Hey there, fellow travellers!

I am thrilled to welcome each and every one of you to our small community. This “Introductions” thread is the perfect place to break the ice, share a bit about yourself, and get to know your fellow community members.

To kick things off, I’ll start by introducing myself:

Name: kglitch
Location: New Zealand
Interests: computer things - linux, programming, webdev. Nature, Photography, Travel, History.
Favorite thing about this community: Being able to knock some of the rough edges of stock kbin

Now it’s your turn! Don’t be shy—feel free to share as much or as little about yourself as you’re comfortable with. Here are a few ideas to get you started, but feel free to deviate from them if you’d like:

Name or Username: [Your preferred name or online handle]
Location: [Where you're from, or the place you currently call home]
Interests: [Tell us about your hobbies, activities, or any unique talents]
What brings you to this instance?
Anything else you'd like to share:

If you’re not comfortable sharing personal information, that’s perfectly fine. You can still participate by engaging with others, asking questions, or simply offering a warm welcome to newcomers. The goal is to build a strong and supportive community where everyone feels valued.

So, without further ado, let the introductions begin! I can’t wait to get to know each and every one of you and see this thread come alive with our diverse and fascinating community.

Welcome aboard, and enjoy your time here!

Best regards,

KGlitch admin

  • Arotrios@kbin.social
    3·
    1 year ago

    Name: Arotrios
    Location: SF Bay Area
    Interests: web dev, data analysis, music, writing, weirdness

    Been watching kglitch for a bit and I was impressed with the changes made to the base code - love what you’ve done with the place. I’m curious to see if you have any insight into the SQL that drives the ActivityPub feeds - been thinking for a while about developing the ability for a user to choose which instances they publish to, but haven’t had a chance to put up my own instance yet and dive in.

    • kglitch@kglitch.socialOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      Welcome and thanks!

      There’s not a lot of SQL in the codebase as it uses the Symfony ORM, doctrine. Although I’ve used PHP since forever I am not familiar with Symfony so my improvements have mostly been on the frontend - CSS and JavaScript, text changes, merging in PRs ignored by kbin.

      When you create a new post you can send it to any community listed at https://kglitch.social/magazines, including remote ones. It really doesn’t matter which instance your user account is on as you can read and write to anywhere. If the community you want to post to is not at https://kglitch.social/magazines then this server doesn’t know about it yet. Add the community by putting [email protected] into the search, first.

      • Arotrios@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for the detail! I’m not familiar with Symphony, so looks like I’d have to dig in there a bit to figure it out. I’m an old PHP hand too (altho very rusty as I’m mostly on the backend now), and I’m 90% you can do it with a standard MySQL/PHP stack in theory.

        I love the fact that kglitch can post across instances as you’ve detailed - the power and potency of the software has the potential to become a Fediverse flagship. My goal is to expand the capability so that you could also choose which instances not to publish to and would be defederated from reading your content by limiting the results of the API feed available to the instance, based on domain name.

        The main reason that I wanted to explore this avenue is because personally, when I write certain pieces, I don’t want them appearing on Meta / Threads. I think that folks with toxic family who have Facebook accounts will sympathize, particularly those of the LGBTQ+ community.

        If outgoing defederation can be set per Thread, this gives the user greater confidence that their piece is only being promoted to the audience they intend.

      • Arotrios@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Thanks again, 'cause this is getting fun. Follow up to my previous reply - dug into Symfony a bit and found that while it likes to handle database calls as Symfony defined objects, it happily handles standard SQL. They also note:

        With SQL, you will get back raw data, not objects (unless you use the NativeQuery functionality).

        …which means that a simple WHERE statement filtering on a Thread field value could do the trick. Match that against the domain calling the API and you’ve got defed/blacklist capability by Thread.

        • kglitch@kglitch.socialOP
          2·
          1 year ago

          Yes, possibly. You’d better look into how ActivityPub works though because I think once the post goes to remote servers it could be shared from there and still end up in Meta’s hands. This is why some server admins have been talking about defederating from Threads and every other server that does not do the same.

          That seems pretty nuclear, to me. We’ll see how it plays out.

  • dipbeneaththelasers@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m on kbin.social but just subscribed to get federation going, if it wasn’t already. Good luck with the instance! How was it to setup and what’s your hardware?

    • kglitch@kglitch.socialOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks!

      It was really difficult to set up, and I have 20 years of programming and server admin experience. There is a comprehensive guide but if you deviate slightly from it (I used cloudflare for SSL instead of Lets Encrypt, pulled hair out for 2 days), you’re on your own.

      Using docker is probably much easier but last week when I went through this the docker guide didn’t exist and I prefer bare metal anyway.

      My hardware is a VPS from https://www.hetzner.com/. They run some ARM-based servers which are really good value. Check out this 128 core craziness.