this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

+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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

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 :/

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Here is a list of note-taking apps:

https://github.com/tehtbl/awesome-note-taking

By the way, I am building my own Journaling system, it's still early stages and I am looking for ideas!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Plain text or org mode file.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Obsidian is great for note taking and creating pathological atomic notes that connect to each other

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

pathological

I'm afraid this one is already taken, friend.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Why not use Journal from Silverbullet since you already have it https://silverbullet.md/Library/Journal

You can just copy those templates and edit them as you wish, for example I have one for Stand-ups at work

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Seems like Monica or BookStack would fit your criteria. I looked into Monica for a similar reason but ultimately it seemed like too much work to organize every person in my life so meticulously. But if that's what you want, it might be perfect for you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I went with bookstack. Simple to use and does exactly what OP is asking. Tailscale to connect so it isn’t public at all. Works great for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Like a blog?

Check out Wordpress, Hugo or Ghost.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

You have and use Silverbullet. Why not use templates and Silverbullet? It’s basically made for exactly that use case.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] cheddar 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I think you're looking for Monica at this point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Memos is a great app for this or if you want it local, use DiaryVault

DiaryVault can sync (encrypted) with Nextcloud too. Memos is a serverapp, it has a good responsive webapp

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your data is securely preserved on your Google Drive / Dropbox account, ensuring complete ownership and privacy

Lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You can sync with Nextcloud ☝🏻

Gdrive is for people without anything

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Notesnook doesn't have self hosting yet (the developers are working on it) but it might be a good option in the future.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Org roam could work if you’re your cool with emacs. Create files on the fly that are named with the date/topic and it could be setup to allow timestamps since you mentioned that. Notes can be linked to each other or easily merge or split as it develops.

Also org roam comes coupled with a daily diary that attaches to emacs calendar system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Trillium is a full featured configurable and programmable self-hosted note-taking app that can be easily configured to suit the use case you're describing, it does categories, tags, links to other topics etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

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.

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