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 * Home
 * Freedica Demo Site
 * Member Tips
    * 1 First Steps
    * 2 Set up your Profile Page
    * 3 Share Posts and Comments
    * Freedica... The Movie

 * Admin Tips
    * Admin 1 Create a Secure Linux Computer
    * Admin 2 First Steps after installing Linux
    * Admin 3 Create Your Own VPS
    * Admin 4 Use Midnight Commander to Change VPS Settings
    * Admin 5 Use Hestia to Install Freedica
    * Admin 6 Network Configuration Steps
    * Admin 7 Customize your network appearance
    * Admin 8 Member Moderation

 * FREE DOWNLOADS
 * Freedica Forum
 * Freedica Course
 * Sign Up for our Newsletter
 * Attend Event

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WELCOME TO FREEDICA!

Freedica is a free open development social network that allows you to easily
create your own locally controlled social network similar to Facebook or Twitter
– but under the control of your local group rather than under the control of a
billionaire led for-profit corporation - and without the data mining, shadow
banning, trolls and bots commonly found on top down social networks.



Freedica runs on a simple Virtual Private Server (VPS) which costs about $20 per
month. This is obviously much less expensive that a centrally controlled social
network which can cost anywhere from $100 million to $100 billion to build and
run.

Freedica was forked from the Friendica Social Network project in June 2023.
While the names may sound similar, Freedica has a much different purpose than
Friendica. The goal of Friendica is to create worldwide groups of casual users,
through interaction with a platform called the Fediverse. While this is a worthy
goal, it can result in some of the same problems experienced while using
Facebook and Twitter - namely drive-by trolls making constructive conversations
all but impossible.



To overcome this problem of bots and trolls, Freedica does not intend to be part
of the Fediverse. Instead, our goal is to create a series of more locally
controlled social networks to be used by a social movement or national political
campaign to gradually grow their movement over time by starting with a single
national social network that includes 50 state groups - and can eventually
evolve to a series of 50 state networks – each of which can include any number
of sub-groups for each county, city, school district or other sub-divisions in
that state. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, we are focusing on
providing a specific tool for a specific function.

To achieve this goal, Freedica offers several major benefits. Here is a list of
the top 12 differences:

#1 More Informative Site Home Page
Your Social Network Home page should be come with customizable text and images
to let visitors know what your network is about and why they should join. Sadly,
the template for the Friendica site home page is extremely complex as it
includes both right and left side panels in addition to being dominated by the
Site Login and Registration forms. There is limited provisions for adding custom
text and images. This makes it difficult to customize the Friendica site home
page.

We addressed this problem by eliminating the right and left side panels from the
site home page and moving the Login and Registration form to a separate Login
page accessible from a top navigation bar. In addition, we provide four Site
Home page HTML and CSS files as well as four Site Home page content images that
can be easily customized using the provided Libre Draw files. These changes
allow your to easily customize the appearance of your Social Network site home
page.

#2 Customizable Theme Variants with Customizable Banner Images added to the top
of the Site Home and Member pages
We provide 4 nature based and customizable theme variants called Blue Sky, Green
Meadow, Purple Mist and Yellow Sun. Each variant has its own customizable banner
image. We also include 4 sample Libre Draw files which can be used to create
your own banner images.

Here is the Friendica Site Home page using the Vier theme:





Note that the left side panel is empty white space while the right side panel is
hidden. Below is an example of the Freedica Site Home page using the Spring
theme with the Blue Sky variant.



#3 Simplified More Readable Site Member Pages
The Friendica Top Navigation bar has a distracting search box - and the tabbed
bar below it has five options for the Network page.



The Friendica Home Profile page is even worse with nine options:



All of these options can be reached by other routes. But their presence on the
top bar and tabbed bar can be pretty confusing for beginners. In addition,
having so many menu items requires making the font size so small that words can
barely be read. We therefore reduced the number of menu items on both the top
navigation bar and the tabbed bar below it. This allows us to increase the font
sizes which makes Freedica is much more readable and therefore much easier for
beginners to learn how to use.

Here is the Freedica top bar and tabbed bar on the Network page:



Here is the Freedica tabbed bar on the Home Profile page:



#4 Simplified Graphical Installation Process
Our goal is to encourage people who are not programmers to install and manage
their own bottom up social networks. Friendica documentation offers several very
complex and confusing ways to install Friendica. These options are needed
because there are many types of server configurations Friendica is trying to
support.

In order to simplify the installation process, we will provide only one set of
instructions but they will be step by step instructions. This is made possible
because we will assume that those installing Friendica will be using a VPS host
with a graphical DNS Manager and that they will be installing Freedica on a
Debian VPS with the free open source Hestia Control Panel. The Hestia Control
Panel dramatically simplifies the installation process allowing even those
without a technical background to install and run their own Freedica Social
Network. In fact, you can install Freedica on a Hestia VPS in under 5 minutes
just by clicking on a couple of buttons.



#5 Simplified Cron and Backup Process
A major advantage of using the Hestia Control Panel is that it includes a simple
graphical interface for creating cron jobs and backups. Cron commands can be
entered in less than a couple of minutes. Backups are taken automatically and
can be downloaded with the click of a button. Restoring your site from a backup
can also be done in a matter of minutes by clicking on a button.

#6 Simplified and more current Member Instructions
The documentation that comes with Friendica is often outdated. Much of it is
intended for developers with a more technical background. One of our main
missions is to focus on assisting those without a technical background. We
therefore have greatly improved documentation for beginners while at the same
time moving documentation for developers out of the Freedica package and into a
separate series of web pages.

#7 Freedica has a much smaller File Size.
Friendica is a very large program at over 120 Megabytes. This includes 5 themes
and 85 addon programs. We have replaced these five themes with two new themes
and eliminated 80 addons – leaving a total of 5 of the most commonly used
addons. These changes reduce the size of Freedica by about 60MB such that
Freedica is less than 60MB. This means Freedica takes much less space on your
server and therefore costs much less to run and maintain over time.

This file size reduction is needed to permit a single VPS to host up to 50
networks. Including two backups and posting data, a single Freedica network
would take about 200MB of disc space on the VPS while a single Friendica network
would take about 400MB. 50 Freedica networks would take 10GB of disc space while
50 Friendica networks would take at least 20GB. Over time, each state network
could be hosted on its own VPS. However, initially all state networks would be
hosted on the same national VPS. It is therefore important to keep the cost down
by reducing the file size as much as possible.

#8 Freedica uses much less JavaScript
JavaScript is a program for making changes in a website that occur directly in
the web browser rather than being processed through the VPS. The problem with
JavaScript is that hackers can use it to attack websites. This is particularly
true of JavaScript frameworks such as JQuery. Many website development programs
such as Joomla have worked to reduce their reliance on JavaScript and have
eliminated JQuery. Sadly, the default Friendica theme, called Frio is heavily
dependent on JavaScript as is shown by the following graphic.



By contrast, the two Freedica themes, called Spring and Summer, are both based
on a Friendica theme called Vier which does not use JavaScript at all.



Smarty is a template creation language based on HTML. So the Vier theme is based
almost entirely on simple and secure CSS and HTML. In addition, each Freedica
theme has a file size of 1MB which is one tenth the file size of Frio which is
11MB.

#9 Freedica eliminates Bootstrap
Bootstrap is a very large CSS and JavaScript framework used by the Friendica
Frio theme. Bootstrap changes versions every couple of years. The current
version is version 5 which is soon to be replaced by version 6. Sadly, the Frio
theme still uses Bootstrap 3 which is substantially different from Bootstrap 5.
For example, Bootstrap 3 relies heavily on JQuery – which is not used at all in
Bootstrap 5. For the Frio theme to be updated to Bootstrap 5 would mean updating
thousands of lines of JavaScript and CSS code – which is a lot of work even if
you know what you are doing. There would need to be even more work to update to
Bootstrap 6. Thankfully, Friendica also comes with a theme called Vier which
does not use Bootstrap and is therefore much easier to customize and maintain
over time. This was the primary reason we based both Freedica themes on the Vier
theme.

#10 Freedica Development is on an Open Source Repository called Codeberg instead
of closed source GitHub
It is sad that many Open Software projects, including Friendica, use a closed
source repository called GitHub when there is a much better non-profit Open
Software repository called Codeberg to host their Open Software projects.



GitHub (aka Microsoft) was recently found to be spying on and pirating BILLIONS
of lines of code from more than a million open source projects in order to
develop their commercial GitHub program called Copilot – a clear violation of
Open Source License requirements. Microsoft and GitHub are currently being sued
for $9 billion. Here is a link to the 56 page lawsuit:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23264658-github-complaint

One of the people who brought the lawsuit explained how this spying and code
theft harms Open Source Code development: “Microsoft is creating a new walled
garden that will inhibit programmers from discovering traditional open-source
communities, Over time, this process will starve these communities. User
attention and engagement will be shifted [...] away from the open-source
projects themselves—away from their source repos, their issue trackers, their
mailing lists, their discussion boards.”

The Software Freedom Conservancy was so appalled at Microsoft’s attack on Open
Source Software development that they referred to it as “monetizing the labor of
open source developers via a proprietary product.”They therefore launched a
campaign asking Open Software developers to “Give Up GitHub!.”

https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/#ICE-contract-details



Yet despite this assault on Open Source software, tens of thousands of projects
are still made using Windows programs on Windows computers with their code
hosted on GitHub and or the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Sadly, $9 billion is peanuts
for Microsoft who will likely be given a Get Out of Jail Free card – just like
they have been given many times in the past after being found guilty of
violating US federal laws.

If we are to overcome our current addiction to harmful software, and gain our
freedom from the likes of Microsoft and Google, we need to completely change the
way we develop software. We need to look not merely at the code for hidden
defects, but rather – because software has such a big impact on all of us - we
need to closely examine the entire software development process for hidden
defects. The term I propose for this more careful and holistic approach is Open
Software Development.

Our goal is to more precisely define the word “open” and explain how Open
Software programs can and should be developed using entirely Open Software tools
– and to provide a place where those interested in learning about and or
developing Open Software programs can ask questions and discuss important issues
regarding the present state and future of Open Software programs.

Open Software Development includes the prior concept of Free Open Source
Software. But in addition, it requires a willingness to change - an open mind –
to consider and try new ways of doing things.

More Drawbacks of GitHub
Even if you do not care about GitHub spying on your code development and
stealing your open source code for their closed source programs, you should
think twice about using GitHub.

In 2012, Linus Torvalds stated:

"I don't do GitHub pull requests. GitHub throws away all the relevant
information, like having even a valid email address for the person asking me to
pull. Their diffstat is also deficient and useless."

In 2021, Torvalds added:

“GitHub creates absolutely useless garbage merges, and you should never ever use
the GitHub interfaces to merge anything… Linux kernel merges need to be done
properly... That means proper commit messages with information about what is
being merged and *why* you merge something. But it also means proper authorship
and committer information etc. All of which GitHub entirely screws up."

In 2022, Torvalds added: "Git comes with a nice pull-request generation module,
but GitHub instead decided to replace it with their own totally inferior
version. As a result, I consider GitHub useless for these kinds of things... the
pull requests and the online commit editing, are just pure garbage."

GitHub likely loses more than $100 million per year – but Microsoft does not
care
Since purchasing GitHub in 2018 for $7.5 billion, Microsoft has not reported any
revenue numbers for GitHub in its quarterly and yearly filings. The last
reported GitHub balance statement was leaked in 2016 - when GitHub was losing
about $100 million per year. Microsoft essentially uses GitHub as a Loss Leader
to attract users to their Azure Cloud – which makes billions of dollars every
year - while keeping people addicted to the insecure Windows operating system
and Microsoft 365 monthly rental payments.

#11 We use a simple graphical tool rather than complex terminal commands to
improve Freedica

Because we want to make Freedica development more accessible to more people, we
use and show you how to use a graphical interface called Git Cola to connect
local copies of Freedica with our Codeberg repository. Git Cola combined with
Codeberg make it possible for more visually oriented people to take part in
Freedica development.



12 We explain how to integrate your Social Network with other free online
community building tools
There are a variety of ways online communities can communicate with each other.
In this course, we explain how to integrate Freedica with several other free
open source online community projects. If your team wants to have their own
video conferencing platform, where they can collaborate on creating team
documents, we explain how to use Jitsi and NextCloud. If you want to write a
book or create a course, we explain how to combine Freedica with the Joomla
Content Management System (CMS) and the Moodle Learning Management System. Learn
to connect content you create on your Joomla website with shared documents and
video conferencing on your Nextcloud website and distribute your content on your
Freedica Social Network. This is possible because all three programs are built
using PHP – which runs 80% of the world’s websites.



Freedica offers many other important organizing benefits including:

* Customizable profile forms to organize by state, county, city, Congressional
District, Legislative District and or School District.

* Customizable Themes to give you complete control over the appearance and
content of your network pages.

* Customizable New Member Landing page for members to be directed to rather than
just returning them to the Network Home page.

* Customizable Error Page to give people helpful advice when they wind up on a
broken page.

* Three typed of networks… Choose between a network completely open to the
public, a network requiring admin approval or a completely closed network open
only to invited members.

We have written a detailed course on how to create your own secure Freedica
social Network. Here is a link to this course:

https://createabetternetwork.com/

Here are the 9 Steps we review during this course:



You are invited to be part of this great adventure
Whether you are an expert on coding with PHP or a beginner looking to escape
from Facebook, you are welcome to join our Freedica community. For more
information about setting up your own Freedica website, visit our project
website freedica.org or visit our course website:

https://createabetternetwork.com/


WELCOME TO FREEDICA... THE MOVIE!





 * Home
 * Freedica Demo Site
 * Member Tips
   * 1 First Steps
   * 2 Set up your Profile Page
   * 3 Share Posts and Comments
   * Freedica... The Movie
 * Admin Tips
   * Admin 1 Create a Secure Linux Computer
   * Admin 2 First Steps after installing Linux
   * Admin 3 Create Your Own VPS
   * Admin 4 Use Midnight Commander to Change VPS Settings
   * Admin 5 Use Hestia to Install Freedica
   * Admin 6 Network Configuration Steps
   * Admin 7 Customize your network appearance
   * Admin 8 Member Moderation
 * FREE DOWNLOADS
 * Freedica Forum
 * Freedica Course
 * Sign Up for our Newsletter
 * Attend Event