A small instance for and by people who make things! We stand for an open, independent, sustainable, inclusive, and accessible web.

Table of Contents

• Disclaimer
• Welcome
• Not welcome
• Support
• Content cache retention period
• Help
• Third-party apps
• Appearance
• Code of Conduct

Disclaimer

This server is not affiliated with or endorsed by Mastodon GmbH or Mastodon Inc. It was created in March 2018.

Welcome

Mastodon.design welcomes all makers and designers who love to build things and talk about them. We stand for an open, independent, sustainable, inclusive, and accessible web. Its current admin is @timotheegoguely, the previous one was @mcpaccard (we both speak French and English), and the current moderators are @rafa (English) and @amxmln (German, English).

Not welcome

⛔ AI agents, fascists, racists, supremacists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, tech/crypto/whatever bros and spammers are not welcome on this server.

Support

Although there is no registration fee, it would be SUPER nice if you’d drop a few $/€ to support Timothée with the instance hosting costs. This instance is hosted in France on OVH servers via Masto.host (Galaxy Plan + ElasticSearch add-on + 2 Extra Resources add-on) for $142.80/month (many thanks @Hugo for all the good work!) and has a custom domain for €44.45/year at Infomaniak.com for a total bill of ~$1644/year (~$137/month).

💛 So if you can afford to financially support mastodon.design (tiny monthly donations help more than one-time ones), you can click on one of the donate buttons below.



Content cache retention period

⚠️ Our Content cache retention period is now set to 730 days (2 years).
This means that all posts and boosts (reposts) from other servers, and all your bookmarks, favorites, and boosts will be deleted after 2 years.

Help

Need help? Mastodon can sometimes be a strange place for newcomers, but understanding its core concepts and exploring it is also very exciting! Here is a list of guides and resources to help you in your journey:

• Mastodon quick start guide, an article from Mastodon’s official blog.
• What is Mastodon?, a short introduction video.
• Intro to Mastodon 101, a longer introduction video.
• How to use MASTODON: the COMPLETE GUIDE (join, use, find people to follow, etiquette…), an even longer video published by The Linux Experiment.
• An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon, a massive Q&A by Joyeuse Noelle.
• How Does Mastodon Work?, a blog post by @kev@fosstodon.org that will help you move your account to another server.
• Mastodon Help, a website also translated in Italiano.
• Resources for Mastodon newbies, a partial list of links and tips to help you get started with Mastodon.
• TUTO : choisir et utiliser Mastodon, a 5 pages PDF in French written by Piaille.
• Fedi.Tips, an informal and unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse.

Third-party apps

Did you know that there are lots of different third-party apps for Mastodon? You can find the whole list directly on this official page or explore the curated selection below.

Web

• Elk
• Phanpy
• Enafore

macOS / iOS

• Ivory (Mac / iPhone / iPad)
• Mona for Mastodon (Mac / iPhone / iPad)
• Ice Cubes (Mac / iPhone / iPad)
• Mast ($2.99, iPhone / iPad)

Android

• Moshidon
• Tusky
• Fedilab
• Pachli

Appearance

Mastodon.design uses a custom theme with the following features:

• Warm light theme (inspired by Obsidian one)
• Responsive 4 columns layout for advanced web interface on desktop

Custom CSS works at the instance level, so if you want to use you own custom CSS, you need to use add-ons like Stylus or Live CSS Editor. For example, you can add .layout-single-column .colums-area__panels { flex-direction: row-reverse } if you prefer to use the single-column layout with the logo and navigation menu on the left, and the search bar and compose form on the right.

If you miss the Twitter X’s user interface, you can use the advanced custom theme Mastodon Bird UI designed by Roni Laukkarinen.

Code of Conduct

If you would like to join Mastodon.design or already have, you agree to behave according to our Code of Conduct below:

Accessibility

Please make sure you caption the images you upload. Image descriptions, also called alternative text or alt text, are text descriptions of an image. These descriptions support people who are blind, have low vision, use assistive technology, live in low-bandwidth areas, or want more context. The goal of writing image descriptions is to be clear and concise, while giving more context to your post. Here’s a list of recommendations for writing great image descriptions:

1. Capture what's important
2. Be succinct, clear, and detailed
3. Be objective
4. Write out or summarize text in images
5. Watch out for acronyms and abbreviations
6. Include the image type details
7. Use regular sentence structure and letter casing
8. Avoid redundant information
9. Take care with complex visuals

For those who want to improve their knowledge, here are two comprehensive guides on the subject:

• Alt-texts: The Ultimate Guide, by Daniel Göransson for Axess Lab
• How to write an image description, by Alex Chen for UX Collective

Media size & quality

Please reduce your images’ size and compress them before uploading. Mastodon automatically downscales images to 1.6 megapixels (enough for a 1280×1280 image) 8.3 megapixels (enough for a 3840×2160 image)* and compresses JPEG and PNG with a quality of 90**, but you can often get much better compression by using free tools like Squoosh (web app), TinyJPG (up to 20 images, works for PNG),

1. Sexually explicit or violent media must be marked as sensitive or with a content warning
2. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, validism, xenophobia, or casteism
3. No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
4. No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other people
5. No content illegal in France
6. Do not share intentionally false or misleading information
7. Any reversal of systemic oppression is forbidden
8. Content created by others must be attributed, and use of AI must be disclosed

1. bdsm-jp.club: limitation
2. mytter.jp: suspension
3. soc.jrconlin.com: limitation