Gush!

Features

• Post about the things you love!^*** Any post can have a "context" (e.g. a game), which is searchable, browsable, and followable.
• Contextual posts can be tagged as comments, excerpts (e.g. screenshots / recordings from playthroughs), or reviews (with scores)
• Posts federated to other fediverse platforms automatically have ("out-of-band") hashtags applied, so others can view and follow your post context from e.g. mastodon or gotosocial
• Interact with the wider fediverse! Post, share, and interact with other Gush! instances, as well as other services that communicate via activitypub.
• Comments, quotations, and reviews from Bookwyrm will also apply Gush!-style context and review ratings

Guiding principles

• Simplicity
• For users
  • The web frontend is standard html and css, with only a tiny, optional javascript helper to add dynamic polish
• For moderators
  • Full moderation and federation controls
• For admins
  • Single-file deploy^*
  • Doesn't require a PhD in systems administration or cloud architecture
  • Manage via standard mechanisms
    • application.conf
    • logback
    • (optional) docker / compose
  • Bring your own database
    • Use any database supported by exposed^**
  • Deployment documentation
• For developers
  • Api-first: all user-facing functionality goes through the api layer, to ensure that anyone can build a first-class app or frontend
  • Straightforward architecture
  • Modern, expressive programming language
  • Copyleft license
  • Standard frameworks and libraries
    • ktor
    • exposed
  • Developer documentation
  • Code of conduct

More questions?

* Customization or more advanced configurations may introduce additional files

** Gush! has been heavily tested with postgres and h2 - other databases on the list should Just Work, but there may be unforeseen issues

*** Early versions of Gush! only support video games as post context. We plan to add first-class support for other types of "gushables" in the future: films, music, …