Welcome to wanderer
wanderer is a self-hosted, federated trail database built for explorers who want full control over their outdoor data. Whether you’re tracking personal hikes or publishing trail networks for a wider community, wanderer gives you the tools to manage, share, and discover trails all on your own terms.
What is wanderer?
Section titled “What is wanderer?”wanderer is an open-source web application that allows you to:
- Upload GPS tracks from formats like GPX or TCX
- Create new trails using a built-in route planner
- Add metadata such as difficulty, terrain, tags, or region
- Organize and search your trail collection with advanced filters
- Follow other users, like and comment on trails
- Host your own instance, with full data ownership and control
Whether you’re a solo adventurer, a local trail group, or building a public archive, wanderer adapts to your use case and keeps your data in your hands.
What is federation?
Section titled “What is federation?”Federation allows wanderer servers — called instances — to communicate with each other. This means users on different servers can interact, follow one another, and share trails across the network, even if their data lives on separate machines.
But federation is completely optional. You can run wanderer entirely on your own, as a private trail database with no external connections. All features, from route planning to metadata management and search, work fully in standalone mode. Your server doesn’t need to talk to any others unless you choose to enable it.
When federation is enabled, wanderer becomes part of a wider decentralized network. You can still control exactly who your instance connects with — or keep it entirely private if you prefer.
This flexible design means wanderer works equally well for:
- Individuals who want a private, local trail archive
- Small groups collaborating on a shared server
- Public communities contributing to a federated network of outdoor explorers
For more detail on how wanderer uses federation, see the community interaction guide.
What is ActivityPub?
Section titled “What is ActivityPub?”ActivityPub is an open, standardized protocol for decentralized social networking. It was developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and is used by platforms like Mastodon (microblogging), PeerTube (video hosting), and WriteFreely (blogging). These platforms form what’s known as the Fediverse — a network of independently hosted services that can talk to each other.
wanderer uses ActivityPub to enable federation between instances. This allows users on different wanderer servers to:
- Follow each other
- View and interact with trails across servers
- Like and comment on trails, even if they were created elsewhere
- Receive notifications about new trails or updates from followed users
Because it follows a common standard, wanderer can also potentially interact with users from entirely different platforms in the Fediverse — for example, someone on Mastodon could follow a wanderer account and receive updates when new trails are published.
Community and support
Section titled “Community and support”wanderer is open-source and developed in the open. You can help shape its future or get involved in many ways:
Want to contribute? Start by checking the roadmap or browsing open issues on GitHub.