
grant all privileges on pixelfed.* to 'pixelfed'@'localhost' identified by '<set_pixelfed_database_password>';
flush privileges;
exit

Install Apache2

Install the Apache2 webserver and set all the required modules:

apt -y install apache2 php8.3-fpm
a2enmod rewrite proxy_fcgi setenvif ssl
a2enconf php8.3-fpm
a2ensite default-ssl.conf

For production deployment, it is strongly recommended to use Certbot or a similar tool for Let's Encrypt certificates.

Now edit the Apache configuration:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

And change:

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

To the following (we will install Pixelfed to this directory later):

DocumentRoot /var/www/pixelfed/public

Now edit the same for the SSL vhost:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf

Again, change:

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

To:

DocumentRoot /var/www/pixelfed/public

Finally, edit the Apache config file:

nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

And change:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted

To:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted

And restart the webserver:

systemctl restart apache2

Prepare and Install Pixelfed

Lets prepare the PHP-FPM for Pixelfed:

cd /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/
cp www.conf pixelfed.conf
sed -i 's/^\[.*\]$/\[pixelfed\]/g' /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/pixelfed.conf
sed -i 's/^listen *\=.*$/listen = \/run\/php\/pixelfed.sock/g' /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/pixelfed.conf
systemctl restart php8.3-fpm

Now prepare the Redis for Pixelfed:

sed -i 's/^port *[0-9][0-9]*$/port 0/g' /etc/redis/redis.conf
sed -i 's/^# *unixsocket * .*$/unixsocket \/run\/redis\/redis-server.sock/g' /etc/redis/redis.conf
sed -i 's/^# *unixsocketperm * .*$/unixsocketperm 770/g' /etc/redis/redis.conf

To allow access to Redis from the webserver:

groupmod -a -U www-data redis

And finally:

systemctl restart redis

Now, download the Pixelfed application and setup the rights and dependencies:

cd /var/www/
git clone -b dev https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed.git pixelfed
cd pixelfed
chown www-data:www-data . -R
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
sudo -u www-data composer install --no-ansi --no-interaction --optimize-autoloader

Create a systemd service for Pixelfed:

nano /etc/systemd/system/pixelfed.service

Insert the following:

[Unit]
Description=Pixelfed task queueing via Laravel Horizon
After=network.target
Requires=mariadb
Requires=php-fpm
Requires=redis
Requires=apache2

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /var/www/pixelfed/artisan horizon
User=www-data
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start Pixelfed:

systemctl restart pixelfed

Configure Pixelfed

cp .env.example .env
nano .env

Set at least the following values (adjust the rest to your needs):

APP_URL="https:///pixelfed"
APP_DOMAIN=""
ADMIN_DOMAIN=""
SESSION_DOMAIN=""
DB_PASSWORD=""
REDIS_SCHEME="unix"
REDIS_PORT="0"

And add the followng new option:

REDIS_PATH="/run/redis/redis-server.sock"

Now do the following steps to finish the installation:

chown www-data:www-data .env
php artisan key:generate
php artisan storage:link
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan import:cities
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

This step is missing in the installation documentation but is necessary for enabling the API for comments and likes to work properly:

php artisan passport:install

Run the following command every time you make changes to the .env configuration file:

php artisan config:cache

Add admin and regular users using:

php artisan user:create

Make sure to include an email address for login purposes.

Edit crontab:

crontab -e

And add the following line:

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/pixelfed/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

References and Additional Info:

• Pixelfed Installation Documentation
• [How to Install and Use PHP Composer on Debian 12](https://wiki.crowncloud.net/?HowtoInstallandusePHPComposeronDebian_12

Developer: Daniel Supernault, Pixelfed community