Still on holiday and taking a break from social media in general, but sharing this here as it's relevanito the kinds of conversations that (I believe) @BonfireBuilders are trying to create... dougbelshaw.com/blog/2022/08...

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There are a lot of teething issues with Penpot at the moment and I found it slower to work in than Figma. I've been keeping an eye on the project and I provide feedback to the team, and I hope it continues to improve. But right now, I wouldn't recommend it for use in production unless you're willing to make some time to log the bugs and problems you encounter along the way.

I imagine that lots of Fediverse projects require some technical knowledge to set up. Even something relatively straightforward like "Go to Mastohost's website and pay for a hosting plan" might seem easy to someone with experience, but overwhelming for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

It would be brilliant to work on removing that technical skills barrier in the open and create a new source of revenue for the projects. That's a great idea 🙌 if there's anything more I can help with, I'd love to be involved.

There might be concerns around having only 1 private company hosting the majority of instances for a platform, e.g. what happens if the platform gets very popular and an investor buys the biggest hosting company of that platform? It would be worth thinking about how we tackle that as well.

In terms of moving the design system to Penpot, I should let you know that you can share a prototype publicy like I did, but you can't share the actual design file publicy. You can only invite others to join via email - there's no option to share a view-only link or anything like that, which you have in Figma. So I think it would be harder for other designers to access Bonfire's design work if you move it into Penpot at this time.

Hey @ivan I've been thinking a lot about how we could make federated social networks more accessible for people who:Don't want to learn how to set up hosting or use the terminal.Have a limited knowledge of instances, federation, and all the technical workings of the Fediverse.Want an online space for their community which isn't Facebook.I know you mentioned it's something your team's been considering a lot as well.I wanted to wireframe a Bonfire setup process which doesn't require any technical knowledge. No finding a hosting provider, and no using a terminal. I also wanted to experiment with concepts which users would be familiar with from other digital products, like "trial" and "upgrade," by offering hosting as a service which can be bought and managed within Bonfire.My idea is that users can set up a test instance on a Bonfire-hosted server as a "free trial," with a limit on the resources which this instance can use. Once they have tried out Bonfire's features and customised their instance to suit their needs, they can then pay for a hosting plan with a partner company. Their instance's data is then transferred from the Bonfire-hosted server to the partner company's server, and any appropriate DNS records are set up automatically (either for the subdomain.bonfire.cafe address, or for their own custom domain).Here's my prototype:design.penpot.app/#/view/27a...What do you think of the idea?

As someone who’s new to the city I live in, I wish there was a solid alternative to Facebook Groups. There are a lot of local groups which you need a Facebook account to access if you want to see their events. I’ve been considering starting my own online litterpicking group for my local area. I’d like to post pictures and updates and organise litterpicking events in my local area, but I’ve struggled to find a decent alternative to Facebook groups. “Podia” seemed about the closest thing, but it’s paid if you want a custom domain, and it’s not really aimed at local community groups. I haven’t seen anything on the Fediverse which looks approachable for casual users who are used to Facebook. It looks like “groups” as a whole is a work-in-progress on several Fediverse platforms. I’d be really interested to see if Bonfire can fill that gap in time.

If you’d like a hand with planning, carrying out, or analysing user research or usability testing, I’d be interested to find out more 😊

I really enjoyed reading the Bonfire team’s research on misinformation. It’s great to see a Fediverse platform investing in user research! Are you planning on doing any more research as you go? I’d be really interested to find out what community leaders who currently use Facebook groups, Discord, or another centralised platform think of the Bonfire instance creation process. It would be really exciting if making a Bonfire instance was as easy as setting up a Discord server or a Facebook group. I think it could make the platform more inclusive towards less digitally literate people.

If I tap on the ”…” in the bottom-right hand corner of the post, nothing happens.

Some minor feedback. Testing on Firefox on an iPhone 11: the website field has autocorrect turned on. I typed in “www.” and it got autocorrected to “was.”the first letter of bullet points doesn’t get capitalised automatically. the post composer crashed 3 times when trying to write this post.

A few other text fields seem to have the same issue. Tapping any field with a font size of less than 16px on iOS causes the page to zoom in.

Otherwise, the UI is looking gorgeous. At first I thought “what’s this all about? We already have Mastodon.” But now I see you’re trying to build a set of tools which can be mixed and matched to suit individual communities, and suddenly I’m very excited about that. I’d definitely love to see how this progresses! I can see this being great for small communities if it’s easy to set up, can be easily tailored to suit the community’s needs, and is a really user-friendly experience. Awesome stuff, it’s looking very promising! Gorgeous design, I love the whole Bonfire branding.

I’d prefer to have the tab bar on the bottom on mobile. It took me a while to find the three-dot menu because it’s not in the top-right hand corner of the screen; instead, it’s underneath the tab bar. Moving the tab bar to the bottom would make it easier to reach with my thumb, would be consistent with how native iOS apps work, and would place the three-dot menu in the top-right hand corner of the screen, which is a pattern I’m very used to.

on iOS, because the font size of the “write a post” text area is less than 16px, when I tap on the field my browser zooms in. I have to zoom out or pan around to find the “Close” button