creating an ebooks bot is about to get a lot easier!
what features would you like to see in fedibooks?
things i'm definitely doing:
. customisable post frequency
. multiple bots
. bots learn from multiple accounts
. edit name, profile picture, etc. from fedibooks
things i'm probably doing:
. misskey support
things i'm not doing:
. patreon exclusive features
. different types of bots
also let me know if the website looks terrible/great
i don't know when this will be ready because it's a fairly big undertaking, right now i've only got a few pages prepared and none of the backend stuff
i'm not looking forward to the SQL stuff but the rest should be fun 
the source code (what little there is so far, anyway ;3) is at https://github.com/Lynnesbian/FediBooks
here's the bot edit page so far, it looks pretty gross i know
are there any options that seem missing? there are some other options not pictured here, such as turning off replies, banning given words, or changing the profile picture
i don't want to overwhelm the user with options but i don't want it to be too limiting either
this page allows you to manage your bots and such. the buttons on the bot are a little confusing because they're just icons. they mean, from left to right:
. toggle bot enabled/disabled
. bot settings
. accounts learned from
. banned words
. chat with your bot
. delete
before i shut down my free bot hosting service, i was hosting 108 bots. that means my server had 108 open connections listening for replies at all times. i don't know how many it can handle, but the answer's at least 108 
i have no idea how many people are going to use this, though, so it might not go so well. each reply listener needs to be its own process, too... i might have to either get a separate server just for this or upgrade my current server to the prohibitively expensive next tier
in other words, when this goes live, i'm kinda hoping for people clicking on those donation links so i can upgrade the server! 
this is by the people (henlo) for the people (you!) so if there's anything at all you'd like to see, let me know!
what do you want in an ebooks bot? what annoys or disappoints you about the current ones? if you could program, what custom functionality what you give your own one? what do you like or hate about webapps (like mastodon and gmail) that could apply here? what is your favourite breed of rabbit?
allowing users to get their bot to post once every five minutes is probably a bad idea, right
i'm excited to work on the backend but the frontend still isn't done, there's just so much to do!! 
the more hardcore lynnesbian fans may note that fedibooks looks rather similar to curious greg (no not 
, i mean https://cg.lynnesbian.space)
i did take inspiration from that design, which in turn took inspiration from mastodon's web UI. however, i made a few changes, most noticeably to the buttons, to give it its own unique identity. i also decided to go a little bit brutalist (and i really do mean a little bit) by leaving everything with sharp, square edges, flat colours, monotone icons, and so on.
who says programmers can't design frontends? 
you may also notice that fedibooks used to be a different project. i've abandoned the old fedibooks and moved to this one instead. in retrospect, the old fedibooks concept was way too ambitious. it was around the time i was considering how to create a simple UI for displaying complex decision trees that i realised i was in too deep.
why create fedibooks? (long)
I've been working on ebooks bots for a long time. My first project, mstdn-ebooks, dates back to October 2018. It's a much less ambitious project than FediBooks, but maintaining and developing it has still been a formidable undertaking. It's changed a lot since the initial version, and has worked very well for a long time.
Using mstdn-ebooks is nowhere near as easy as using FediBooks. There's a long guide you'll need to follow, and you'll have to install some programs like Python and possibly Git to get working. It runs on your own computer, meaning that if you put it into sleep mode, it stops working. Updating it to the latest version is also your responsibility, and the error messages it gives aren't exactly user friendly.
To help with this issue, I decided to create a Patreon where I offered a $2.50 per month tier to host up to three bots for you. I would take care of configuration, maintenance, updating, et cetera. This worked pretty well up until recently.
A new change in Mastodon and Pleroma adds something called authenticated fetches. Reffered to as "authorised mode" by Mastodon, this new feature prevents unauthorised instances and programs from accessing the API. In other words, if instance A blocks instance B, then instance B won't be able to see instance A's public posts anymore. However, this also means mstdn-ebooks can't see your posts. This can be fixed, however, by requesting permission from instance B. So what's the problem?
I would need to ask every single person I run a bot for to click a link I send to them, and then send me back the authentication code they received. This is messy and annoying, and greatly tedious. Furthermore, mstdn-ebooks' code base is starting to show its age (I used to be even worse at programming, believe it or not), and I thought this gave me a good motivation to create a new project.
When FediBooks needs permission from instance B, all you need to do is click "authorise". No copy and pasting codes and sending them in a Patreon DM. This is much cleaner and easier for the end user, which is what this is all about!
FediBooks is one of the biggest projects I've ever taken on, and it's been wonderful working on it. I hope you enjoy it!
why create fedibooks? (long)
Can't wait for it to go live! The screenshots so far look very impressive :)
re: why create fedibooks? (long)
@prasoon thank you!