Migrating your Bluesky account the hard way

When I set up my main Bluesky account, @jola.dev, I signed up through Bluesky. This means my account and my data lived on one of the very many Bluesky Personal Data Servers (PDS). Specifically, mine was created on shaggymane.us-west.host.bsky.network. This blog post isn’t about how atproto works under the hood, but the relevant bit is that when you post on Bluesky that post is stored on your PDS. It’s also stored in the Bluesky AppView, and replicated across the protocol for anyone who’s interested, but the source of truth is your PDS. The way it’s designed, your PDS doesn’t have to be Bluesky infrastructure for you to be able to post on Bluesky. It’s a decentralized design and you can run your own server. So obviously you should! The other day my specific PDS was down for a couple of hours, and I kept thinking about how cool it would be if it was my own fault my PDS was down instead of someone else's. I’ve previously written about cove.town and setting up a PDS using the excellent…