Why do entrepreneurs NOT use ready-made forum softwares like this to start startups? Clever use of general tools like this (maybe not specifically Flarum) can help them launch communities or marketplaces in less than a day. Is it as optimal as a in-house built forum? No. Should they be saving time on reinventing the undifferentiated code part so that they can test the core business concept and build out their differentiated networks of users? Yes.
- you're competing with hobbyists that have the same look & feel
- hobbyists are online when the community is (mostly outside of 9-5)
- members of the community demand custom functionality specific to their interest.
Also:
- building communities is very hard
- they're not easy to monetise
I've built two successful communities in related niches and I'm pretty sure that succeeded because I was young and early. It's not easy to replicate now.
Most, let's call it, web software is a handrolled system with its own framework, design patterns, etc. Flarum is a great example of web software that rolled it's own, WordPress is another far more popular piece of software that does it's own thing.
The point being, that unless you're already familiar in the "system language" of the software you want to hack upon, or unless the software is very light on abstraction, it's gonna be pretty inconvenient to MVP on top of it.
I've tried in the past to take that approach with few small projects and gave up pretty quickly. In my view it's the same as getting onboarded on a new project - it's slow. The only difference is that with OSS software you might have a bit more documentation available
No. From Monterey to Ventura, they changed checkboxes to switches, which they explicitly recommend against in their Human Interface Guidelines.
Having said, I don't think 100% consistency is a useful goal anyway. The Ventura design is usable, and the guideline is useful. Gap between the two can be operational "debt" (like technical debt) which is not theoretically ideal, but practically useful to keep making/shipping progress.
Programmatic land grabs like this is why people today must suffer from lack of remaining .com domain names.
Nothing wrong with the writer of this post. I think this is a rational behavior that should be considered "expected". Whoever designed domain name registration/ownership model is to blame for failing to create a system which can efficiently give right domain names to people who actually need them and can use them for good (aka actually hosting businesses or contents instead of scalping).
Some newer TLDs like .dev or .app have a tiered pricing structure. So it becomes less economically feasible to squat the best names. They also released them in stages when the TLD first went live.
Realistically this problem will never be solved while we only support fixed domain extensions and act like some are more legit than others. Like what gives DNS providers the right to say what's a valid extension or not? Just support any string ffs.
Not to mention the country restricted ones that you can only get if you're a resident, like bruh.
That said, part of the issue you flag is just perception. It's like going with a financial services firm that has a Wall Street or "Fifth Avenue" address in New York City versus a firm that has an address in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Both might be fine but we often attach significance to an address (even if its just a mailbox).
To your last point, I think its ultimately good that (many) Country restricted TLDs have geographic restrictions.
Nothing inherently, it doesn't have the “full of spammers” stigma of .xyz and so forth, though some seem to think it inherently means non-profit/non-commercial (sort of true, it was defined as for organisations not fitting in other tlds where .com was one of those and intended for commercial use) and think .com therefor looks more serious.
Also: if you take the .org and the .com is already in use, be ready to have the name taken off you if they get successful, or for some of your users to mistakenly go to the wrong place. To avoid one of those things happening later if the .com is available now you could buy both, but then the availability of the .com becomes the deciding factor again not the .org and you are paying for two domains.
The inability to find any available domain names was one of the primary reasons for us to create Mashword. (https://mashword.com) You can enter the name you are looking for and it will quickly suggest similarly spelled or sounding names to the one you entered.
I never understood MFAs. In terms of ability to "log back in", it creates more "weakest links", where failure of one can lock me out of all.
Most consumers don't, but I use 3+ phones at a time, picking up whichever one has battery and is near me, and replace phones multiple times a year. MFAs and similar "future-looking" security solutions seem to target majority cases, whereas I think such security solutions need to support edge cases.
Currently, my best guess is magic links where I can set aliases like "this particular email" to be the source of truth, such that I can lose a device or two and still access the email, and still replace entire email if email is compromised (or regularly, just for best practice). But definitely does not feel satisfying...
Big respect for experts who are thinking about this problem day and night to solve it for the humankind. Seems hard and is definitely critically important!
