<story><title>Show HN: Haven – Run a private website to share with only the people you choose</title><url>https://havenweb.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wintermutestwin</author><text>My suggestion: add a &amp;quot;circles of trust&amp;quot; feature, where you categorize your users into different levels like: acquaintance, co-worker, friend, family, special friends. Each post would have a simple bullseye icon to select how far in to the circle of trust you must be to see the post.</text></item><item><author>mawise</author><text>Hey HN,&lt;p&gt;I’m the author, Haven has been my side project for a little while.  The core idea is that we should be able to make it easy for anyone to host their own private webpage as an alternative to centralized social media.&lt;p&gt;A lot of the decentralized community seems to have chosen federated models as the solution to “self-hosting is hard”.  I’m trying something different.  With core web technologies as the foundation, my mom or my wife’s grandmother can visit my site with any web browser and I’m still able to exclude the rest of the world.  For technical people, self-hosting is made easy with a one-line AWS deployment script, and an install script for the Raspberry Pi Zero W.  I’d like less-technical people to be able to use this too so I’m exploring providing paid hosting as a service.&lt;p&gt;I think of Haven as a Facebook-alternative, but probably not a Twitter alternative.  I see Facebook as selling itself more as “stay in touch with your friends and family” where Twitter is more about “see what interesting people are saying”.  The latter has discovery as a core component.  With Haven everything is private so discovery wouldn’t make any sense.&lt;p&gt;There’s nothing new here in terms of technology--server-side rendered web pages using Ruby on Rails, no javascript frameworks, RSS using HTTP basic auth.  But also no analytics libraries or ad-tracking.  Pages are lightweight and load really fast.  I’ve even provided a limited ability to add custom CSS so you can really make your page your own.&lt;p&gt;I would love any feedback you want to share.  Both from a technical or installation side, feedback on the public webpage, as well as thoughts on communities that might be interested to learn about Haven.&lt;p&gt;Thank you!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>teeray</author><text>I think there’s some unspoken stress about building and maintaining a taxonomy of your relationships. Whether someone is an acquaintance or a friend or a good friend can be fairly dynamic. Being constantly confronted with rearranging people into different “circles” feels a bit like explicitly deciding if people can sit at the cool kids table today or not.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Haven – Run a private website to share with only the people you choose</title><url>https://havenweb.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wintermutestwin</author><text>My suggestion: add a &amp;quot;circles of trust&amp;quot; feature, where you categorize your users into different levels like: acquaintance, co-worker, friend, family, special friends. Each post would have a simple bullseye icon to select how far in to the circle of trust you must be to see the post.</text></item><item><author>mawise</author><text>Hey HN,&lt;p&gt;I’m the author, Haven has been my side project for a little while.  The core idea is that we should be able to make it easy for anyone to host their own private webpage as an alternative to centralized social media.&lt;p&gt;A lot of the decentralized community seems to have chosen federated models as the solution to “self-hosting is hard”.  I’m trying something different.  With core web technologies as the foundation, my mom or my wife’s grandmother can visit my site with any web browser and I’m still able to exclude the rest of the world.  For technical people, self-hosting is made easy with a one-line AWS deployment script, and an install script for the Raspberry Pi Zero W.  I’d like less-technical people to be able to use this too so I’m exploring providing paid hosting as a service.&lt;p&gt;I think of Haven as a Facebook-alternative, but probably not a Twitter alternative.  I see Facebook as selling itself more as “stay in touch with your friends and family” where Twitter is more about “see what interesting people are saying”.  The latter has discovery as a core component.  With Haven everything is private so discovery wouldn’t make any sense.&lt;p&gt;There’s nothing new here in terms of technology--server-side rendered web pages using Ruby on Rails, no javascript frameworks, RSS using HTTP basic auth.  But also no analytics libraries or ad-tracking.  Pages are lightweight and load really fast.  I’ve even provided a limited ability to add custom CSS so you can really make your page your own.&lt;p&gt;I would love any feedback you want to share.  Both from a technical or installation side, feedback on the public webpage, as well as thoughts on communities that might be interested to learn about Haven.&lt;p&gt;Thank you!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tyingq</author><text>I like the bullseye idea, but aren&amp;#x27;t circles often venn diagrams? That is, you might not want work posts to go to family, and vice-versa as well.  Doesn&amp;#x27;t fit the bullseye idea naturally.</text></comment>