Just over a year ago we released v0.9.0 with the intention of not releasing another (non-patch) release before #ActivityPub support is at a state of at least alpha level usability. I (Jason, author) must admit, this took longer than I excepted. Partial reason for this was huge changes that happened in my life - a divorce and switch from employee to entrepreneur. There were times were I hadn't looked at any of the code for a month and spent hours just catching up where things were.
There was also a huge amount of refactoring needed to make #Socialhome, which was designed for the #Diaspora protocol, happy with two protocols. While ActivityPub covers the same use cases (in a much more flexible way), it is fundamentally different in how profile and content identity is handled. Most of this refactoring happened in the federation library, which has to job of worrying about all this protocol stuff leaving the Socialhome changes mostly dealing with data storage.
This is easily the biggest single push that has been made for this project. It has also meant that not many features or UI changes have landed during the last year. I think however expanding the reach of Socialhome users from approx 25K monthly active users to around 500K monthly active users is probably worth it.
Simultaneously is released v0.18 of the federation library which handles all the actual protocol level logic.
A total of 460 commits (of which 170 to the federation library) went into this release by four authors, changing 392 files (33096 insertions, 7410 deletions).
Other highlights
Tag streams (followed tags) was added.
Scope of incoming integration for the Diaspora protocol Social-Relay can be set by the server admin.
Users now have a "followers" page similar to their "following" page to see who they are followed by. This is only available to the user themselves.
Rewritten contacts page with more visually pleasing boxes instead of a table from the nineties.
Plus various smaller changes and fixes, see the full changelog here.
What's next?
Now that ActivityPub support has been shipped, it's time to make it more robust and compatible with other platforms. This will take time and happen gradually. Please do report all the bugs you may find in our chat or in the issue tracker.
There will also be more focus on the UI side of things and adding more features now that all the time doesn't have to be spent on the federation layer. @{https://diaspodon.fr/users/AugierLe42e} has already spent some time rewriting the publisher in #VueJS and various UI design rewrite/change proposals have been submitted from the community (one, two).
Docker
This release is also the first one that has Docker images published. #Docker will be the suggested installation method from now on. Any manual installation guides will be accepted but will not be maintained in the official docs.
Due to the Docker image being new, feedback is very welcome from Docker enthusiasts. Let us know how it worked for you and what needs better solutions or documentation.
What is Socialhome?
Socialhome is best described as a #federated personal profile with social networking functionality. Users can create rich content using #Markdown. All content can be pinned to the user profile and all content will federate to contacts in the federated social web. Federation happens using the ActivityPub and Diaspora protocols.
Please check the official site for more information about features. Naturally, the official site is a Socialhome profile itself.
Want to work on a #Django and VueJS powered social network server? Join in the fun! We have easy to follow development environment setup documentation and a friendly chat room for questions.
No i w końcu idą po swoje. Ponieważ świadome dzieci nie są już takim łakomym kąskiem dla ksiedza-pedofila, PiS spieszy watykańskim agentom z pomocą.
Za edukację seksualną dzieci służby będą zamykać do więzienia. Ziobro się ucieszy (już na sam dźwięk słowa "więzienie"), kościelni pedofile również. Jak trzeba być podłym by blokować ochronę naszych dzieci?
Prezesie - wstyd i hańba. Łapy precz od naszych dzieci!
