I'm going to pin this post to the top of my profile so there's a place for anyone to publicly ask me a question, and I'll do my best to reply when I can.
I'm happy to offer advice primarily on the intersection of software, entrepreneurship and career.
Happy coding!
Top comments (93)
How did you grow enough of a following to launch a social network? Any advice for someone who wants to do the same?
Yes, can you please give us advice about how to grow an audience as a dev?
I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't stop working on the project for 10 years, even if traction took forever. Then I methodically worked on content creation and observing what stuck and could lead to further opportunities. It was years of growing on Twitter before even typing
rails newfor what became DEV.Giving myself the room to do a lot of observing while methodically building helped ensure some amount of success. But it's also an area that combines several different skillsets of mine.
FWIW it's going to be way easier for folks to build from scratch on Forem (the extraction from DEV we're working hard on).... We'll soon launch a Forem app which will act as a discovery mechanism for independent Forem social networks hosted in a distributed way, but discoverable through one app.... It's going to be really really cool.
You must have had exceptional belief in DEV community then
Thanks for answering!
I had belief in my own interest in seeing an improvement in online communities. My sense was that I wouldn't get bored of trying to help because I really cared. So with that in mind I also promised myself I wouldn't give up.
In prior ventures I'd either gotten bored or given up primarily because I either didn't truly care about the mission deep down, or got involved with people I didn't like or respect as founders and people. I made sure with this venture to solve for some of those fundamentals early on and let the success come with patience.
Sorry if I missed it, but how many years has it been (since the 10-year stop watch started, anathem-style)?
My snooping suggests ... 8-ish? Though this could be completely misguided.
Thanks for your public inbox. I'm searching for the way to communicated with people.
🙂
Do you now make enough money to support yourself with DEV?
DEV (Forem) was once a ramen story (not paying ourselves, running out of money etc)...
But now the company is pretty well funded and building a very sustainable business model around hosting Forems.
Special Announcement From the DEV Founders
Ben Halpern for The DEV Team ・ Nov 7 '19
Awesome 👏
Congratulations. I will do my best to read that other article.
Hi Ben, is there any way to get analytics on a post made to dev.to? The number of views figures are nice to see but would love to be able to track where the visitors came from.
Thanks for the great work on this site.
Hi Ben, I hope you don't mind I used your avatar to create a Loader meme: dev.to/afif/i-made-100-more-css-lo... ?
PS: You may have missed my ping so I am writing you here.
Cheers!
Sorry I saw it, but didn't react. I love it 😅.
Are you familiar with the concept of "invariants"? It is a query you write with SQL, or via ActiveRecord, that should have a specific
countresult, usually0.For example, the count of users with invalid data should be zero.
I have no idea how my Forem account broke, though I suspect it was related to when my Dev.to account was deleted/banned and accused of being a bot.
Even since then my Dev.to access has worked, but I can't login to Forem, and the reset password, just goes in circles, never showing an error, but also never actually resetting my password. I'm guessing it is because
user.saveis returning false.Might be worthwhile having an invariant that check for users with a particular type of data characteristic, like my Forem account currently has, to make sure they are able to use the product.
Account is peter dot boling at gmail dot com.
Cheers!
I am unable to sign up for an account on Forem. I am unable to login to Forem. I am unable to request a password reset on Forem. When you accidentally deleted my dev.to account, it must have banned me on Forem also. Is this something that can be resolved? I would ask support, but they lied to me (or you did, still unclear?) about the manner in which my account was deleted, so I am not comfortable messaging them again. You have a public face, so I'm inclined to believe your explanations over theirs.
Shortly after posting that last comment I got an email that my Forem account had been locked due to too many failed login attempts. I used the link to unlock my account. I used the "forgot password" link to request a reset password link, and the email did actually come through! But upon attempting to set a new password, I was dumped back into the same cycle. Submitting the form clears it, and displays no messages. Logging in, in the hope that the reset might have worked, does the same. No error message. Just reloads the login form. Please unlock my account (for real this time)!
In case you missed it in my first message, I suspect that my user record is unable to be saved, due to some invalid state.
Hello Ben
i hope you know me a little bit about
but still I am krishna kakade. Currently I am in my last year of computer science and engineering from India and mostly working in web development related technologies. and i am interested in joining the devto/forem frontend development team as fresher student because i love to write blogs for forem and also i would to like to join core development team of forem and i also have to learn ruby and rails but i will learn it i can join within next 15 days you can also check my personal website here:- krishnadevz.github.io
and resume here :
I am ready to work hard and consistently for the betterment of the company's products.
thank you
have a nice day
kind regards
krishna kakade
Would you be thinking of this as an internship/apprenticeship sort of opportunity?
Yes and also I am about too graduate in next two months thank you 😊
any updates ?
?
Hi Ben, I read the manifesto essay for Forem recently and was quite excited to see so many of the issues with the current state of the internet expressed so eloquently :)
I was wondering if you have any advice for building successful business models for open source software?
Thanks for starting this, I'm excited to see more community focused software in the future!
Pay a lot of attention to what is established and working (read up on open core), but merge that with an exploration of what hasn’t been tried in the space you’re in — what is the unique way you’ll apply some good established ideas?
Thanks for the reply! I hadn't heard of open core I'll read up on that. I'm currently studying arts and social media at university, and its been very interesting to see how the design choices made by platforms are impacting their use (although also a bit maddening at times).
I think Forem's community-first approach is definitely the right track to be on. The values of open source seem to be pretty well aligned with the direction social media should be taking, though its surprising how rarely open source is considered as an option for that sort of every-day-person-facing software.
Hi Ben! I scheduled my first post today and as I'm often traveling, I'm not sure which timezone is the sheduler using (for some context, even my computer is not on the right timezone right now 😂). Can you help? Thanks!
Hey @ben, not sure if you saw my message! Cheers
I’m not sure off the top of my head but I believe it’s your local time based on the browser.
hi Ben. i'm a big fan of your meme Monday threads 🤓
check out what these guys are doing: twitter.com/johnrushx/status/16615...
they are building a social network. 20 strangers gathered together to build a web app.
perhaps you to join as a chief memologist 🙂
Where's the discord link? I might be missing something, but I'm curious :)
it is discord.gg/78pkDrAW
then navigate to the "DevHunt" channel.
Hi👋
I have a doubt Ben.
I know you are he co-founder of Forem
Do you work in Forem only, or in another company?
Because Forem is completely free for users.
Then how do you make money?
So I asked, there is nothing wrong with what I asked.
Forgive me if I heard wrong
How's the fam?
I haven't been able to see most of my family in over a year (Canadian), but generally doing pretty well. I'm very grateful for the Canadian government assistance through the pandemic for the folks in my family who have needed it.
Hey @ben,
Thanks for the awesome platform. I have 2 queries for you
Have you started many projects that could become companies to you ? Which proportion of your ideas did you actually start writing code for ?
If so, what was your reciepe to know if a project is worth it ?
And how would you know when persistence on a project becomes obstination, and that it is time to abandon it ?
Hey Ben! Thank you for this AMA.
Is there an ETA for the first stable/public release of Forem?
We've been hesitant to give a date on some of this because there's been a lot of discovery needed on both stability of the hosting options while at the same time ironing out all the edge cases where historically with DEV we've been able to dip into a coding environment and for this to run effectively it shouldn't need that. With that being said, things are getting a little clearer:
The first stamped down supported self-hosted option. I don't know exactly when the release will be, but we're pretty close here... Expect an ETA soon. I don't want to make any promises but we're finally seeing the finish line.
For our hosted version, Forem Cloud, while it's stable for us, the thing we need to work out is orchestration so we can effectively automate the management of n number of Forems. This will come in the second half of this year.
Thanks for your patience! Our end goals are incredibly ambitious and Forem is going to change the Internet!
Thank you, Ben! Looking forward to the release.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.