For simplicity, this post is opinionated and uses Namecheap, Digital Ocean, and Resend.

Create an account for each one. It should be straightforward to replace them with your preferred services, making the necessary adjustments.

What we'll do

In this post, I will:

  • Buy the domain bskydemo.xyz. NOTE: I'll use this domain name throughout the post, use yours instead.
  • Run the Bluesky PDS (Personal Data Server) that will contain your account data (including your posts) on a cloud platform. You can add other accounts if you want to, but it is out of scope here.
  • Point pds.bskydemo.xyz to the PDS instance.
  • Create an account on Bluesky using pds.bskydemo.xyz as the PDS.
  • Use the custom domain bskydemo.xyz as the user handle on Bluesky (@bskydemo.xyz).
  • Redirect bskydemo.xyz to the Bluesky profile (https://bsky.app/profile/bskydemo.xyz).

You can pick only the ones that you are interested in.

Buy a domain name

Go to Namecheap and buy a domain name. We'll come back later to Namecheap to do DNS configurations.

Pick a cheap domain like .xyz or .blog, which costs around $2/year at the time of writing.

Create your PDS instance

Go to Digital Ocean and create a project (just a wrapper to organize resources) called bluesky-pds and create a new Droplet (what Digital Ocean calls their VMs).

Pick:

  • In "Choose an image" -> Marketplace -> search for "BlueSky Social PDS".

    digital-ocean1

  • In "Choose Size", get one of the cheapest and smallest options. I picked 1 GB of RAM, 1 CPU, and 25 GB of SSD. At the time of writing, it costs $6/month.

    digital-ocean2

  • In "Choose Authentication Method", configure access via SSH key or password. Later we'll need one of those to access the Droplet.

Create the Droplet, and once done, copy the IPv4 address of the Droplet. In my case, it is 167.172.254.26. NOTE: I'll use this IP throughout the post, use yours instead

digital-ocean3

Configure your domain name's DNS

Back to Namecheap, find your domain in "Domain List", and click "Manage" -> "Advanced DNS".

namecheap1

Create these 3 records. Note the Host in the first line is an @, which means the root domain:

namecheap2

Test that your DNS config is working by using https://dnschecker.org/#A/bskydemo.xyz. It should show the IP address you set. This might take a few minutes to propagate to all locations.

dnschecker1

Initialize the PDS

Connect to the Droplet using ssh:

ssh root@bskydemo.xyz

It will prompt you a few questions:

  • Enter your public DNS address: enter pds.bskydemo.xyz.
  • Enter an admin email address: enter your email. At this point it will initialize the PDS, it will take a few seconds.
  • Create a PDS user account? (y/N): press enter for N.

Configure a domain on Resend

In Resend, configure a domain. In my case, it is bskydemo.xyz.

Go back to Namecheap and add a record like this:

namecheap3

Create an API key on Resend

Go to Resend and create an API key. Copy that API key and store it somewhere safe, we'll need it soon. You can restrict it only to sending access, and to the domain you configured above.

resend1

The free plan should be enough for your needs.

Configure SMTP on the PDS to be able to verify an account's email

Back to the ssh session, run this (NOTE: first edit the 2 values as needed, the first with your Resend API key, the second with your email - has to be on the domain configured on Resend).

echo 'PDS_EMAIL_SMTP_URL=smtps://resend:YOUR_API_KEY_HERE@smtp.resend.com:465/' >> /pds/pds.env
echo 'PDS_EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=admin@bskydemo.xyz' >> /pds/pds.env
reboot

Your SSH session will close while the VM reboots. The PDS will restart with the new SMTP configuration.

ssh into the server again and run pds create-invite-code. It will output a code that you can use to create an account.

Create a Bluesky account

Go to https://bsky.app/ (while logged out), click "Sign up". Select "Hosting provider" -> "Custom", and enter pds.bskydemo.xyz

Enter the information requested. The invite code is the one you got from pds create-invite-code. You can use your email, even if you already have a Bluesky account. You'll need to verify the email, so use an address you can access.

For the handle, enter anything for now, like temp. Your user handle will be temp.pds.bskydemo.xyz. We'll change it later.

Verify your account's email

Go to https://bsky.app/settings, and click "Verify My Email". You'll get an email with a code to input in the next step.

Tip: if you get an error here, check the network tab on the browser. The error is most likely happening on your PDS, and the full error will be there. You can access it with docker logs -f pds while you do the email verification process.

Configure the domain name as your handle

Go to https://bsky.app/settings, click "Change Handle" -> "I have my own domain". Enter bskydemo.xyz as the handle you want to use.

Go to Namecheap and add this record (NOTE: copy the DID value from the Bluesky settings page, don't use the same as mine):

namecheap4

Check https://dnschecker.org/#TXT/_atproto.bskydemo.xyz that your record is correctly configured (it should return the same DID value as in the Bluesky settings page):

dnschecker2

Back to the settings page, click "Verify DNS Record" and click to update your handle to @bskydemo.xyz.

If you have issues via the UI, try the API directly. From https://aaronparecki.com/2023/03/07/3/bluesky-custom-domain:

http post https://pds.bskydemo.xyz/xrpc/com.atproto.server.createSession identifier=YOUR_EMAIL password=YOUR_PASSWORD
# Use the value of "accessJwt" below
http post https://pds.bskydemo.xyz/xrpc/com.atproto.identity.updateHandle Authorization:"Bearer ACCESS_JWT_RETURNED ABOVE" handle=bskydemo.xyz

Point your domain to your Bluesky profile

If you want to make https://bskydemo.xyz redirect to https://bsky.app/profile/bskydemo.xyz, you need to configure it on the Caddy server running alongside the PDS.

Connect to your Droplet again and run:

cat <<EOF >> /pds/caddy/etc/caddy/Caddyfile

bskydemo.xyz {
        redir https://bsky.app/profile/bskydemo.xyz
}

EOF

reboot

Once the reboot is done (and Caddy is running, so give it a minute), access https://bskydemo.xyz. It should redirect to the Bluesky profile.

Conclusion

You now have a Bluesky PDS running on Digital Ocean, using your domain name as your user handle. You can post and interact with other Bluesky users.

Note how, even though pds.bskydemo.xyz and bskydemo.xyz resolve to the same IP address, they are used for different purposes. We want https://bskydemo.xyz to redirect to the profile, as it is the most user-friendly URL. So we need a different URL to access the PDS, hence pds.bskydemo.xyz, which won't redirect.