New features added to Bonfire, including "communities", a Ghost integration, and a rebuilt main webpage

Today is announcement day 🔥

Bonfire is shifting its centre of gravity: from social features to community tools. Four things ship today, and the whole story is here: bonfirenetworks.org/posts/bo...

1. Bonfire for communitiesGroups and topics, community rules, decision-making (from quick polls through structured consensus to weighted score voting, where an objection can count for more than an approval), events, shared organisation profiles, announcements. A ready-to-use space you can then take apart: add what's missing, fork what almost fits, switch off what you don't need.

2. Our first Mosaic case studySix months with Jacobin's German edition, building jacobin.social from the ground up: a home for 3,000+ readers, wired into their Ghost publication, in their language and their look and feel. Their readers crowdfunded the project, which included a reboot of the magazine and a new community space. Now every publisher can benefit. What one community funds, every community inherits. Details: bonfirenetworks.org/case-stu...

3. A deep Ghost integrationKeep publishing exactly as you do now, and Bonfire can become the home for everything that happens around the work: your archive imported, new articles followed, members and tiers synced, sign-in through Ghost, federated discussion under every piece. Details: bonfirenetworks.org/ghost/

4. The TellingOne script tag turns any web page into a federated conversation. Readers reply with an account they already have, on Bonfire, Mastodon, anywhere. The thread lives on your server, and you can take it with you. Details: bonfirenetworks.org/telling/ Being straight with you: this is a 1.0 beta. Groups work within a server and don't federate yet. We're designing that in the open with the W3C groups task force, because we'd rather it work across the whole fediverse than ship a dialect only Bonfire speaks.

Want to poke at it? Groups are live on the campground, our open test instance. Make an account and try it out: campground.bonfire.cafe

Finally, we've rebuilt the website to reflect the new direction: bonfirenetworks.org/

Now back to following up with crowdfunding backers to organise install parties, co-design workshops, and other rewards. Thank you for your patience 💛

@Bonfire@bonfire.cafe