Prerequisites

You have no clue what this Mastodon and the underlying Fediverse is but you wanna try and find out!

Setting

• Learning by doing. Jump in fast - learn Details later.
• Why Mastodon?
  tldr; Its very popular and stable software.

Step 1 - Find your Home

• This is where you log in.
• Different Homes have different rules
• it's NOT TWITTER! It is similar but very different.

Find your first Home on the Fediverse

So choosing a good home is very important. But you don't have to make the correct decision at the start. Moving your Home is very easy on the fediverse. So choose well but fast.

There are lots of Ressources that help you find a home

• Shows you where your Twitter Followers are on the Fediverse
  fedifinder.glitch.me
• https://instances.social
• https://fedidb.org
• https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers

I reccomend using the last one as a start - it's a good collection of decent servers.

Or pick one from my List, which i curated to show the diversity

• Language-based
  • Deutsch Allgemein https://troet.cafe/about
• Interrest based
  • Mental health Neurodiverse https://neurodifferent.me/about
  • Genome Research https://genomic.social/about
  • Astronomie https://astrodon.social/about
  • Netzpolitik https://digitalcourage.social/about
  • Weather Nerds https://meteo.social/about
• Geographic
  • Switzerland https://swiss.social/about
  • Northern Germany https://norden.social/about

done? Found one you don't hate?

Step 2

Make your Account!

Bookmark it!

As a start it's good to think about it like an email Account - your adress is @YourName@YourServer
Thats your new fediverse adress where EVERYONE can reach and follow you. Note it somewhere.

Login - Fill your Profile

Click on Edit Profile, Fill in your Bio

Soemthing like:

My Name is Hans and i am #newhere a #busdriver by day and play intense #Chess matches online at Night! I like #Drawings of #SpaceStuff and am a bit of a #Nasa Fanboy

You can also change your Avatar- Picture (it will be displayed next to yout posts for others)

Step 3 - Explore

Tipp: Explore before you search for old followers

First

Login - you are at your personal Home Timeline, which is pretty empty right now.

Second
Look at the "Local Timeline" - All accounts that tweet publicly on YourServer are here.
Read trough them a bit - if you like something leave a star and go to the account and Follow it!

Next also checkout the "Federated Timeline". Read some toots(posts) and Click on Profiles you like and "Follow" them.

done?

Third

Go back to your "Home Timeline".
Still emtpy? Go back to the second step and follow some People! :D

Otherwise - Voila - Your Personal Feed!

Boost if you want to give reach, leave a star if you want to appreciate the author.

Step 4

Write your first Toot

Write a short Introduction:


My Name is Hans and i am #newhere a #busdriver by day and play intense #Chess matches online at Night! I like #Drawings of #SpaceStuff and am a bit of a #Nasa Fanboy

Something like that, trough the #newhere Hashtag others can find you and you can find others that are new - so you can find your first followers.

Detailed Help Documentation

Done - Enjoy the Fediverse!

Exploration Background

Migrations

I highly recommend finding new people trough mastodon first to get a feel for the groove of your new home.
After that - use these Tools to find your twitter people.

• Debirdify https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/ 
• fedifinder.glitch.me

Shamelss Plug: If you want to have your own Fediverse Server please contact me - i'm free for hire.