epilys/tade

tade is a discussion/forum/link aggregator application. It provides three interfaces: a regular web page, a mailing list bridge and an NNTP server

AGPL-3.0 python3 django3 sqlite3

[tade] ^† is a discussion/forum/link aggregator application. It provides three interfaces:

1. a regular web page,
2. a mailing list bridge and
3. an NNTP server.

^{†. pronounced tA-de, ta- as in tally and -de as in the. τάδε is a Greek pronoun meaning this}

Repository: https://github.com/epilys/tade/. See DEPLOY.md and CONFIG.md for running your instance.

Public instance at https://tade.link (formerly sic.pm) | Tor hidden service | IRC: #sic on Libera Chat | [sic] bot on Mastodon

In a nutshell

Web interface

• No Javascript necessary. An HTML5 compliant browser is enough; it even runs on w3m, the text web browser.
• Lightweight, requires only a python3 environment and stores its database in a sqlite3 file.
• Can be deployed with WSGI compatible servers (Apache/NGINX) or even django's development server if need be.

Mailing list interface

Optionally, the forum can be used as a mailing list for registered users only. Users receive only posts with tags they are subscribed to, or replies directed to them.

NNTP interface

Optionally, the forum can be used with the built-in NNTP VERSION 2 server. The server supports authentication for posting.

✒️ Forum features

• Posts can be text and/or URLs.
• Posts can optionally have any number of tags.
• Latest stories RSS and Atom feeds are provided.
• Post and comment text content support commonmark Markdown syntax.
• Posts and comments can optionally have karma. You can turn this off and have posts ranked by latest activity instead.
• Posts can be pinned to the top with a time limit or indefinitely.

🏷️ Tag and 🗂️ Aggregation system

• Tags can optionally have any number of parent tags (but cycles are not allowed)
• Tags can optionally be organised in Aggregations, which are collections of tags with a common theme. A user's frontpage can be either all stories or their subscribed aggregations' stories.
• Aggregations can optionally be private, public or discoverable by other users.
• Aggregations can be set as "default" by moderators. New users are subscribed to default aggregations.
• Users can create their own aggregations at any time.
• Tags, users and domains can be excluded from an Aggregation via exclude filters.
• Users can have their own global exclude filters.

🔍 Search system

• Comments and posts are automatically indexed in a separate sqlite database file using the fts5 (full text search) virtual table extension.
• Posts with URLs can optionally have their remote content fetched and indexed with a django management command (e.g. from within a cron job).

🎛️ Permission and moderation system

• Users can be inactive, active or banned.
• Moderators can set the number of days for which an account is considered new. New accounts cannot add tags or perform other potentially destructive actions.
• Public moderation log.

📨 Notification and email system

• Mentioning other users in comments notifies them.
• Users can choose when they receive each kind of notification via email
• Users can optionally enable a weekly digest email.

👥 Account system

• Users can either freely sign-up or have to be invited to.
• Users can optionally request for an invitation (this feature can be turned off).
• Users can save any story, comment to their bookmarks along with personal notes and export them at any time.
• Users can add personal metadata in their profile, including an avatar.
• Users can add "hats" to their account, which are decorations that can optionally be added to a comment. For example a moderator user wanting to comment as a moderator and not as a user would use a hat.
• Users have a personalised Atom or RSS feed that shows only their subscriptions.

🌐 Web standards

• Posted URLs are notified with webmention.
• Users can be retrieved with webfinger.

Setup / Deployment

You can use this repository as is by modifying the tade package to fit your needs, or install it with pip as a Django app.

Using it directly

cp tade/local/secret_settings.py{.template,}
vim tade/local/secret_settings.py # REQUIRED: add secret token
vim tade/local/settings_local.py # OPTIONAL: local settings (SMTP etc)
python3 -m venv venv # OPTIONAL: setup virtual python enviroment in 'venv' directory
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt # Or 'pip3' install...
python3 manage.py migrate #sets up database
python3 manage.py createsuperuser #selfexplanatory
python3 manage.py runserver # run at 127.0.0.1:8000
python3 manage.py runserver 8001 # or run at 127.0.0.1:8001
python3 manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 # or run at public-ip:8000

For customization options look at the TadeAppConfig class in tade/apps.py, style.css in tade/static and the templates in tade/templates.

Installing with pip

See DEPLOY.md.

Code style

See CODE_STYLE.md.