WriteFreely: Open source federated microblogging platform | Hacker News Reader

WriteFreely: Open source federated microblogging platform

writefreely.org

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WriteFreely – An open source platform for building a writing space on the web - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27800248 - July 2021 (94 comments)

Show HN: WriteFreely – minimalist, federated blogging platform - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18432327 - Nov 2018 (112 comments)

> you can even run it on a Raspberry Pi!

Here in India so many of us want to do this but almost everyone is behind CGNAT. I know there are solutions that exist like cloudflare tunnels but I just wish I could host at home without any third party.

Airtel, one of the largest Indian ISPs - does not put users behind CGNAT. Plus, now that they have deployed IPv6, each of your devices gets a routable ipv6 (bit scary when I first discovered that!). So if you use airtel as an ISP, you can definitely self host: on IPV4 using the right port mapping, or on ipv6 without any additional configuration.

Additionally, airtel uses pppoe. If you wish, you can connect a PI to your airtel modem via a bridged connection (look in your airtel modem configuration) and then just run pppd and get a dedicated (though still dynamic!) IPV4 for your PI - seperate from the rest of your network. It works beautifully!

i have a jio fiber at home. i have put a an old router with lan cable jiorouter>wifi router.

i have put new wifi router on the same wifi name/pw so i get to transparently switch between the two connections.

this somehow disables ipv6 on the devices connected to the downstream wifi router so that their address is not exposed. on the regular jio fiber, ipv6 address is exposed

https://github.com/test2a/JioFiberwebhosting

try this, you are free to suggest improvements and suggestions.

this has served data to me for quite some time now and there are "some" issues but it is overall fine.

Their latest release is from 30 Jun 2021.

Yes and many PR's not addressed ... very interesting project but looks unmaintained.

It's difficult to maintain a project for 5 years without other contributors popping up to support it. I think Matt has not actively dropped working on it, but maybe his enthusiasm has dwindled. I'm not sure if the paid version is enough of an incentive.

It’s in many ways also “done”, in that it pretty much does what it says on the cover. I had to tweak a tiny few things to host it on DigitalOcean App Platform, and plan to do some development where needed as I start hosting an instance.

I get the idea of "done" software, but this software here has 3rd party dependencies. My biggest concern is not that it's not done, but that there are security issues inside the release.

WriteFreely is not a tool that counts lines in a file :). It's a rather complex application that needs constant caretaking. Especially because it's facing "the internet" :).

It looks like they took a break this summer but plan to do another release of WriteFreely.

https://musing.studio/roadmap

https://write.as/blog/a-calm-summer-2022

Yes, the project is still alive and well! It also powers our very alive commercial service, Write.as, which has most of my attention. The open source project is just moving at a one-maintainer pace because it only has one maintainer :)

There will definitely be future releases, especially once we get through a roadblock with the tool we use to cross-compile WriteFreely [0]. Otherwise, anyone who wants to see the project move faster is more than welcome to contribute, especially with tasks like code review, to help clear out those PRs [1].

[0] https://github.com/techknowlogick/xgo/issues/155

[1] https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely/discussions/550

Makes sense! Thanks for the feedback!

a dumb question,why not just leverage wordpress

It can be used for microblogging, but it's set up well for proper blogging, and doesn't e.g. char limit you.

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