Multi-tenancy with custom domains

[nileshtrivedi]

Pitch

Allow one instance to host multiple domains

Mastodon issue: mastodon#2668

Motivation

Like email, hosting costs can be divided across multiple orgs while giving them control of their identity by domain ownership. Please see the links issue for more on this.

[dariusk]

Am I reading the original issue correctly that the idea is I could have an account physically hosted on alpha.example, which is a server I don't own but have an account on, and then configure DNS on beta.example, which is a domain I do own, to act as a kind of proxy name for it? so people could follow me at @myname@beta.example even though the account is hosted on the alpha.example server?

[nileshtrivedi]

Yes, I think the idea is that the domain in my ID @myname@beta.example and domain of my actor hosted by the Mastodon/Hometown instance alpha.example don't have to be identical.

[robsonsobral]

Actually, you can already allow people to follow you from a different domain than the one which hosts your account. However, this isn't transparent. The domain on the profile page you always be alpha.example. Being more accurate, the idea is to make so simple to host multiple domains as it is to host emails.

The better approach to that is the issue.

[dariusk]

Yes, that's the key difference between this and the current LOCAL_DOMAIN, is that one physical host can host multiple domains.