IPFS Boards

The easy to use Social Platform that runs in modern web browsers but requires no servers and no external applications to work.

This Application aims to allow users to:

• Share Data with the world, in a distributed and permanent way, whether it is documents, media, posts or files and folders
• Discover other user's content by visiting a link to their profiles, and then seeding the content they like the most
• Connect with other people, building communities and merging boards.

All of these in a fully distributed way: servers help by seeding content, but they are not necessary for the application to work.

The App is being developed to be versatile: it will run in web browsers, and it will bundle a viewer that will understand and display any file or folder already hosted via IPFS, with a nice user interface and optionally social features on top.

This is how the Board view looks in the current prototype. You can see that markdown syntax is supported in all text bodies, and the administrator name fazo96 and also the other allowed posters, in this case only one. Posts are shown in chronological order, but other sorting methods are planned.

This is the Post view with reddit style comments.

State of development

Even though the application kind of works, the project needs quite a rewrite. Development has been paused for months because I didn't have time, meanwhile I've grown a bit as a programmer and quickly realized I made many bad mistakes when writing this. Also, ipfs now supposedly works in the browser so I'd probably rewrite the lib around it and drop support for the http gateway, while using Redux or something like that to handle the state and lifecycle, then separating react components containing logic from the stateless rendering ones.

Anyway, this project already accomplished many things, like having a kind of working prototype and being a great proof of concept. I hope to resume development soon and update it, but pull requests are still very welcome, as I'd probably review them with pleasure.

Why this project?

Discussion boards, forums and other social platforms have many problems:

• Centralized

  • What if it gets shut down?
  • What if the servers are down?

• Fragile

  • What if there's a DoS attack?
  • What if there is a usage explosion and the servers can't handle it?
  • What if the datacenter is flooded and data is lost?

• Limited

  • What if you want new functionality or restore old features?
  • What if you want to build custom clients or extensions to the service?
  • What if you want to use it in a Local Network with no Internet access and no servers?
  • What if you want to do more than what the service was designed for, or truly be in control of your data?

This project was conceived to solve that. With the help of:

• the IPFS and IPNS protocols for efficient distributed data storage
• IPLD and POST protocols for a common, universal data structure
• Modern browsers and web technologies for a portable, accessible user interface

We can solve these problems and create a truly universal social platform which can act as:

• Discussion board, like reddit or 4chan
• Blog with dynamic comments
• Wiki
• File Sharing platform, like dropbox.
• Forum
• (Maybe) E-Learning platform

With security, control, reliability, rock solid stability, fully distributed architecture or, optionally, none of these!

Get Started

The App is not ready yet, but you're welcome to take a look at the prototype, even though it has limited functionality and is cumbersome to set up at the moment.

Also keep in mind that due to issues with the current implementation of IPNS in go-ipfs, real world usage of the prototype is very limited. This will all be sorted out as soon as go-ipfs' next version, 0.4, is out.

Check it out here: http://ipfs.ydns.eu

Tip: http://ipfs.ydns.eu is also a full IPFS gateway for IPFS 0.4. You can also use it to access the 0.3.x network by visiting http://ipfs-0.3.ydns.eu

If you want to really use the prototype, you can take a look at CONTRIBUTING.md to set up a developer environment and try it out.

Note about current status: almost every feature is not optimized, not efficient, but almost all solutions to current problems are already well defined, frozen, and being developed, expecially regarding IPFS.

Note about short term future: after go-ipfs 0.4 comes out, a public demo will be available and you'll just have to open a link to try the app!

Note about long term future: a javascript implementation of IPFS is in progress. As soon as it's done, you will not need go-ipfs anymore and this application will truly run in the browser without external dependencies.

FAQ

See FAQ.md

If you have any questions not already answered, please open an issue and consider contributing to the documentation and FAQs.

How does it work?

See PROTOCOL.md

How do I set up a development environment and contribute?

See CONTRIBUTING.md

Components

• Client
  • a static web application to access IPFS Boards
  • work in progress, some features are already done, see above
  • maybe a desktop version (which would be the wrapped web application, using Electron)
  • will be able to do everything in any modern browser
• Cache Server and/or Backend
  • Not started yet: no code has been written yet!
  • Completely Optional: you don't need this to be able to use the App
  • automagically caches content 24/7 so that it's always available
  • fully configurable, for example only cache content from users you want to support.
  • can serve data via HTTP API
  • can render the client application so that search engines can index content
  • can provide content over an HTTP API or web sockets so that devices can save bandwidth
• go-ipfs
  • needed to use the app until js-ipfs is ready!

Note: until the IPFS Javascript Implementation is done:

• the client (a static web application) requires a full IPFS node because it needs to be able to discover content via the IPFS API.
• the cache server (written in node) requires go-ipfs.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Enrico Fasoli (fazo96)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.