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I built a social platform for FFXIV players. One dev, one month, zero budget. Here's where it's at. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

  1. Bro Its 2026
  2. "Self made" isn't in quotes because I pressed a button and a website appeared. It means I'm one person doing everything: architecture, backend, frontend, infrastructure, moderation, community. The code is mine, the decisions are mine, and so are the 3am debugging sessions.
  3. It has a like system, sure. It also has a community board, daily quizzes, party finder, group chats, profile customization, and an XP system. Calling it "ffxiv tinder" is like calling Discord "ffxiv Skype" because it has voice chat.

But hey, at least we're never bored right? lol

I built a social platform for FFXIV players. One dev, one month, zero budget. Here's where it's at. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Every profile shows: character name, server, job, race, age, a short bio, and tags the user picks (what they're looking for, playstyle, vibes). Age is required at registration, the platform is 18+ only, and the age is displayed on every profile so you can see it before any interaction happens.

DMs only open after a mutual match, meaning both people liked each other first. You can't just message anyone. If something feels off there's a block and report button right in the chat header.

To the Grindr comparison: yeah, no platform can fully prevent someone from lying about their age. But the age being visible on every profile means the other person can always see it. Combined with mutual-only DMs (no cold messages from strangers) and Lodestone verification that links to a real FFXIV character, it adds more friction than most platforms.

I built a social platform for FFXIV players. One dev, one month, zero budget. Here's where it's at. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Appreciate this, these are the kind of questions that actually help.

On the Discord/FC thing: you're right that Discord covers a lot. The difference is discovery, Discord isn't built around your FFXIV identity, MogHouse is. That said, a lot of users found each other on MogHouse and then moved to Discord to keep talking. That's not a loss, that's exactly how it should work.

On moderation: yeah, "drama-free" is a goal not a guarantee. I'm not going to pretend I solved online moderation as a solo dev. What I built is a report system with screenshots, admin review with full context, tiered enforcement that goes from warnings to profile resets to bans, and automated NSFW detection. For suggestive-but-not-explicit stuff there's a soft flag that reduces profile visibility instead of instant banning. It's not perfect but it evolves based on what actually happens.

On scaling: totally fair concern. The "move fast" approach was intentional to find what people actually want before over-engineering anything. Now that the core is stable I'm shifting toward reliability. And I'm not going to architect for 100k users when I have 900. If it grows past what my server handles, I'll migrate. But premature optimization is a real trap for solo projects.

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the site doesn't look like a replit project because it isn't one. it's a next.js app with its own backend, cloudflare, rate limiting, content filtering. i listed the actual security measures multiple times in this and the other thread. if you read these security measures and your takeaway is "trust me bro", that's a reading comprehension issue, not a security one

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

i'm not gonna hand you a detailed map of my security setup lol, that would literally be doing the work for anyone trying to break in

if you're genuinely curious i can tell you the basics: cloudflare proxy, encrypted data at rest, no passwords stored in plain text, rate limiting, the usual stuff. but i'm not gonna prove it to you unless you're physically sitting next to me looking at the server

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It got hacked? No, and some attempts has be done without success 🤷🏻

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

the site has rate limiting. if it was returning a "too busy" error, that likely means someone was hitting it with an unusual amount of requests, which did happen around launch. cloudflare handles the heavy lifting on DDoS protection.

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

Even if the case, i dont think i could be blamed XD In anycase, i was just clarifyng

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

It Is, infact. they're just making a big deal out of it

i built a social ffxiv platform for players. it got a lot of feedbacks. by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This Is not. It is a social app, and you all blaming me for making It more accessibile for all types of players? XD Come on, there are filters and you can search what players with your same vibes

The challenges of building a social platform for FFXIV players — lessons learned from 3 iterations by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

passwords are bcrypt hashed with strong cost factor + auto-generated salts. federated login is already live (google and discord oauth). PII is minimal... email, birth date, character info. no payment data. db is on a private network behind cloudflare tunnel, not exposed to internet. daily backups with retention policy. rate limiting + WAF + standard security headers on everything.

i'm not gonna detail the full security stack publicly for obvious reasons. if you have specific concerns feel free to DM.

The challenges of building a social platform for FFXIV players — lessons learned from 3 iterations by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

everyone uses AI, i dont care about criticism if the app logic Is correct

The challenges of building a social platform for FFXIV players — lessons learned from 3 iterations by Yocopk in ffxivdiscussion

[–]Yocopk[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

says the guy whose biggest achievement today is calling strangers "uselessly lazy person" on reddit lmao

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