- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/45160218
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/45160073
I’ve been working on Habitat for the past two years. It all stemmed from this idea that I posted in April 2024.
Habitat is a free open-source, self hosted social platform for local communities. It is aimed at fostering local community discussions and discovery of areas of interest. This is why it is built primarily around location. A Habitat instance centers on a specific area, and the local community can make generic posts about that area, or they can make posts about specific locations in that area. More about what I’ve been building and the future plans here.
Features
- Habitat specification of location and size - enabling posts related to the local area
- Home feed - Displays the most recent posts
- Nearby feed - Displays posts sorted by proximity to the user
- Create posts - Upload photos, set locations, comments
- Categories - Location rules
- Amazon S3 image storage option
- Personalisation - Overrides Habitat defaults per user: kms/miles, hidden categories
- Moderation tools - User, post, comment moderation, block email addresses
- Announcements - Scheduled announcements
- Public moderation log - Keep moderator actions visible for 30 days
If you’re interest in this at all, please give it a spin and let me know how you get on. I’ll keep an eye here on Lemmy, but you can also post to the Habitat discussion board on GitHub.
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I remember that post!! Really cool to see that you ran with it, I’d love for this to catch on
Nice! An actual replacement to Nextdoor.
This is very cool. But I’m thumb fingered idiot.
How can I check and see if anyone in my area had started an instance I can join?
Unless you live in my home town, it’s highly unlikely that there are any other instances yet. From a practical point of view, until I build in federation, it’s a matter of literal word of mouth between people of a community. Once it’s federated, the nearby tab will show you your closest instance.
Oh wow this would be huge. The local sub is the main thing that keeps me coming back to Reddit.
However, it probably will take some local organizing to get it to fire in each area. Getting a critical mass for these is tough by just having randomly distributed global internet users join. Even with thousands of users, the California community on Lemmy is way less active than the sub for my city on Reddit.
Is there a sample instance so we can see it in action?
This is my local instance: https://www.irthlingborough.net/
So I notice one bit of missing information: where is that place?
Besides curiosity, there’s also the practical question of whether it’s the right one to sign up for:
Say I encounter one named “Springfield” - how would I know which of the 93 (in the US alone) it is?I propose having a map on the About page showing the area covered, with the ability to zoom out and see which state/province/etc, which country, and which continent.
Thanks for this. I hadn’t considered it but it seems like a really obvious thing now you’ve said it … testament to a good idea I think! I’ll add it.
This would be great - if there was a Discord/Meetup-style instance so that it could be started for free and communicate with other local communities. As is, I can’t justify the cost, or the time. Plus, I’m in a densely packed area, and each group would want their own space. So as of now, this can’t be a Meetup killer.
Cool!
Where can I get more info on this, like how to join?
It’s distributed – you’ll need to create an instance for your own area. To do so, take a look at the getting started section: https://github.com/carlnewton/habitat?tab=readme-ov-file#getting-started
More information of what it is and how it’s planned to be in the future is in my previous blog posts:
Thanks mate. I’ll look at that tomorrow.
