I would not self-host this on Windows; and if you’re not a seasoned server administrator I definitely wouldn’t use the Ansible (or even docker-compose) methods.

I wrote some bash scripts that will help you deploy on fly.io if you like, which abstracts the hosting layer away a little bit: https://github.com/Veraticus/fly-lemmy

That said if you’re not super comfortable in this space then debugging and correcting problems is also going to feel incredibly frustrating, so, just warning you.

If you aren’t attached to Ansible, I suggest using Docker to host Lemmy. I found it’s instructions, using Docker Compose, to be quite straight forward.

My other 2 cents is that hosting on Windows isn’t worth the hassle and there will be a lot less to debug on Ubuntu if you’re already comfortable with it.

Install wsl for windows Ubuntu default.(can install wsl in PowerShell).

Install Ansible in wsl, create ssh keys to your VPS, follow those instructions.

On my Ubuntu server I did literally nothing but the ssh key generation.

I highly doubt Ansible works on Windows and in general it is really not a good idea to host anything on Windows as it is way to insecure and also not meant for it.

If you install something on your DO VPS maybe try Yunohost: https://yunohost.org/

Also going to suggest using the docker containers as well. It’s much easier to get up and running, plus Docker knowledge is great to have under your belt.

After a looooong day of trial and error and basically learning all of this from scratch, I am happy to say I have finally gotten my own instance up and running!

HUGE credits goes to @ubergeek77@lemmy.ubergeek77.chat for creating a script to install Lemmy in just a few simply commands. Definitely reccomend checking out his work if you’re brand new to all of this: https://lemmy.world/post/249889

Although I ended up taking the “easy way out”, I do want to take a moment to thank all of you for taking the time to comment and contribute time to help me sort out this problem. This is such a warm and welcoming communtiy and I really appreciate it. Cheers from SoCal!

If you’re running python on windows then you need to make sure you’re environment variables are updated or else the commands the instructions tells you to put into cmd will do nothing because the path to the application isn’t defined.

Not sure how ansible works on Windows but you could use Windows Subsystem for Linux, install ansible on that and then off you go.

I’ve had success running mine on docker but i’ve been messing around with docker for a while now so i’m familiar with it. I googled a tutorial that specified what parameters in the config file that needed to be my domain and did the rest on my own. The tutorial was as detailed as to included the commands to make the correct folders and change their permissions. If you have access to a linux machine that may be a better route.

I totally feel you, it took me 4 days on different computers until I gave in and got a new clean server just for lemmy. Then I used the Docker way of hosting. But even with that the documentation didn’t tell me everything, so I had to change the second nginx config file (the one with server_name my_domain.tld;) so now this is working even with the web-workers (for posting comments) and federation with SSL:

map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
    default upgrade;
    ''      close;
}
server {
    server_name jemmy.jeena.net;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-for $remote_addr;
	proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
	proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
	proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
    }
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/jemmy.jeena.net/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/jemmy.jeena.net/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}
server {
    if ($host = jemmy.jeena.net) {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot

    listen 80;
    server_name jemmy.jeena.net;
    return 404; # managed by Certbot
}

Ansible runs on your local machine, but it executes the setup on your (Linux) server remotely via SSH. I’d definitely recommend the Ansible setup, it was the easiest I tried. Are you able to SSH into your server already?

The way I did it was to setup WSL and installed Ansible there then used the lemmy ansible script pointing to my lemmy instance VM

Stop what you are doing and use https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy

It is super easy this way.

On my windows machine I installed ansible using python but when i type the ansible command into terminal it gives me no command found. Is linux required as a host machine?

Its possible the installer didnt properly add the ansible exectuable to the PATH environment variable. You can do this manually, or just use the command prompt and cd to the directory that ansible is installed.

You can do a search of “environment” and edit the variables yourself. It does require a reboot to take effect.

System>Path is what you want to set. And no matter what you need to know where the ansible installer is.

Personally I used an exsiting linux box in my lab. If i didnt have that, then maybe the windows subsystem for linux would be my next step. I would avoid python/ansible in windows if i could.

Additionally you COULD just install ansible on the local VPS. You basically just set the localhost to be the destination in the hosts config.

Something like this

https://gist.github.com/alces/caa3e7e5f46f9595f715f0f55eef65c1

https://www.ntweekly.com/2021/03/30/run-ansible-playbooks-on-your-localhost-machine/

I would also do some basic lockdown of the machine. Set SSH to key based auth only. Setup the firewall and block all ports other than 80/443 and limit 22 to your home IP or something. Limit SSH access to only an account or group etc etc.

I just set one up using docker. Went surprisingly smoothly.