[sic] link aggregator organised by tags AGPL-3.0 python3 django3 sqlite3

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

In a nutshell

• 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.

✒️ 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 only be upvoted. Support for flagging (downvoting) will be added soon.
• 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.

🔍 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

cp sic/local/secret_settings.py{.template,}
vim sic/local/secret_settings.py # REQUIRED: add secret token
vim sic/local/settings_local.py # OPTIONAL: local settings (SMTP etc)
python3 -m 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 macos you will need to provide paths for headers and libraries like so:

$ python3 -m pip install pygraphviz
$ python3 -m pip install \
    --global-option=build_ext \
    --global-option="-I$(brew --prefix graphviz)/include/" \
    --global-option="-L$(brew --prefix graphviz)/lib/" \
    -r requirements.txt

See DEPLOY.md for deployment instructions.

Code style

See CODE_STYLE.md.