This project has been discontinued

usocial (2018 - 2022)

Most open source projects are simply forgotten and die a slow and lonely death.

usocial was different. Same same, but different.

It started as a personal RSS feed reader, evolved into a Podcasting 2.0 client, got released on Umbrel OS...

You could run usocial on your own Umbrel personal server, follow your favourite blogs, subscribe to your favourite podcasts...

usocial would connect to your own Lightning node and, while listening to a podcast episode, you could send sats directly to the podcaster. The payment would even automatically be split, according to the podcaster's desire, and go to different recipients.

It had a terrible UI, but it worked beautifully. It was my way of keeping up to date with podcasts and blogs and tipping creators.

Then, something happened.

usocial didn't die, it just evolved into something else: Servus (2022-).

I realized that more important than following blogs and podcasts is publishing your own content. Only after there is a solid way for anyone to self-host their web site and publish content will there be a need for a self-hosted way to subscribe to content.

I used to be a fan of Jekyll, but I realized that it is not for the mere mortals to use. I hated WP, which I had used since 2005 or so. WP was more user-friendly than Jekyll and other SSGes, but it just did not click with me.

I had written a few CMSes before (2008-2012), mostly trying to host my photoblog in a pre-Flickr era and to build a sort-of online travel log. See nuages, tzadik, feather and travelist.

Then it all clicked. The missing piece was a CMS. I could take a lot of ideas from Jekyll, while trying to keep the usability of WP.

That is how Servus was born and that was the end of usocial.

It didn't die, it just evolved.

Setting up the development environment

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://github.com/ibz/usocial.git && cd usocial

2. Set up a venv

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install --upgrade pip
   pip install -e .
   

3. Create an "instance" directory which will store your database and config file.

   mkdir instance

4. Generate a secret key (this is required by Flask for CSRF protection)

   echo "SECRET_KEY = '"`python3 -c 'import os;print(os.urandom(12).hex())'`"'" > instance/config.py

5. Export the environment variables (FLASK_APP is required, FLASK_ENV makes Flask automatically restart when you edit a file)

   export FLASK_APP=usocial.main FLASK_ENV=development

6. Create the database (this will also create the default user, "me", without a password)

   flask create-db

7. Run the app locally

   flask run