libsoc.net

[Freeman Stephen]

A shameless plug for a new social network (facebookalike) which hopes to attract as many people as possible from those who would prefer to live in a more liberated society where the so called nanny state was a distant bad memory of the past.

The link for the new social network is https://libsoc.net/

[ThePastel]

Nice website. Does it use https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/?

[Freeman Stephen]

Ut does temporarily. Most work on the site was as me being a hosting provider (to myself), setting up the mail system, OS, web server etc which is usually done by the host and a cPanel. I can now churn out as many servers as I need and I didn't have a scalable database driven community app in my own portfolio so I picked that especially since it can practically facebook-alike out the box and there was a need to be filled when the censorship kicked in.

I'm more of a software developer than a server scripter though so I've been hard at work upgrading the app I built and host at https://auranos.org so it is not longer a flat system but a database driven one. Version 3 of that app is visible on the front page of at https://auranos.org and version 2 can be found in the https://auranos.org/sub/ subdirectory. You'll need to sign up twice but I think one of the versions should still have active support for a facebook signup.

I've been working on version 4 which is database driven in the sense that the user details are stored on an MySql database rather than a .htaccess locked directory. Version 4 is "fully functional" in the sense that it does everything a web application needs to do except there's no functionality besides user logins, profiles, themes etc that would make anyone want to sign up and use a web site that deployed the app. It could be used to create static web pages without comments or chat but why would anyone want to log in to that?

Version 2 has a chat facility and version 3.5 has an audiochat facility. Version 4 will have a chat facility but will use audio capabilities in a new innovative way I'm keeping under my hat until I deploy it. When its deployed, all the user accounts on libsoc.net will be zapped and people will have to sign up again into a brand new web application with a community feature that has never been seen before on any website ever. (as far as I'm aware) Im not saying too much about it but members will get a warning soon about their accounts going down along with the server which should be back online in ten minutes (thanks to the server script I wrote earlier).

Thanks for mentioning the name of the site.

[Freeman Stephen]

I'm more of a software developer than a hosting engineer.

The OSSN app which is the application on the front page of the site was a quick and dirty solution from a third party developer and its the nearest to a facebook-alike you can get. There's even a theme that makes the whole app just look and feel like the old facebook, even the old sign up page with the map of the world with connected yellow avatar icons on it. This was my third party software of choice once the effects of facebook censorship made it appealling to provide a facebook-alike alternative but I think that whole market has gone to gab, minds. telegram and parler, with the latter two suffering from the same privacy issues as twitter and facebook.

My focus at the time was to set up a scaleable web hosting solution and the only software I had that I had written was not really scalable so I chose OSSN as the software solution while sheering the cliff face of setting up DKIM enabled virtual mail delivery servers and the various other aspects of setting up LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) servers on the cloud in a way that you can just pump out a new server to meet over demand on the servers you are currently running, then using a load balancer to directed traffic to the server that is least under pressure.

This kind of setup - a scaleable setup - cannot be done with software that uses flat filing systems for everything including the user logins because if you are logged into one server and the load balancer directs you to another server then you need to log in to that server too. I did not have the software in my own portfolio to provide a scalable solution... but now I do!

So the main libsoc.net site is still churning out OSSN as the web application but hidden just outside the field of view is what I hope will be the replacement web application "very soon". Could be a week, could be three months, could be who knows??? This application is a bit barebones at present but it has a new innovative feature I'm not so much trying to showcase but beta test.

The new application can be found at the subdirector https://libsoc.net/af/. You will need to sign up to the application at that URL specifically as the OSSN logins are a completely different database that will likely be dumped when this application under development goes live as the main site.

Basically I need people to "fart about a bit" with the "af" application (which stands for "audio forum" but it also stands for "cool AF" as well (even if I do say so myself :). I'm trying to find bugs (and by bugs I don't mean XSS attacks performed through the careful use of rainbow tables and a blow torch to take the padlock off the door of the place where the physical server resides but bugs ...) like ....

If you are on portrait on some low res mobile phones the width of the media players extends outside the article box meaning there's a horizontal scroll just to see the other side of the media player. This is a layout bug but since the media player is just a temporary browser provided object that will not fulfil the final requirements for the audio forum, I'm not going to fix this bug since they are just being used temporarily and wont be there in the final release.

Other bugs might include things like the web page blocking forever (it should be fast and appear without delay). Maybe you logged in and it didn't log in or you signed up as a girl and your profile doesn't reflect you gave a gender. I honestly don't know what bugs there are, that's why I'm beta testing it. These examples are bugs I fixed during alpha testing.

The application is a bit bare in that outside of the overhead of logins and layouts, profiles and the various used administration functions, there are pretty much no features "whatsoever" (as the independent fact checkers say lol) that anyone would want to sign up for ... except the audio forum. At present there is one forum and that's the front page (in the af subfolder) and its not exactly easy to go through the messages using those media players one at a time. This will be changing in over the next week or so as a new homebuilt autoplaying "one media player for all posts" media player is introduced to a multi forum application that will also allow for the uploading of text, pictures and eventually video messages by the time the application moves from 4.2 (present) to 4.9 (the last 4.x version before I start adding features like live audio chat in what will be version 5.x.

TL;DR?
1. Go to https://libsoc.net/af/, sign up, and leave me a funny message on a public answering machine.
2. I don't need your email address or anything. Just a username and password.
3. Check the page in a day or so and hear my funny reply to your funny message.
4. Report and bugs you experience.

[ThePastel]

I couldn't find the audio/video thing. Isn't there an "echo" test??

Do you plan to make a containerized version of the service? It seems quite a lot of work to setup the same stuff!

[Freeman Stephen]

The thing works. I'm now adding multi forum capabilities to it. The next version 4.3 will be the new front page of the site soon.

The overall service I will be selling will be audioforum +server + domain name which will enable service users paying a yearly subscription to roll out their own websites they can charge user subscriptions on, initially through paypal but extending to scroogle, etc depending on how lucrative $$$ it is for me to bother developing it. I'm into promoting greater liberties in society so most of the site will be dedicated to that serving as a use case for the SAAS I will sell on a subpage to anyone who may or may not be interested in liberalism who might want to run a forum on football, gaming, my little pony or whatever (wtf is it with ponies?)

The server crestion is done through a bash script I've written which I can replicate pop up instances of through aws. Its beyond scope to create containers for vmware and such like as I wont be selling the software separate from the server provision. A special software licence can be purchased which will give copyright uo the licensee to 'fork' the software as if it were gpl exclusively for their use but this will be more expendive than buying a years worth of SAAS. People who buy a developers licence might want a containerised version and I'll be happy to tailor it to whatever they need like docker, vbox, win, vware etc. As I'm saying though, I dont expect many will buy the dev licence.

[Freeman Stephen]

ps the /af subdirectory has been removed

[Freeman Stephen]

11049 views on this stupid post?????

[Freeman Stephen]

Its jumped over 200 views on just this post in 12 hours. No other post is experiencing the same attention. I believe this is being done by a creepy stalker who works for a government agency who is personally indicted on CAH dating back to at least 1995 using a wall of silence to avoid basic conversation about what he's been up to. It's at the point I've laid it bare what the crimes are and prompt him to make a statement in their own defence but rather than making a statement at the last place he has to lawfully engage with me in any way, he is trying to get into my life anonymously and has been deleted from the website several times. My assumption is the anomalous views of this post has to do with creepy stalking like behaviour of a well presented conscience free bastard! Hello "Brendan", you're beloved surveillance regime is a double edged sword, except the people you fucked over built the handle. Where does that leave you? Again you are directed to the same place to respond in substance to the statement there. CEASE AND DESIST!