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This is how Dots Mesh works

Dots Mesh is a social platform that nobody owns (or everybody owns?). That's true for the Internet and emails too. It's distributed by design, and that's extremely powerful.

Here are two main parts that make it work:

1. The clients

Here is where all the "magic" happens. There is a web app (a website if you prefer) that enables you to create and manage your profile, post,  share, browse, comment, chat, etc. This app is built with privacy in mind and it uses encryption heavily. You can see how it looks like here.

The web app is available at dotsmesh.com, and can also be installed on your host or any place you like.

2. The servers

Here the data for the public profiles and groups are stored. The servers are pretty "dumb", as their main purpose is storing and delivering data.

Private profiles do not need a server, because they live on the user's device. This means that they are not accessible by others, but still can join groups and post, share, and comment as expected.

The Dots Mesh team provides a hosting service for those of you that do not want to run servers. Of course, there is the self-hosted option for everybody else. It's fairly easy to create your own host, especially if you own a domain name and a hosting account (or server), so we encourage you to go this way.

Looks familiar?

This is how all websites (including blogs) work. If you want your own online space, you buy a domain and get a server. You do not have to ask for permission, and you have full control over your content. Then everybody can access what you've shared.

Dots Mesh builds on that idea by providing the protocol and the UI that makes social interactions easy for everyone, online.

The IDs

Domain names are what make the Internet extremely easy to use. You type the name in your browser, and the browser connects to the proper server and retrieves the home page of that website.

Dots Mesh's IDs work the same way. Let's take a look at an example:

Let's say you want to see Jane's profile. Its ID is janesmith.examplehost.com. Your app will connect to the server called dotsmesh.examplehost.com and request janesmith's information. The location of the profile's server is specified in the ID.

This is the case for groups too, but this is not the case for private profiles, as they live on the user's device only.

There are special types of IDs, that are actually not that special from a technical perspective, but look good. The IDs "jane" and "jane.uk" look better than "jane.example.com", right? Learn more about them here.

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There will be more!
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