On Sat Dec 5, 2020 at 6:02 AM PST, Martin Roberts wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> I've been working on my flounder page
> <http://dokoissho.flounder.online> quite a bit recently - I think
> what's unique about it is that it works transparently between gemini
> and the web. I have links to multiple versions of the same content,
> depending on the user's preferred platform. Managing content between
> gemini and the web is of course a tricky issue, and I don't currently
> know of any platform that handles this as elegantly as flounder.
Glad you like it! I've been trying to move slowly with new features and
make sure that I strike a good balance between web & gemini
> I have a couple of questions, the first about managing flounder
> accounts.
>
> I've been experimenting with using different names for the domain name
> for different use cases (blog, microblog, features, professional page,
> etc.). This requires setting up a new account in each case, tied to a
> different email address. I currently have 4 active accounts (in
> addition to dokoissho, mroberts, axolotl, pinkowl), and have been
> thinking of setting up a few more (e.g. satellite.flounder.online) and
> maybe moving my content to a new account/domain name - in effect, just
> changing the name of my flounder.
>
> Obviously it's not great for the site to have a lot of unused old
> accounts on it, so I was wondering if it's possible to delete accounts
> as well as create them. It would be useful to be able to prune
> accounts that are unused and/or no longer needed, or renaming existing
> ones. I guess it's complicated to add these functionalities, but for
> the moment might be helpful at least to be able to delete accounts,
> which would also help with getting rid of clutter from the site. If
> deleting accounts is already possible and I somehow missed it, could
> you let me know how to do it?
The features you're looking for would be very simple to add -- I have a
"delete account" feature already, but it's only accessible from an
internal admin panel only I have access to. I want to add an ability to
rename an account as well. I made these only admin-accessible because
the site is small -- I figured people could just email me if they need a
change. But I added a todo item to implement this feature:
https://todo.sr.ht/~alexwennerberg/flounder/66
In the meantime, just let me know about any accounts you need
deleted/renamed.
Another feature that I've been considering is allowing shared
permissions / user impersonation -- you can track the feature here:
https://todo.sr.ht/~alexwennerberg/flounder/26
This way, you wouldn't have to log in / out of each account. I'm
definitely open to feature adds -- they don't take me too long usually
since the flounder codebase is very simple, and user feedback helps me
prioritize work, so feel free to let me know what would be important to
you.
> Second, I like the name flounder itself, which at first suggested to
> me to create accounts with other flatfish names - turbot, doversole,
> dab, etc. The metaphor of bottom-feeding is interesting (in relation
> to the whales and sharks of the web) so I was wondering whether that's
> what you had in mind, or how you came up with the name itself.
I had another fish-named service that was an activitypub server:
https://github.com/alexwennerberg/gourami so I just continued the theme
Mostly I thought it was funny that flounder.online can be read as
"struggle helplessly online", and also as a parody of the silicon valley
jargon "founder".
Also -- I have a mailing list (no one is really using it though) if you
want to use it for feature discussion. I CC'd it in this email to
continue this discussion (let me know if there's anything sensitive here
you don't want public and I can delete it). You'll have to do a small
amount of config in gmail to send plaintext emails to it:
https://useplaintext.email/#gmail-web
All the best,
Alex
Hi Martin & Mailing list --
I implemented many of the features we discussed here. You can now delete
and rename your account. To manage multiple accounts, you still have to
log out and log back in again, but I have put together some groundwork
for more easily switching between accounts.
Let me know if you have any questions or encounter any bugs
All the best,
Alex