After migrating from Signal to XMPP for greater control over messaging, the author documents setting up a Prosody server in Docker. This federated approach eliminates vendor lock-in, keeping messages on personal hardware while maintaining compatibility since 1999. Modern clients like Monal and Conversations have improved significantly, making self-hosting practical for everyday communication.

The guide details DNS configuration with SRV records for client connections (port 5222) and server federation (port 5269). TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt secured via Cloudflare DNS challenges prevent exposing port 80. Docker Compose simplifies deployment with Prosody data volumes and read-only mounts for configuration files and certificates.

Critical modules include `carbons` for multi-device sync, `smacks` for reliable delivery, and `mam` for message archives. OMEMO encryption ensures end-to-end security, while the HTTP file share component enables media transfers with a 10MB limit. The implementation demonstrates how self-hosted messaging preserves privacy without sacrificing modern messaging features.