I have always been on the hunt for some website tech for groups like @
Paranoia RPG Community which can bring multiple services together AND which is open source, free and reliable. This is as close as it gets right now.
So why Hubzilla? When there's a zillion other things you could use? They all fail for various reasons, read on or skip to the bottom to get started with hubzilla.
Features
Two words - Nomadic Identity
This means you can pack up your data and move to a new server. Your server might be slow, or shutting down, or various other reasons. Your contact ID will change, but thanks to hubzilla being built with portability in mind, you don't need to tell anyone to update their address books, all of your connected friends still stay connected to you thanks to nifty code magic. EVERY SINGLE OTHER NETWORK fails at this concept as far as I know (as of 2019 at least).
Hubzilla brings everything together.
Hubzilla has pages, wiki, customisation per channel, import RSS feed content, store files and images, keep dedicated articles separate from posts, chat rooms, bookmark lists, calendar and events, custom styled web pages, direct messages, visitor stats, automatic reputation system. And a lot more...
Do you like Markdown, or BBcode or HTML or just plain Text? You choose what to edit your posts as. But use Markdown, it is the future, BBcode is not the future.
If your server goes down (unlikely) you can still visit other servers to read their posts. You can even set up a clone of your own personal channel on a different server if you want resilience to downtime.
Do you want to
connect to your cloud profile files and photos as a folder on your computer? You can using WEBDAV
Doesn't money need to be in the chain somewhere to make things work?
Nope. Hubzilla still allows donation widgets or paid premium channels if you want to set one up. But generally this whole ecosystem is self-sustaining. You can run a server, got PHP and a MySQL database? done - but really, just support someone else instead and focus on absorbing and creating content. Hubzilla started back in 2011 or something, no monetisation needed.
Why not XYZ service?
Why not both? Hubzilla is NOT competing with anything. You will still need Facebook if your family/friends demand it.
Why not Facebook? I think you know why. They own you, you see Ads, your family exists there, you see things they want you to see, you see things you don't want to see, etc. If you're lucky it isn't always terrible, otherwise it's a huge waste of your time.
MeWe : It's pretty, but it sucks. It doesn't improve, it has problems, despite their desperate promises I feel it is destined to become evil.
groups.io : It is good, but run by one guy, closed source & looks ancient.
Mastadon, diaspora, friendica,GNU social etc : they are just one service where hubzilla is many services and brings in data from and lets you communicate to those services - the others don't do so well.
What about Minds, SteemIt and other blockchain based web3.0 buzzwords? They quickly become overrun with bots trying to exploit the system to gain crypto currency rewards. Some don't have a presence on the internet like a regular website, useless. If you can't see what you are getting into up-front, they've probably got nothing good to offer.
So get started with Hubzilla now
Find a good server (
https://hub.libranet.de is a good choice). Register. Confirm email. Connect with
some channels - starting with
Paranoia RPG.
Help guide.
