PeARS hosting & development
💻 PeARS aims to make it as easy as possible for anyone with basic programming experience to set up and manage their own instance.
However, maintaining a server does take some time and mental space -- from finding a hosting provider to moderating your search index.
Pear Queendom is a service for anyone that wants to join the PeARS universe but can use some help along the way.
We can take care of any or all of the following aspects of PeARS life:
- Initial instance setup: we set up a web server for you and install all the necessary software and perform the initial configuration of the search engine.
- Technical maintanance: we maintain your server for you and make sure the software is always up-to-date and running; prioritized bugfixing if any software problems occur.
- Search index building: we make sure your search engine is as useful as possible by helping you index all the relevant information for your community or topic. This service could be part of your initial set-up (e.g. you have a existing bookmarks, a reading list, a Zotero bibliography, or other materials that you would like to see indexed) and/or continuous (we can help you find new relevant information and index it for you).
- Integrations & extra features: if you need extra features for your search engine -- e.g. display results in a different way, add support for different types of content material or annotation, or automatic indexing of external sources -- we are happy to implement those for you!
- Social media management: PeARS is designed to bring web search back to communities. We are happy to help you set up a social media account for your search engine and engaging with your community: posting updates, answering questions, or even organizing hackathons!
💸 The pricing of our services is flexible and will be adapted to your needs. If you are interested, drop us a line and briefly describe what you're interested in and we'll send you a quote for either a one-off service or a subscription for a longer or shorter period. The services that we provide for you can always be upscaled or downscaled: for example, you could ask us to initially just a set up the instance for you, and later add on more technical or other support; conversely, you could also ask us to take care of everything initially (set-up, maintanance and implementing any extra features you might need) and then hand things over back to you once everything is up and running.
💬 Currently, we are trying to help the PeARS universe grow as much as possible: as with any social network, the usefulness of federated search increases exponentially with every new PeARS instance, every new user and every indexed web page! Therefore, if you or your organization has a large online presence and if your
planned PeARS instance has value for a wide audience, we can offer discounted or even zero-cost services depending on what you have in mind and the growth potential for the search network. Please contact us for the possibilities.
Other self-hosting services
🏭 Not just web search, but countless other aspects of our online livesare controlled by big tech companies. Fortunately, more and more self-hosted solutions exist for anything from social media to spreadsheets to backing up your photos. We would be very happy to help you set up a Mastodon, Pixelfed or Friendica server for your friend group or small organization so that you can move away from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or help you maintain a private cloud so you can finally get rid of Dropbox, Google Photos and Google Drive. We can also help you with setting up a privacy-friendly, self-hosted website for your project or organization (e.g. WordPress or Jekyll) - even including a web shop if you want. Any of these can be provided as a stand-alone service or together with PeARS-related services. Contact us with your wishes and we'll send you a quote.
