I'm on the platform. I'm registered as the role. But what is the next step? The onboarding process is... lacking. I see the Silver thing, but it will be a cold day in hell before I let some AI scrape my private repos.
... I probably shouldn't, but I am.
(self-promotion)
While reading through the post before submitting I realized that the following is fluff/backstory/rambling, so I hid it under a spoiler tag for those who want to jump straight to the design and tech stuff.
>!I've been running a forum for the last 26 years or so. It used to be huge for its niche, then it got less huger for every year. Facebook took its cut, then twitter, and at some point I think the newer generations just didn't "get" the "slow" and non-gratifying form of a traditional forum software. I'm not saying the newgens are not using forums at all, but the gap between forums and tiktok is wiiide. !<
>!Reddit could be seen as a traditional forum, I guess, but I'd rather say it borrows its base structure heavily from them - while wrapping it with doom-scrolling social media features. The gap between traditional forums and Reddit is also wide IMO.!<
>!My idea, and my experiment, is that maybe I could create something that would lie somewhere in the middle. To keep the structure of the forum, but to make it much easier to use (by being inspired from modern social media), and hopefully more appealing to the tiktok gen, and at the same time not pissing off the forum oldskoolers more than I have to (in my experience, literally any change does 🙄). !<
>!I will dogfood this software on my own forum when it's "ready", whatever "ready" means.!<
>!I still painfully lack "marketing" material (not my forte) to show off its many features, but I can say that one novel consept I'm excited about is "first class citizen thread types". Like on reddit you can create different types of discussions (posts here), but depending on discussion type it can shape what features are available not just for OP but for the repliers. Example !<
The software can run in "single" or "multi" community mode. In single mode it behaves like a normal forum, as it in has a set of categories and forums. In multi mode it adds community as a layer on the very top, and the idea is that many communities could share user base but have different owners - it changes the instance from a site to a platform. Pointing your domain at the server would create your own isolated single community forum on your domain, but optionally your content could also be exposed on the platform. I still haven't figured out exactly where I want to go with this feature, tho.
... and I created it as open source in .NET 10, of course! Razor pages, SignalR, Blazor, OAuth login, OAuth provider, 2FA, aggressive caching - both in memory and browser/cdn based, docker, Aspire, rich wysiwyg markdown with inspirations from notion, MAUI (very early stages), and really just too many tech keywords to list at this point...
I've been developing this in the dark for months now - only gathering comments from a handful of people. There are TONS of bugs and unimplemented features. It is nowhere near being ready for production, I'm however finally at a stage where it doesn't scare the water out of me to show it off. I am not claiming it is a software everyone will like or would use, but I hope some would see the vision.
I have no idea if I'm on the right track. I'd very much appreciate some feedback. Any comments, love letters, hate mail?
Le còde. github.com/snakk-community-platform/snakk
Test deployment. Hurt my server, I guess... https://preview.snakk.community/ (jk please don't DoS me 🥺). Currently hosted in finland, so might be a bit sluggish for non-eus. Conversably I do have plans for how to fairly easily support multi region installations, but this post is already long enough for a lazy Saturday.
>Disclaimer: I have 20 years professional development experience (17 with .net), and a decade in architecture and lead roles. I've leveraged my experience and knowledge to instruct Claude Code to assist me in creating the software. This post was written wholly by me, hence the awkward language and dumb amazing jokes.