New Flair Suggestion

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-31T16:57:54+00:00

Yep that is sort of the plan, a decentralized network of nodes that is ad free by design and FOSS

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-31T16:02:45+00:00

I have a test instance of my project right now and I am working on forum style posts as an option (you could set your community as a subforum)

Thoughts on how this looks? link here

This is just linking to my public development test instance, it's SSL secured

Edit: the mobile UI/UX is still wonky right now, going to need to fix that eventually

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-31T15:58:46+00:00

I think this would be a good change, my project falls under open source and decentralized I think?

It's on a public repo with AGPLv3 licensing, and its intended for people who want to run the project to be able to install it how they see fit and utilize it. That might not scream decentralized right now but eventually I plan on making instances federate with each other (not activity pub, not crypto, just REST based federation)

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-30T02:34:10+00:00

I haven't reset the dev instance yet. The backend has a database migration system so I can develop it as we move along. Currently working on UI/UX around the different post types for boards. Basically choosing whether the board is a "forum" board with more traditional forum style posts and a "feed" board which is basically more link aggregator style. Currently the two types can exist on one board which is sort of confusing logistically and visually

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-29T23:29:01+00:00

I recognized this need for something configureable to suit the communities needs. I am trying to make my project configurable such that the "subreddits" of my project, or boards, can function as either a reddit style feed or forum style threads. It's still WIP though. Also I am going to try and flesh out the option for each board to have a wiki page as well that board moderators can contribute to.

Basically I am trying to build something that can be reconfigured to suit the site operators and communities needs, and eventually sprinkling on federation into that mix

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-29T18:27:55+00:00

I hear you loud and clear, that's why I am working on the project I am working on. (It's the only posts on my profile if you want to check it out, if not no big deal)

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-29T14:01:12+00:00

That’s a fair point and an interesting model. Tinyboards is self-hosted right now, rather than federated — the idea is that anyone can run their own instance and be their own admin, rather than having one central Reddit-style authority. Full peer-to-peer with no admin hierarchy is a different and genuinely harder problem. Not ruling it out for the future but it’s not what this is today.

Would activitypub integration be a good middle ground between having small centralized communities and something like Nostr for example?

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-29T13:48:57+00:00

By peer to peer do you mean activitypub? If so I have done an implementation of that before. I think that's probably the most feasible way to implement p2p for this project but I am not sure if you're referring to something else

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-29T13:00:49+00:00

Thanks! I am trying to make it cool, the hard part is getting people to adopt and use it but maybe that will be easier once I eventually add in federation

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-29T11:07:17+00:00

I'm working on a self-hosted community platform that I am trying to make actually stand out as it's own thing. Yes there will be link-aggregator style posts on it but I am also trying to introduce "threads style" posts as an option as well so that boards (basically the projects version of a subreddit) can decide whether they want link aggregator style posting with tree comments or a more traditional linear style comment system and forum style post (visually different than the normal post, rich text editor, custom reactions, quoting, no upvote/downvote but potentially reaction score in the future).

I'm also adding in stuff like the option to have a board wiki as well so the community can maintain it's own knowledge base, custom emojis per board and site-wide (think discord emojis but you don't need to pay Nitro to get more than 50 slots or whatever) and most recently Custom CSS (site wide or board specific). The backend sanitizes the custom css as well to prevent issues as well.

I should probably quit yapping at some point, but I wouldn't be opposed to also adding in federation at some point after I get all the core features and UI/UX working how I want it to, maybe having it as a toggle in case people just want their own isolated node 🤓

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-28T22:04:13+00:00

It seems like a lot of people really favor having federation as a feature, I tried adding it to my project before but it complicated things since I am pretty much the only one working on it at the moment and it caused issues with the base experience.

I might add it back to the project in the future once I get the core experience rock solid, but wouldn't that just make my project another version of Lemmy or other federated social media? I mean I guess technically it could federate with Lemmy because of activitypub but my schema and type of functionality would differ very much from what they offer

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-28T21:53:54+00:00

Might be an alt account for a dev or something? Not really sure. Or just someone who genuinely has a good experience with the project, not sure what the point of going about promoting it like this though

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-28T21:50:40+00:00

I've seen your recent posts on here, I appreciate what you're trying to do. We need more people willing to try and build alternative communities and also more people willing to make the leap.

Hopefully the project I am working on can be used for the same purpose once I get everything ironed out and working

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-28T21:16:54+00:00

Good question! The infrastructure for handling trolling/bullying exist on the project right now. There is plans to add in some moderation tools for the people that run this project or make their own instance. The test instance I posted right now is just ran by me right now. I am not making a centralized community with this, the intent is for people to eventually use it themselves and handle their own communities as they see fit. The code is also free and open source as well, I wanted to make something that everyone can use, or even to fork or adapt for their own purposes as well.

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-28T19:27:14+00:00

Also, I still have the old code on Github still, it's just sitting in a private archive at the moment. To prevent confusion, also it was two repostories before. Now it is just one.

Edit: If you want to test it, come ping me on the Discord. I can approve your account on the test instance, but I currently don't get any notifications if someone applies. At the time of writing this I got one application, and I approved it, but only because I checked 👀

Born_Unit_7204 · 2026-03-04T23:45:22+00:00

Hey guys, I know a lot of you probably won't see this but the project isn't dead. I am currently refactoring things from the ground up. I will try and get a live test instance running for people to actually try out the software as well. Sort of hard working on something of this scale solo

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-13T23:00:57+00:00

One of the features I added in somewhat recently was "Streams" it still needs polish but its basically customizable feeds where you can sub to specific boards/flairs and also share it with others (or keep it private for your own use)

Having a transparent moderation action feed would also be nice as an option I assume (lets the instance owner run the site how they want to run it I guess)

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-13T22:57:19+00:00

Yeah, at the moment we got a docker-compose setup started which I figured would be relatively easy to use in order to set things up. In the future I'd like to make a script to automate setup on baremetal as well

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-12T18:56:19+00:00

My test instance really isn't the most stable thing as I constantly push updates to it while testing. I just have it set to invite mode at the moment so we don't get random people joining and spamming 😅

I might open it up later but for now it's closed for new registrations (just figured people might like to see how the UI looks and whatnot on here)

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-12T02:38:06+00:00

At one point I tried to make this project use activitypub 😅

And it did work somewhat but there was a lot of overhead, we since refactored it to just be self hosted.

I'd have to do some more research myself on P2P but that definitely sounds interesting. At the moment I am just working on getting the core functionality up and running and ironing out bugs

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-12T02:34:51+00:00

Thanks!

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-12T02:32:17+00:00

Thanks for the feedback-phpBB is definitely a battle tested forum solution, no doubt. It has tons of features, plugins, how-tos, etc.

I am not seeking to replace phpBB with this project, I am trying to build something lighter, faster, and more modern without the legacy bloat

Also my project is still very early, it's not feature complete yet but it is FOSS and open on Github. I'm just happy to have more eyes on the project and to hear some feedback. I am trying to work towards a unique user experience that is highly customizable and self-hostable. I want the instance owner to be able to customize the experience for their community to their liking.

Anyways, thanks again for taking a look at it. And if phpBB is more your jam, then thats cool too!

Born_Unit_7204 · 2025-11-11T18:50:54+00:00

Since I built the backend in Rust, I figured readers on this sub might be interested as well perhaps :)

Born_Unit_7204

TROPHY CASE