5.3 KiB
timeline - create you own social website
Created by sørenpeter (www.darch.dk)
So are you also tired and depress by having to use big tech's social medias to stay connected with friends and interesting people? And are you a creative human, who want back control over you art, music, words, code, instead of having to shuehorn your soul into the grid of blackbox algoritmes? Then it is you, who I've made timeline for.
🧶 What is timeline and twtxt/yarn?
timeline is a handfull of small files that you upload to a server and access it via a browser. It then gives you an interface for posting words, links (and images too, soon), as well as following other peoples feeds and enganging in conversations by posting replies.
For the social features timeline are using the twtxt format and most of the yarn.social extentions.
timeline also support its own flavour of webmentions, so it is posible to be notified about @mentions from feeds you are not currenly/yet following.
You can also search for others feeds using webfinger, if they got that set up, like it's the case for most yarn.social pods.
My visions for timeline is to bring back the fun and quirckness of Geocities (1990s) Myspace (2000s) of creating a personlised place for you to express yourself online and also being able to follow others who inspire(s?) you. At the same time provide a good looking basic design with the help of simple.css, which allows you to customise the look and feel. Even to the level where timeline align with the design of excsing webpage, like I did on: darch.dk/timeline.
🪐 Features
// Screenshot and captions
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Social reader, Profile and Gallery view (TODO: Screenshots)
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Basic timeline A timeline view similar to how your twitter or facebook feed would look like with text, hash-tags and images.
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Profile
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Gallery And a gallery view similar to instagram, where alle your posted images are presented in a grid design.
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twtxt/yarn client and server
- Same post on twtxt.net, darch.dk/timeline, raw and jenny or tt
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Cusosmines the look and feel.
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Webmentions
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Webfinder
🚨 DISCLAIMER / WARNING
I'm not a professional programmer, so this software might lead to data lose or making your website unsecure in unforeseen ways.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
🛠 Installation and setup
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You need to have a webhosting with PHP 8 and perferable running Apache or similar for timeline to work.
There are free options, but I would suggest that you pay for your hosting and also get a nice domain, so you have more ownership over your data and online idetenty.
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Download the code from https://github.com/sorenpeter/timeline as a zip
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Upload the content of the zip to you webhosting using a FTP client
- The default would be to put eveything from within the timeline-main folder in the root so you will have:
www.example.net/timeline/ (go here to see your timeline) www.example.net/timeline/gallery/ (go here to see your gallery) www.example.net/timeline/post/ (go here to post to your feed) www.example.net/twtxt.txt (where you feed lives and other can follow you) www.example.net/avatar.png (your pretty picture) www.example.net/README.md (can be deleted)- or you can rename the folder
timelineto something else
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Go to the
privatefolder and make a copy ofconfig_template.iniand save it asconfig.ini -
Open
config.iniand edit the setting to you liking and setup -
Open up
www.example.net/timeline/in your browser and check for any errors
🎨 Customization
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Upload your own
avatar.png(can also be a .jpg or .gif)- Edit your
twtxt.txtandconfig.iniwith the correct path
- Edit your
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Open up
custom.cssand try out the provided themes by uncommenting the code -
Change the colors and other elements in
custom.cssto you liking
TODO
🐞 Bugs
- Fix issues with parsing markdown vs. twtxt syntax
- replace slimdown with our own basic parser, supporting lists, block quotes, code/blocks, links, images
🚀 Features
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UI for uploading images
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UI buttoms for markdown when making post
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Backend: Thumbnail cache support, to avoid loading all images in full resolution when viewing a gallery
🙏 Credits / shoutouts
Ideas and inspiration
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twtxt - The original decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers
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yarn.social - The multi-user pods allowed everyone to use twtxt as a social media without selfhosting
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groovy-twtxt - A curated list of groovy twtxt-related projects