Ocelot.Social

November 16, 2024About 5 min

Ocelot.social is free and open source software program code to run social networks. Its development is supported by a community of programmers and interested network operators.

Our goal is to enable people to participate fairly and equally in online social networks. The equality of opportunity applies both to the fundamental equality of all people and to the possibility of letting their diverse voices be heard.

We therefore consider it desirable that operators offer such networks so that people can choose where they want to be on the move.

Our vision for the future is that at some point it should be possible to link these networks together (ActivityPub, Fediverse) so that users can also connect with people from other networks - for example, by friending them or following posts or other contributions.

If you would like to help set up this capability with us, please contact us.

In other words, we are interested in a network of networks and in keeping the data as close as possible to the user and the operator they trusts.

Screenshots

Check out more screenshots here.

Features

Ocelot.social networks features:

news feed
posts
as articles and events
comments
filter
search
groups
map
user accounts
user roles
make your own branded network
and more …

Check out the full feature list.

User Guide and Frequently Asked Questions

In the wiki you can find more information.

Demo

Try out our live demo network, see here.

Help us

If you're wondering how you could help, there are plenty of ways, e.g.:

Spread the good word about ocelot.social to make it more popular:
- Add the link ocelot.social to your website.
- Give ocelot.social a Like at https://alternativeto.net/software/ocelot-social/.
- Star our project on GitHub at https://github.com/Ocelot-Social-Community/Ocelot-Social/.
- Promote it on your social networks.
- Tell your friends about it by word-of-mouth.
- Write a press article on ocelot.social or contact the editorial office of your local news page or radio station.
Take a good first issue or issues that need help. Make sure to read CONTRIBUTING.md first though.
Testing and reporting bugs.
Translating: Please contact us.
Reviewing and testing pull requests.

Donate

Your donation is very welcome and helps to enhance and improve the network. This software is mostly developed and maintained by the association busFaktor() e.V. . Please support us with a donation to busFaktor() e.V. . Thanks a lot! ❤️

Contact

Are you interested in operating your own ocelot.social network or becoming a user? Please contact us here:

hello@ocelot.social
our developer chat on Discord

For Developers and Contributors

Introduction

Have a look into our short video: ocelot.social - GitHub - Developer Welcome - Tutorial (english)

Directory Layout

There are three important directories:

Backend runs on the server and is a middleware between database and frontend
Frontend is a server-side-rendered and client-side-rendered web frontend
Cypress contains end-to-end tests and executable feature specifications

In order to setup the application and start to develop features you have to setup webapp and backend.

There are two approaches:

Local installation, which means you have to take care of dependencies yourself.
Or install everything through Docker which takes care of dependencies for you.

Installation

Clone the Repository

Clone the repository, this will create a new folder called Ocelot-Social:

Using HTTPS:

$ git clone https://github.com/Ocelot-Social-Community/Ocelot-Social.git

Using SSH:

$ git clone git@github.com:Ocelot-Social-Community/Ocelot-Social.git

Change into the new folder.

$ cd Ocelot-Social

Live Demo and Developer Logins

Try out our deployed development environment.

Visit our staging networks:

central staging network: stage.ocelot.social

Logins for the live demos and developers (local developers after the following installations) in the browser:

email	password	role
`user@example.org`	1234	user
`moderator@example.org`	1234	moderator
`admin@example.org`	1234	admin

Docker Installation

Docker is a software development container tool that combines software and its dependencies into one standardized unit that contains everything needed to run it. This helps us to avoid problems with dependencies and makes installation easier.

General Installation of Docker

There are several ways to install Docker on your computer or server.

Check the correct Docker installation by checking the version before proceeding. E.g. we have the following versions:

# use Docker version 24.0.6 or newer
# includes Docker Compose
$ docker --version

ATTENTION: For using Docker commands in Apple Silicon environments see here.

Prepare ENVs once beforehand:

# in folder webapp/
$ cp .env.template .env

# in folder backend/
$ cp .env.template .env

For Development:

# in main folder
$ docker compose up

For Production:

# in main folder
$ docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up

This will start all required Docker containers.
Make sure your database is running on http://localhost:7474/browser/.

Prepare database once before you start by running the following command in a second terminal:

# in main folder while docker compose is up
$ docker compose exec backend yarn run db:migrate init
$ docker compose exec backend yarn run db:migrate up

Then clear and seed database by running the following command as well in the second terminal:

# in main folder while docker compose is up
$ docker compose exec backend yarn run db:reset
$ docker compose exec backend yarn run db:seed

For a closer description see backend.
For a full documentation of the Docker installation see summary.

Local Installation

For a full documentation of the local installation see summary.

Contributing

Choose an issue (consider our label good-first-issue) and leave a comment there. We will then invite you to join our volunteers team. To have the necessary permission to push directly to this repository, please accept our invitation to join our volunteers team, you will receive via the email, Github will send you, once invited. If we did not invite you yet, please request an invitation via Discord.

We are happy if you fork our repository, but we don't recommend it for development. You do not need a fork.

Clone this repository locally as described above, create your branch named <issue-number>-<description>, add your code and push your branch direct to this repository. Then create a PR by comparing it to our master.

!!! Be aware: Please don't compare from a fork, because the tests are breaking caused by credential problems.

Please run the following commands before you push:

# in folder backend/
$ yarn lint --fix
$ yarn test

# in folder webapp/
$ yarn lint --fix
$ yarn locales --fix
$ yarn test

Check out our contribution guideline, too!

Developer Chat

Join our friendly open-source community on Discord 😻 Just introduce yourself at #introduce-yourself and mention a mentor or @@Mentors to get you onboard 🤓

We give write permissions to every developer who asks for it. Just text us on Discord.

Deployment

Deployment methods can be found in our deployment folder described in the README. Our branding template is our stage.ocelot.social repository. Place your branding repository inside deployment/configurations.

The only deployment method in this repository for production purposes is Kubernetes for now. But we just started to develop a deployment for Docker Compose as well.

The only deployment method with branding in this repository for development purposes as described above is Docker Compose:

# in folder deployment/
# set your branding folder name in .env
# then run
$ docker compose up

The code is branded automatically. To setup the Neo4j database see above.