Hello everyone,
I've been working on a project for a little while now and after numerous rewrites and countless delays, I've decided to make this a community project.
My Project's Name: Torn
Objective: To provide a high-availability email blog system for users around the globe.
Target Audience: People who want a blog and people in countries where they have restricted access to the Internet.
Pricing: Free plan with option to donate to obtain more space/bandwidth (which would then be spent on more LES's).
Server Implementation: Two servers will be used to host static content for the other server (and my sponsored Italy server).
The remaining server will be connected to a HAProxy in order to ensure uptime and availability. Note: I will be adding my sponsored Italy server to this one in order to make a total of 4 servers. Two front-end, two back-end. More servers will be added to the frontend (more bandwidth) and backend (more storage). The front-serving server will be running PHP. The static-content serving servers will be running lighttpd. (One server will probably be on the Italy node, due to the SSDs)
Use Postmark for email sending/recieving! (Feel free to recommend me another service)
Software Implementation:
Using the PHP Markdown standard from: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
Written in basic PHP (KISS principle)
Non-encoded.
Development Plan:
Days 1-3: Get the servers set up, optimise web-servers and get HAProxy serving them.
Days 4-7: Start coding, using BitBucket for commits.
Weeks 2-3: Code!
Week 4: Bug testing, private alpha.
Month 2: Private Beta/Waiting list: Get users onto our networks and get word out to social media.
Months 3-4: Public Beta: Continue developing.
Months 5-12+: Keep services up and running, continue development.
Documentation Plan:
All steps will be documented on the main BitBucket repository for anyone to re-create themselves.
All code will be under Creative Commons Share and Remix.
How can people sign up to Torn?
People can sign up by simply going to the main site and entering their email address and filling out a captcha. This then shows them their unique identifier on the screen, which they can choose to either be sent to their email (in the case of a normal blogger) or record to physical media (doesn't want the unique identifier attached to their email - censorship).
How will Torn help people in places where the internet is censored?
Most censored countries still allow one particular form of communication to get through; email. Although the main site of Torn might be blocked, the email addresses associated with the site will not be. Even if they are, we will have multiple ways that a user can get to our mail servers.
Torn will have a special address (ex. signup@torn.pw) to allow users to sign up even if they have no idea how to circumvent censoring. In cases of extreme censoring, this address can be obtained from a friend or colleague (written on physical media such as paper). They will then be sent back a challenge image which they must fill out in order to ensure their signup isn't spam.
Still, how can others in censored countries read their posts?
Anyone who is signed up to the network gets a special address and identifier that will allow others to do different things. Emailing the blog with the words "Latest Posts" in the title will send you back their latest posts, for example.
What about ordinary people?
Anyone who can access the site will be able to control their account and post to their blog via. a web-based interface with all those lovely bells and whistles. It appears quite like a pastebin, but you can search for a unique identifier within it, causing it to have a "Discover" (everyone's posts) mode and a "Read" (single blog) mode.
Why email?
Email is available to pretty much anyone, and since it is an unblocked protocol in most censored countries, it seems like a good choice.
Why markdown?
You can store Markdown as plain-text in order to remove the need for a database. The idea here is not to encrypt posts as there is simply no point.
Any cool features planned for later?
Users will be able to post to each others blogs (like Facebook walls).
Users will be able to collaborate on posts (using Github/Bitbucket etc).
Users will be able to host more than just static text (planned once storage is added).
What's this about donations?
This allows for the service to have a total of 500 users with no extra nodes.
Donations are optional, but highly regarded. I will probably give donators a special badge or something.
Why not free?
I reconsidered. It is now free, but donations are what will keep this service running.
Why this?
Because I need a new project, that's why! Plus, this has been on my mind for about a year now and I need a bit of a kick and/or motive to get me going.