The link-aggregator part of the fediverse has grown, with the launch of PieFed’s beta test. PieFed joins platforms like Lemmy and Kbin who all have the ability to share links, and comment and vote on them. PieFed focuses on making the platform easy to manage, maintain and develop for, and uses Python. Developer Rimu is […]
  • edric@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Nice! I hope it gets popular enough to get the same multitude of desktop front-ends and mobile apps Lemmy now has.

    • flamingos-cant@ukfli.ukEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Maybe they can implement Lemmy’s API, like what Misskey et al. does with Mastodon’s API, so it can use the same apps.

  • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Official site is here: https://join.piefed.social/

    Beta test is happening here: https://piefed.social/

    It looks quite neat. I like the emphasis on making things easy for admins and using more tried and true technology compared to Lemmy’s bleeding-edge (that sometimes causes issues). Here’s hoping it’ll be a great alternative to Lemmy.

  • swab148@startrek.websiteEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Looks like it’s too late to sign up, I just tried and it kept telling me to “verify that [I’m] not a robot” without giving me anything (like a captcha) to do so.

    • Rimu@piefed.social
      1·
      11 months ago

      PieFed dev here.

      Sorry about that, I’ve had a hard time getting the captcha working while also having decent XSS protection. I’ve deployed a probable fix, please try again.

    • Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run
      0·
      11 months ago

      I signed up, no problem. There is a bit of funky behavior (I clicked on the Pie logo, and it changed to the word, “Logo” haha), but overall it looks sharp. I"m trying to figure out where to make suggestions - I’m a dark screen person, and it’s got way too much white and blue - colors that suppress melatonin production. I’m mighty fond o’ me melatonin.

        • Nix@merv.newsEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Awesome!

          P.S. Is it just me or does join.piefed.social have no link to actually join or go to piefed.social? Also what software does the blog use i can’t find it listed

          • Rimu@piefed.social
            1·
            11 months ago

            There are links to piefed.socal but I guess a nice big button front and center on the home page is what it needs.

            The blog is Wordpress with the Activitypub plugin. It can be followed on Mastodon/kbin: @piefedadmin@join.piefed.social

        • Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run
          1·
          10 months ago

          Yay, and thank YOU!!
          Edit: I went over and looked. So the point of dark mode is to make things easy on the eyes, and to reduce interference with melatonin production. Melatonin production is blocked by blue and white (because it contains blue) light. The best option for dark mode is black background and orange type, as it provides good contrast with minimal interference with melatonin production.

          The classic example is the White / Blue of Facebook - designed, no doubt to keep users awake, and clicking. I noticed sometime ago, that screen invert in iOS yields, White --> Black, and Blue --> Orange. Technically speaking any light will reduce melatonin production to some degree, some researchers would say, even being able to see your hand in front of your face, like at all, will do it. And the biggest effect is from Blue and White light. :-)

          • Rimu@piefed.social
            1·
            11 months ago

            No blue, got it.

            Currently, dark mode is just whatever Bootstrap considers ideal dark mode to be so there’s a lot of room for improvement. PieFed includes a theming framework which will make it quick and easy to build custom themes so I expect many more design options will be available in the future.

  • fenndev@leminal.spaceEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Always happy to see a new Fediverse service!

    My only concern is Python. Wonderful for AI and scripting, but I’m not sure how well it works as a web server. Although, I’d assume that a lot of the web server code is actually C under the hood…

    • Rimu@piefed.social
      3·
      11 months ago

      PieFed dev here.

      It’ll be interesting to see how Python performs.

      There’s some fun stuff you can do with compiling Python into C. e.g. https://cython.org/ or https://docs.exaloop.io/codon/. But I don’t see a need for it as PieFed doesn’t really crunch numbers much. Mastodon has a Ruby backend. Kbin uses PHP. Until you get really massive the choice of language doesn’t really make a huge difference to performance as most of the work in most web apps is done by the database.

      I am a little bit concerned about the limited support for asynchronous I/O in the Flask framework, which could limit scalability at some point. But there are options for the future. Quart claims to be a drop-in replacement for Flask.

      In any case, performance is just one factor. For a FOSS project to be successful long term it needs contributions from other developers and with the massive pool of Python developers there are, hopefully I’ll be getting some help soon. Also along those lines I have deliberately chosen:

      • to code as simply and stupidly as possible, to make it accessible to most skill levels.
      • No complicated frameworks, fancy algorithms, or esoteric design patterns. Model View Controller, baby.
      • No frontend build process or tool chain (vanilla JS only. No npm).
      • Few third party dependencies, only Redis and Postgresql. Mostly.

      All this makes setting up an initial development environment, finding the bit you want to change and testing it out fairly quick and easy.

      I hope it’s these choices that lead to an absolute blizzard of contributions from many people and that’s where the true strength of the project will come from.