Using Pseudonyms on Code Forges

2023-12-11Updated on 2024-04-08

This short post demonstrates how to create a pseudonym on a code forge. I will be using Codeberg — a non-profit platform — as an example of a code forge that can be used to host a website using a pseudodynm.

Your Complex Identity#

Like me, you probably use GitHub to develop your software projects. You might also use other popular code forges, like GitLab and SourceHut.

A user profile on one of these services can become a big part of your online identity and can be a showcase for your work in a professional context.

Our identities are complex, however, and sometimes it might be necessary to compartmentalise our online selves. Perhaps you don't want your open-source projects in personal blogging, erotic fiction and embedded systems programming to all be co-located.

Maintaining Anonymity#

What you might want to achieve is a complete separation between two identities.

You want a pseudonym and this will require some immediate, obvious actions. When using your pseudonym you should:

Use a different username
Setup a new email address
Avoid referencing personal details

There are some additional matters to consider that are less obvious.

Git User Name and Email#

At some point you probably set a global configuration for git on your device(s):

git config --global user.name "myoldname"
git config --global user.email "myoldemail@gmail.com"

Let's say you've created a repo on Codeberg with the source code for your new secret website. You clone it to secret-website on your local machine:

git clone https://codeberg.org/mynewname/web-src.git secret-website

cd secret-website

Now you add something to your secret website that you don't want anyone to see:

git add secret.html
git commit -m "added new secret post"

Before a git push to the Codeberg repo you prudently check the commit history:

git log

# commit 0242446c21a4b3dcefagcf22f232a91bac323b02
# Author: myoldname <myoldemail@gmail.com>
# Date:   Mon Nov 2 13:43:24 2023 +0000
#
#     added new secret post

Ah! Your old identity is embedded in the commit history. If you perform a git push you will be revealed in the commit history on the public, remote repo.

Let's start again.

First reset to the previous commit:

git reset --hard <older-commit-hash-from-git-log>

Now change the user configuration details for the repo:

git config user.name "mynewname"
git config user.email "mynewname@gmail.com"

Global and Local
Note: a --global flag is not used in the above commands. You probably don't want to change your global settings.

If you git add secret.html && git commit "added new secret post" you should now see something like the following when logging the commit history:

git log

# commit 5253249d42f2c2dcfdbcdf35f144422fbd215a10
# Author: mynewname <mynewemail@gmail.com>
# Date:   Mon Nov 2 13:53:24 2023 +0000
#
#     added new secret post

Success! Your identity now shouldn't be revealed through your commit history.

Hosting on Codeberg#

In addition to trying out a new identity you also want to try out a new code forge. Perhaps you don't trust mega corporations with your data and are bothered by their tendency to feed your work into AI training models.

After some research you settle on Codeberg and decide to host your new secret website of static content using Codeberg pages. Setting up a profile on Codeberg is trivial and should be familiar to anyone who has used GitHub or a similar site. Hosting the website on Codeberg might feel different, however.

Here I will outline one approach to doing this successfully check the docs for other options.

Before you do anything make sure you are in the secret-website directory:

pwd #/home/<username>/dev/secret-website

Run touch .gitignore && vim .gitignore then add any directories that will contain build outputs:

/dist/
/pages/

I am assuming that a static-site-generator (ssg) of some kind will be used and that there is a build step that can be invoked with ssg build:

ssg build #builds static files in /dist/
ls dist #icon.png index.html style.css

What we want to do is copy the files from dist into a directory called pages. We then want to push the contents of pages into a Codeberg repo that is distinct from the one holding the source code of the website.

On Codeberg create a separate repo called web-pages, give it a readme and then clone it into your secret-website directory:

pwd #/home/<username>/dev/secret-website
git clone https://codeberg.org/mynewname/web-pages.git pages

You should now have a parent directory (secret-website) containing the source files and a child directory (pages) that will hold the output of ssg build. Both are git repos that will have separate commit histories and Codeberg remotes.

Check that your user name and email in the pages directory are correct:

cd pages
git config user.name #mynewname
git config user.email #mynewemail@gmail.com

Now move back to the parent directory and do a recursive copy from dist to pages:

cd ..
pwd #/home/<username>/dev/secret-website
cp -R dist/* pages

Run git -u push origin main to push your source code to https://codeberg.org/mynewname/web-src.git

Change to the pages directory and commit the static files to https://codeberg.org/mynewname/pages.git

cd pages
git add secret.html
git commit -m "add secret post to website"
git push -u origin main

If you access the pages repo on Codeberg you should see a visit page button that will take you to a site with the url mynewname.codeberg.page

Domain Privacy Protection#

If you want a custom domain for your secret website then you need to add a .domains file to your pages repo.

This is just a plaintext file that lists domains. The first entry is the address of your custom domain. Subsequent entries in the list will be redirected to the custom domain. It might look something like this:

nynewname.com
www.mynewname.com
mynewname.codeberg.page

When you are buying a domain make sure that the domain name registrar provides domain privacy protection. If you register a domain without privacy protection then identifying details you entered during registration can be found by anyone using a service like Whois Lookup.

Buying a domain with namecheap comes with free privacy protection, for example.

You will need to set up DNS for your new domain. This is normally done through your user profile on a service like namecheap. This is outside the scope of this post but you can refer to the official Codeberg pages docs for more information.