## Hosting Your Own DEV Instance

We envision that the DEV codebase will eventually be generalized to the point where it can be used to power other communities and ecosystems.  We’re excited for the project to mature to that point, but we’re not quite there yet.  This page is designed to serve as an FAQ and checklist of considerations that are relevant to the goal of eventually hosting your own version of our community platform.

### Current Limitations

- Many aspects of the app are hardcoded.  For instance: logos, certain elements of content, etc.  If you were to host the current version of the app, you would be inadvertently impersonating the core DEV project.
- We do not currently have a versioning system that will allow us to share fixes and improvements with modified versions of the code.

### I want to stand up my own entity using the DEV codebase, how can I help?

- You can help us generalize the code, removing DEV-specific language and images and replacing them with environment variables or database tables as appropriate
- You can commit to staying in very close coordination with us as we navigate the process together.

The long-term benefits of doing this the right way far outweigh the short-term gains of spinning something up without consulting us. If you are interested in getting started with this process, let us know in [this thread](https://dev.to/ben/so-you-want-to-stand-up-your-own-instance-of-dev-help-thread-1elo).