I’m a bit late on writing this up, but Federama v0.2 was released a couple of weeks ago. It’s a large improvement over v0.1, but there is still a lot of work to do.
The main points of the Federama v0.2 release are:
- Admin can do basic site configuration
- Users can modify their profiles and change passwords
- Posts can be edited or deleted
- Pages can be created, edited, and deleted
- Messages can be created and sent to users on the same instance
- Nodeinfo
- Webfinger
- RSS and Atom feeds for site and for users
- Federama logo in appropriate spots
- the-user.php, the-post.php, the-page.php, the-message.php, the-statistics.php
Nodeinfo is an unofficial standard that provides metadata about a server, such as the number of users and the number of posts. What I really like is that it differentiates between all users, the number of users active in the past month, and the number of users active in the past six months. I think a lot of social networks and a lot of dating apps inflate the numbers of their users. If a site claims a million users, but only 500,000 have logged in during the past six months, and only 100,000 have logged in during the past month, can it really claim to have a million users? There’s nothing to stop them, but Nodeinfo will hopefully keep websites honest about their user base.
Where Nodeinfo provides metadata about a website, WebFinger provides metadata about users. Unlike Nodeinfo, Webfinger is an official standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Like Nodeinfo, it’s a stepping stone to connecting to the Fediverse. Federama doesn’t federate yet, but Nodeinfo and Webfinger are metaphorical baby steps along the way.
RSS and Atom are convenient ways of getting updated posts from a given server. Once upon a time they were used extensively on blogs and blogging platforms, and although Firefox has dropped support for them, they still have their uses. Feeds can be embedded in different websites, which means they can be used to create timelines similar to Twitter or Mastodon.
The stylized F (a/k/a Latin Capital Letter F with Stroke) is displayed differently by different browsers. I’d hoped it would appear more or less they same in all browsers, but since it’s a bit esoteric, some browsers don’t give it much thought. Because of this, I turned the logo into an actual image in Inkscape and Gimp*, and use that in the Federama header. Then I went on a binge and created a whole bunch of logos in different colors, but that’s a different story.
Site admins can do some basic website configuration, though a lot of work needs to be done.
Users can edit their profiles, though more work is needed, and they can also change their passphrases.
In Federama, posts are long-form textual content organized in a timeline. They will be familiar to anyone who has used WordPress, Blogger, or any other blogging platform.
Pages are long-form textual content that is organized outside of a timeline. They are often used for reference material, such as About Me pages, Privacy Policy pages, or for providing contact info. As with posts, they will be familiar to anyone who has used any number of blogging platforms.
Messages are short-form textual content similar to tweets in Twitter or toots in Mastodon. Technically, Federama v0.2 doesn’t have a limit on the size of messages, though future versions will limit them to 500 characters by default. Site admins will be able to configure this to whatever they choose.
Federama v0.2 also has the-user.php, the-post.php, the-page.php, the-message.php, and the-statistics.php to make it easier to look as individual users, posts, pages, etc. All of these are very basic, and require more work.
Work on Federama v0.3 is already underway, and will hopefully be out sometime in October 2019. You can take a look at the main wiki page for Federama to get an idea about the timeline, and what features will be introduced and when.
* FWIW, I support forking GIMP because of the name. In the not too distant future, I look forward to using Glimpse.
Be First to Comment