• Alt-texts: The Ultimate Guide by Daniel Göransson (15/10/2017) https://axesslab.com/alt-texts/  
• Encouraging thoughtful alt text behavior on Mastodon with CSS (27/12/2022) https://multiline.co/mment/2022/12/alt-text-mastodon-css/

• This repo contains CSS tweaks and modifications for Mastodon: https://github.com/trwnh/mastomods
• Quality-of-life & aesthetic improvements for Mastodon, through custom CSS https://github.com/chirpycora/mastodon-css-tweaks#quality-of-life--aesthetic-improvements-for-mastodon-through-custom-css 

• RE: Mastodon media storage by Hugo Gameiro (10/11/2022) https://masto.host/re-mastodon-media-storage/
• Cleaning mastodon media attachments by Peter Babič https://peterbabic.dev/blog/cleaning-mastodon-media-attachments/ 
• mastodon-tootctl-media-purge.txt 

• How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports by Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner (Free Ebook) https://frameshiftconsulting.com/resources/code-of-conduct-book/#book 

• I sincerely recommend reading this post by Rixx (21/12/2021). The bits on moderation in "The Bad" section is especially pertinent to Moderation and what it actually entails, but the whole post is very valuable information: https://rixx.de/blog/on-running-a-mastodon-instance/ 

• Running Mastodon with docker-compose (Get Mastodon running!) by Peter Babič https://peterbabic.dev/blog/running-mastodon-with-docker-compose/ 
• Complete beginner's guide to installing Mastodon (+Hometown) by @mart0@438punk.house (2023-01-07) https://n00q.net/articles/guide-mastodon-hometown/
• How to run a small social network site for your friends by Darius Kazemi (08/07/2019) https://runyourown.social/ 

• User Generated Content and the Fediverse: A Legal Primer (USA-based instance admins need to read this) by Corynne McSherry (20/12/2022) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer
• Mastodon Privacy Policy Generator (EU/GDPR compliance) https://blog.riemann.cc/projects/mastodon-privacy-policy-generator/
• "[...] drafting what I think is a reasonably sensible Mastodon privacy notice. It's more applicable if you are running a small instance in the EU with a limited subset of sub-processors, but it is tweakable. I would love feedback if you think I missed something. It's (roughly) modeled on the EDPS privacy notice, but less lawyerly. " by dataprotection.social/@privacat over at https://dataprotection.social/@privacat/109371854193930397 
• Mastodon Privacy Guide V.1.0 by @privacat https://github.com/clening/MastodonPrivacyGuide

•  Can I change the domain name of my Mastodon server? by Hugo Gameiro (06/01/2023) https://masto.host/can-i-change-the-domain-name-of-my-mastodon-server/ 

Note that if you are not an experienced sysadmin it would be irresponsible to actually consider scaling your Mastodon instance beyond a small number of users. This is here for your curiosity and edification.

• Scaling Mastodon: The Compendium https://hazelweakly.me/blog/scaling-mastodon/ 

• Operational security best practices for Mastodon users: https://distro.f-91w.club/masto-opsec/

Some instances vanish without warning when administrators burn out. 
As Darius Kazemi writes (https://runyourown.social/#keep-it-small): 

I can't stress enough how important it is to keep your numbers small. To draw from recent history, witches.town was one of the more popular Mastodon servers in 2017 and 2018. In mid-2018 there were a series of disagreements between the primary administrator and the users. I can't speak to the nature of these disagreements as I wasn't there but there were multiple disagreements about moderation policy, and also the primary administrator (who I believe actually owned the server and its domain) said they were burned out on running the server. In the end, the site was shut down. According to archive.org it had about 2400 registered accounts in April 2018, shortly before the instance was deleted. 
I posit that 500 active, invested community members will not be able to achieve a values-based harmony or consensus. It's simply too big to be possible. My assertion is not backed up by any studies I have read but rather my personal experience in online and offline groups of all kinds. You cannot wrangle consensus from 500 people. With that many active, committed community members you will necessarily have at least a few dedicated members who feel investment and ownership in the community who are also extremely unhappy with the direction of the community.