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Self-hosted diary

Looking for a self hosted diary type of service. Where I can login and write small topics, ideas, tag them and date them. No need for public access.

Any recommendations?

Edit: anybody using monicahq or has experience with it?

Clarification: indeed I could use a general note taking app for this task. I already host and use silverbullet for general notes and such. I am looking at something more focused on daily events and connections. Like noting people met, sport activities and feedbacks, names, places... So tagging and date would be central, but as well as connections to calendar and contacts, and who knows what else... So I want to explore existing more advanced, more specialized apps.

Edit2: I ended up with BookStack. MonicaHQ seems very nice but proved unable to install using containers. It would not obey APP_URL properly and would mess up constantly HTTP / HTTPS redirection. Community was unrepsonsive and apparently github issues are ignore lately. So i ditched MonicaHQ and switched to BookStack: installed in a breeze (again container) and a very simple NGINX setup just worked. I will be testing it out now.

cyrus ,
@cyrus@sopuli.xyz avatar

If you wanna go nuts on the data, probably Obsidian.md with the built-in Daily Note plugin and the Dataview plugin, which allows you to do all kinds of crazy operations on the data in your vault as if it was a database.

If you wanna go less nuts, obsidian still has tagging, linking notes, daily notes, and all kinds of other stuff built-in and is extensible by things like the Calendar plugin from the community.

And everything is stored as plain Markdown with the occasional hint of JSON (for some plugins) so you're not locked into using Obsidian until the end of time. Your data is yours.

(I realise this sounds like an ad but I've just been using Obsidian for years now and I enjoy it)

abies_exarchia ,

I have been using obsidian for the past few months and i really enjoy it. It’s not open source, but you can self-host a not syncing service called Obsidian LiveSync that I use to sync between my computers and phone

cyrus ,
@cyrus@sopuli.xyz avatar

I've resorted to just syncing my fault folder using Syncthing externally, surprisingly convenient

abies_exarchia ,

Sweet! Does it sync to mobile? I’m on ios, and haven’t looked into syncthing

Gutless2615 ,

The only practical reliable solution last I checked to syncing on iOS is to go with their paid service or use iCloud and set up iCloud on the desktops you want to sync with. You can jump through hoops with GitHub sync and a paid GitHub client on iOS that makes syncing fairly easy but fundamentally iOS does not really allow background syncing for anything but iCloud. There was also a selfhosted syncing plugin I tried out before that may have gotten better but I just found it too unreliable. Worth checking out perhaps.

cyrus ,
@cyrus@sopuli.xyz avatar

Syncthing does have an Android app, but I've never looked into doing anything syncthing-related on iOS because I simply don't have any iOS devices :/

rambos ,

I dont have the same usecase, but BookStack will check most of your boxes

kionite231 ,

I personally use private github repo as my diary. I don't want to lose my data by accident. I trust github more than I trust myself

foggy ,

You trust Microsoft?

cheddar ,
@cheddar@programming.dev avatar

When it comes to preserving my data? Yes. Though I'd be concerned about privacy of my diary too, I get your point. Public code is one thing, but personal notes is another.

berryjam ,

Are you okay with your diary being consumed by copilot?

cheddar ,
@cheddar@programming.dev avatar

Didn't I answer this question in my previous reply?

berryjam ,

Welp, I guess you did

DarkSirrush ,

WordPress could probably do it, you don't have to give it public access.

SolarPunker ,

I use Orgzly Revived with Syncthing, it's pretty good

thomasloven ,

I think OP needs to explain why a note taking app is not a diary app in their view.

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

I did, on top post.

thomasloven ,

Sorry, I don’t see it.
Do you mean in a reply to a comment?

solrize ,

Plain text or org mode file.

rem26_art ,
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

Maybe not be exactly what you're looking for, but Logseq has a daily note-taking function. When you open it for the first time of the day, it shows you a blank journal with the current date as the header and you can put whatever you want in it. It has a search function that can search through all the notes you've made for specific text. It saves each day as a separate markdown file and you can sync these to your phone or other devices with Syncthing, a cloud service like Google Drive, or with git if you host something like Forgejo.

The only thing about Logseq is that it doesn't use the standard syntax for Markdown checkboxes. Instead, it has it's own Todo syntax, which is perfectly human readable without Logseq, but loses out of some convenience if you were to migrate to something else.

Cyber ,

+1 for Logseq... I'm using it for work as well as personal stuff and it's strength is automatically creating new pages (and reverse links back) by just typing '' [[that new idea]] '' and you're done. Fantastic.

And sync with syncthing

fendrax ,

I took a look at the awesome self-hosted repo and found DailyTxt. I have no experience with it but maybe worth a try?

perishthethought ,

I like:

https://github.com/usememos/memos

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

Tried the demo, nice, but still mostly a note taking app. Seems easy to selfhost

damnthefilibuster ,

I’d like to add to the voice about Memo. It’s very nice, stable, loads of features if you want them and actively growing.

I think of my “diary” as a stream of consciousness. Thus Memo makes sense. It feels like a personal Twitter feed.

Tagging, photo upload, links. All that works great in Memo.

cmeu ,

If it isn't meant for others to see, what's wrong with a .txt file you just add notes to?

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

Organization, sorting, categorization...
Indeed a TXT can do the job, but why limiting to that...

I already use silverbullet for general notes... But looking for something more targeted and specifically meant for diary tasks.

Alabaster_Mango ,
@Alabaster_Mango@lemmy.ca avatar

Would Obsidian work for you? The notes are stored locally, and the software uses markup for formatting and stuff. You can get it synced to your phone with Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.

overload ,

I think there's an obsidian extension that allows you to basically save the notes in a github repository, making it cloud based kind of.

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

Not really, I am not looking to a note taking app but a diary kind of app, quite different use case. Similar, but different feature set.

Thorned_Rose ,
@Thorned_Rose@kbin.social avatar

Obsidian can be almost anything you want it to be. Try searching out some videos from folks who use Obsidian for journalling.

MiltownClowns ,

I picked up obsidian because it is a perfect diary app w/ templates and daily notes built in. But it's so damn customizable that my obsidian notebook has become an all consuming passion of knowledge base and personal project managment that requires me to be productive IRL to generate more content for me to catalogue. Really appeals to the data hoarder in me, been a game changer. Highly recommend. Perfect 5/7.

Obsidian.rocks

rdschouw ,

I use Standard Notes

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

Not really what I call open source.
Long topic, not OT to discuss here...

AbidanYre ,

tiddlywiki?

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

Looks very promising, but its not self hosted? Looks more like an app / local webapp?

Norgur ,

it's a bunch of loose files, basically. If you wanted it actively hosted, you'd just need to put them into a web server, basically.

AbidanYre ,

The "no public access" made me think a local option would suffice.

There's noteself as a self hosted version.

I used it for a while but ended up moving to Joplin to be able to share notes with family. Noteself/Tiddly seemed like a better fit for your described use case though.

mypasswordis1234 ,
@mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world avatar

Joplin

Shimitar OP ,
@Shimitar@feddit.it avatar

I find Joplin cluncky and kinda slow. Also, it's storage is not plain MD even if the files are called .md

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