Higher Ed Web Social is a place for higher ed web folks (and friends from the +) to stay in touch with each other and chat about work and life.

Welcome to Higher Ed Web Social

Higher Ed Web Social aims to be a safe space where humans can engage with each other in order to support each other, foster relationships, and grow and learn in order to better ourselves and the world around us. Sometimes that means sharing a bit of silliness. Sometimes we talk about higher education and websites.

All who wish to take part are welcome. But you must follow the rules in order to remain active on this server.

Please contact a server admin if you have any feedback and/or ideas about how we can add/edit rules to make our space safer.

Status page

Access the Uptime Robot status page for higheredweb.social at https://stats.uptimerobot.com/Lk0RlsNVQZ.

Financial reports for the server

The server admins keep a Google spreadsheet of expenses and contributions toward maintaining the server. Access the public financial report

Contribute funds to the server

This Mastodon server has a median cost of $68.75 a month to maintain. Some of the spending choices could be decreased. The admins made some of the choices understanding they may cost a little more in order for the admins to try out specific tools.

For the time being, we plan to continue supporting the server financially, but if everyone pitched in $1 to $5 a month, it would help keep things going. You can contribute whenever or whatever you like, be it a monthly contribution or a larger annual contribution.

How to contribute financially

As part of your contribution, please indicate whether or not you wish to remain anonymous for our public financial reports.

• Paypal: send contribution to rachel@rachelcherry.me
• Another platform: Send an email to rachel@rachelcherry.me if you wish to contribute funds using another financial platform.

Adding new users to the server

Feel free to invite your friends to join our server! Ask them to click the "Create account" link on our about page. They will be asked to agree to our server rules, and then a server admin will have to approve their account. It should be pretty straightforward.

If they have any issues, send an email to rachel@rachelcherry.me.

Your privacy on this server

Higher Ed Web Social wants to make sure you are aware of how private your information is on this or any other Mastodon server.

There are privacy settings featured in this platform which restrict visibility from the general web interface. But the Mastodon database itself is not encrypted.

While the admins at Higher Ed Web Social have no interest in reading your private messages, we cannot guarantee the privacy of your information, especially when your information crosses between other servers.

Please assume all messages you send on any Mastodon instance are not private. If you have something private and sensitive to say, please move your messages to another, more privacy-oriented system.

Mastodon Server Covenant

The HigherEdWeb.social server commits to following the Mastodon Server Covenant found at joinmastodon.org/covenant.

HigherEdWeb.social admins

• Rachel Cherry
• Jason Woodward

HigherEdWeb.social governance

The technology used to manage the Mastodon server and who has access to this technology is detailed below. If the server takes off, then access and ownership of our technology will be expanded.

Namecheap

The higheredweb.social domain name was purchased from Namecheap by Rachel Cherry on 11/9/2022. The domain is managed under Rachel’s personal Namecheap account. As of 11/20/2022, Rachel Cherry and Jason Woodward are the only Namecheap users with access to manage this domain.

DigitalOcean

The Mastodon server is hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet with a managed database and Spaces object storage. The database and object storage (which comprises all of your data) is backed up daily.

The droplet, object storage, and database is managed under a DigitalOcean team named “Higher Ed Web Social”. The team was created under a DigitalOcean account owned by Rachel Cherry.

Rachel Cherry created the droplet on 11/10/2022. As of 11/20/2022, Rachel Cherry and Jason Woodward are the only members of the HEWS DigitalOcean team and the only users with access to the droplet and database.

SendGrid

The Mastodon server requires an SMTP server to process emails for notifications, etc. Rachel is not a big fan of Twilio but it has the best price for getting started. Rachel is, like with all our services, open to consider other options. This choice of tool, above all others, will be audited if/when our server’s needs grow.

Rachel Cherry created the SendGrid account on 11/10/2022. As of 11/20/2022, Rachel Cherry and and Jason Woodward are the only users with access to the SendGrid account.

Github

The codebase used for the Mastodon server is a fork of the Mastodon source code. The fork is located at github.com/higheredwebsocial/mastodon.

The repo is public and is owned by a Github organization named Higher Ed Web Social. This organization is owned by Rachel Cherry’s personal Github profile: @bamadesigner.

Rachel Cherry created the Github repo on 11/10/2022. As of 11/20/2022, Rachel Cherry and Jason Woodward are the only users with direct access to the Github repo and the Higher Ed Web Social organization.

Uptime Robot

On 12/26/2023, Rachel Cherry created a free account on https://uptimerobot.com/ in order to monitor the HTTP status of https://higheredweb.social.

The service performs a HEAD HTTP request to https://higheredweb.social every 5 minutes and emails Rachel if there is an issue.

Rachel Cherry's personal email address is the only user with access to the free account because, otherwise, she would have to pay for an upgraded service plan.

You can access the Uptime Robot status page at https://stats.uptimerobot.com/Lk0RlsNVQZ.

1. Safe space: LGBTQIA+
2. Be mindful of using inclusive language. Words matter, people.
3. Active members should feel free to share their work but no "cold" spamming. Whatsoever. In any format. No one wants that.
4. No harassment of any kind. You will be gone so quick.
5. No racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any other kind of discrimination.
6. No nationalism, colonialism, white supremacy, fascism, or religious extremism.
7. We will suspend your account if we feel like your account was created from an automated service. For example, if your account name is just a blob of letters and numbers, e.g. "c4j29ag". What also looks suspicious is not having a profile photo.