I am considering putting up a Mastodon tutorial here soon. There is a good one HERE. However, I find the snakeoil SSL he uses to be insufficient and it causes browsers and some anti-virus software to refuse to connect as it is NOT a Let's Encrypt certificate so browsers do not recognize the URL as secure.
I am, today, putting up a Mastodon instance using that tutorial and trying out fixes I have come up with. If it works, as I am certain it eventually will, I will put my tutorial up here. In the meantime, you can get one up and running using the other without Let's Encrypt but you may have to make exceptions for your anti-virus and browser to connect even if you are successful in making that tutorial work for you.
For quite a while now, say eleven years, give or take, I've been working with and gradually learning web servers. Along with this project I have also gotten involved with installing software in order to build my own websites. Websites of all kinds from social media to blog to websites such as you are on now.
Along the way I have spent more hours than you can count finding tutorials to help build those websites. Recently, I found that many of these tutorials have been put up and then forgotten. What this simply means is that many of the hours I spent trying them resulted in reinstalling servers as the tutorial was out of date and didn't work. Usually, it is the software versions behind the website (php, MySql, etc) that has moved on while the tutorial stagnated.
In the past couple of weeks I have spent hours writing this tutorial for “Writefreely” and trying it out to see if it worked or not. Trial and error with code is not easy but it is invigorating for the mind. Today, I built this website from my own tutorial and it works fantastically as you are reading this and it went smooth as silk. But, only after those hours of writing, copy/pasting, frustration, and then . . . winning.
Have fun with what I place here and I do recommend, Webdock, for your VPS hosting.
Their support is wonderful if not, at times, a little slow. But, if you're going into any phase of coding you will find that patience is a virtue. They also offer scripts, snapshots, fast, fast servers and more. Give 'em a try. I did.