We’re back to the future! To infinity and beyond 🙂 We’ve been working like crazy, full days, for over three weeks straight to completely overhaul the site. Everything has radically changed for the better compared to previous versions.

We’ll take this opportunity for a mea culpa because we readily admit that since the site launched, we had very heavily prioritized substance over form. That was a mistake, and it’s now almost entirely corrected. There are just a few tiny details left that are about to be sorted out. But above all, we really needed a rock-solid NovaFuture, perfectly aligned with our values, to welcome our very big projects that are right around the corner.

Version 8.0 “Enter the Dragon” now takes over from 7.5 “Ghost Rider in the Sky“. But you might be wondering why a title so heavily inspired by a Bruce Lee movie? The answer is pretty simple: For us, it means you have to enter the dragon to fight the dragons. We think that’s an allegory that’s pretty easy to grasp 🙂

But why fight? Because capitalism and everything that comes with it —-> Like the patriarchy, the destruction of our planet, ever more glaring injustices… is literally waging war on us every single day. And on our end, we are absolutely not resigned to the idea that this system is set in stone. And absolutely not resigned either to letting billionaires and their puppets the politicians force their nihilistic visions of society on us. That’s why we’ve been committed for many, many years to the path of alternatives, whether digital or in the real world, preferably. With experience, we know it works and that all that’s missing to move toward another possible world is coherence and cohesion. All of that is what fuels our motivation and our fighting spirit.

Now that the groundwork is laid, we warmly invite you to discover everything that’s behind this excellent vintage ETD V8.0 🙂

NovaFlow: The forum transforms into a true modern social network

They say real social networks with structured data are dead? Together we’re going to prove them wrong! The new NovaWall is split into two parts: A news feed kind of like Mastodon or Bluesky, and a section for discussions between users.

We took the engine from our excellent forum and turned it into a true modern social network that still relies on structured data to enable quality exchanges over the long run. NovaFlow runs without any algorithm and without AI. There was no way we were going to reproduce the rotten patterns of mainstream social networks. So the strategy isn’t about capturing attention for malicious purposes but about fostering in-depth exchanges that lead to concrete outcomes.

Is our goal to become a huge network? The answer is clear: Absolutely not! There are already free networks doing excellent work and that’s great. We’re not here to step on their toes, quite the opposite. So we’re a niche network, and that’s a deliberate choice. But watch out! Not just any niche! We’re a great little niche with a friendly vibe for all you alternative enthusiasts 🙂 For us, a network’s quality isn’t measured at all by the number of its users but by the richness of the interactions it can generate. In other words, we’d much rather chat every day with 10 cool people than waste time scrolling through networks where everyone is just navel-gazing.

Enough about the philosophy. Let’s get into the concrete technical stuff. Here’s what’s available on NovaFlow V 1.8.0: Perfectly adapted for mobile, tablet and desktop, follow and unfollow a user, a clean news feed with zero manipulation, the ability to reply privately, the ability to like a topic or a reply just to let the user know you appreciated their input. No negative likes, we’re against them because they’re toxic. The ability to follow the site’s authors and soon other super cool features.

Worth noting that NovaFlow is open and self-managed by its users, who can become moderators and even have their own NovaFlow. Also worth noting that it’s a troll-free zone where troublemakers have no place. And also worth noting that the main language on NovaFlow is English, but there’s absolutely no problem if you post in French, German, or Spanish. For now we can’t spread ourselves thin making separate networks for each language. But that might come if the demand is there. We’ve already anticipated that possibility in the code. So it’s not complicated to set up.

The PWA app is all of NovaFuture right in your pocket

To go perfectly with our social network strategy, we had the idea of offering a mobile app. But the app store racket? That’s over for good! So we’re offering you something even better: A PWA app that works on Android and iOS mobile, on Linux, Mac, and Windoze. When you click its shortcut it opens straight to your NovaFlow feed. And cherry on top, the site is even faster and becomes available offline. You can find out more and install it if you want by clicking this link.

The free blog hosting service

They say blogs, which are one of the pillars of free speech on the web, are dead and buried. Oh really? Together we’re going to prove them wrong! Because NovaFuture offers you a 100% free and 100% ad-free blog hosting service. A human-scale service where everything is designed to put authors front and center and bring them an audience. We even allow authors to get paid through services like Liberapay, Patreon, or others.

So if you’re on crappy platforms like Blogger, Medium, WordPress.com, or Tumblr that have zero respect for authors and readers, you should seriously consider migrating to NovaFuture. We accept all topics. The only things we don’t accept are reactionary speech, pseudo-science, and conspiracy theories. For everything else, the field is wide open and there’s plenty to explore.

The publishing interface works just as well on mobile, tablet, or desktop. You get a visual editor and the ability to create drafts so you can work at your own pace and publish later. You can also upload images from your hard drive and embed videos or podcasts. If you’re interested in this feature, just click this link and you’ll be ready to blog in under 5 minutes.

NovaFuture articles: Time to shed some light

Now that the overhaul is done, we’re going full throttle on publications again. We’ve got a packed schedule with some heavy stuff coming. We’re not here to be lukewarm, and we’re not here to race toward radicalism either. We never chase the news cycle. As a free media outlet, we simply bring a different perspective than the mainstream media on subjects we care deeply about bringing to light. Worth noting that we’ve completely revamped the layout of NovaMag, which is now much clearer for readers.

By the way, this is a good time to remind you that NovaFuture is a participatory site. So if you want to become an occasional or regular author on NovaFuture? Nothing easier, let’s talk about it on NovaFlow.

The knowledge base offers technical guides to help you become self-sufficient

We’ve fallen pretty far behind on publishing technical guides about alternatives. For this part of the site too, we’re going to seriously ramp up our publishing schedule. The technical guides take a lot of time to put together and we move at our own pace, prioritizing quality over quantity. When creating these guides, we try our best to make the technical stuff understandable for everyone. And to take it further, we offer NovaFlow support channels to help you carry out your self-sufficiency projects.

For this version, we still keep some guides accessible with a simple site registration. That’s just to limit the plundering by AI bots that suck up content and spit it back out all garbled. This is also a good time to point out that registering on the site is just a simple anti-spam measure. The only email notifications sent are solely when you’ve received a reply to one of your messages on NovaFlow. And only if you’ve checked that option.

For podcasts, the platform is ready, all that’s missing is you 🙂

We’ve got a great podcast platform all set up with a dedicated server, great SEO, and a very wide distribution network. But unfortunately, we just flat-out don’t have the time to take care of it. We tried, but honestly it wasn’t great. We’ll definitely do something serious with it later. In the meantime, don’t forget that we’re an open project. If anyone is interested in podcasting as part of NovaFuture or their hosted blog, we just need to talk about it on NovaFlow and this project can take shape very quickly.

NovaFuture is now fully accessible through Tor

NovaFuture has its own Tor server with a real .onion address that covers the entire site. That means everything, including the NovaFlow social network, is fully anonymized when you go through Tor. Unlike Signal or Telegram which require a phone number to work, NovaFlow via Tor doesn’t ask for any personally identifiable information. Your traffic is encrypted end-to-end by the Tor network and neither we, nor your internet provider, nor anyone else can know that you’re browsing NovaFuture. When it comes to anonymity, we’re a step above what mainstream messaging apps offer.

If you’re already familiar with Tor, just open NovaFuture in your Tor browser or in Brave and you’ll automatically be offered the Tor option. If you don’t know about Tor yet, click this link and we’ll explain everything.

Unsolicited bots that are starting to get on our nerves

The internet has always been more or less a jungle. But the further we go, the harder it gets to survive out there. Which probably explains why so many small independent sites are disappearing, much to the delight of the big platforms.

Like every site out there, we’re invaded by bots of all kinds. “Legal” parasites and malicious ones. On top of that you’ve got AI scraping and morons trying stuff by pretending to be browsers. Or even more ridiculous: straight-up with Python. Up until now we’ve been super chill about it. We’ve seriously hardened the site’s security. But despite that, last month alone over 5 gigs of bandwidth were wasted by all this crap.

So at some point, ENOUGH! If everyone ended up thinking that’s just normal, well we don’t! So we’re obviously going to keep playing defense because you don’t mess around with internet security. But we’re also going on the offensive! Because if some people think they can just barge into other people’s place like that, all rude and uninvited, then we figure we can do the same. And the retaliation has already begun! Some of them already have their bots lost in the wild and others have had their appetite for playing with their little scanners killed off for good! We’ve put some solid solutions in place to get some peace, and our friend Debugman will be more than happy to share them in an upcoming article.

Under the hood: a major engine optimization

This is the part that’s least visible but it’s super important. We did a major code optimization, which means a faster site, fewer resources consumed on the server side, and fewer resources needed from your browser. That means better browsing comfort for you and a smaller ecological footprint on the infrastructure side.

This work is far from finished. The next version will barely change visually, but on the other hand we’re going to completely change the engine. We’ve already started working on this project in parallel and we’re giving ourselves between 6 and 8 months to make it happen. It’ll be the opportunity to release a 100% open source and highly performant site engine so that web creators can start off on the right foot.

Big upcoming projects while we wait for the next version

Let’s not kid ourselves, everything that’s been done so far has been about laying the foundations. The most exciting stuff is ahead of us. In a few days, we’ll be unveiling PeerBox. We’re not going to tell you everything now, just that it’s a project we’ve been working on for a long time and it’s going to make some noise. Stay tuned 😉

But there’s more to life than the web. We’re also looking for land to set up a community space that will allow us to put NovaFuture’s themes into practice in the real world: low-tech, permaculture, energy self-sufficiency, eco-construction… Because a website is great, but getting your hands dirty in the real world is even better.

On the digital side, as we just mentioned, the new 100% open source site engine is in the works. A new version of NovaFlow is also in the pipeline with its batch of new features. And there are other big projects we’ll talk about later with great pleasure. Let’s just say the schedule is packed and the motivation is right there.

Music break

We’re not dropping the good habits 🙂 Here’s something to properly celebrate this new version 8.0. A special shoutout to all the rude girls and rude boys who follow us, and to all our friends.

Conclusion: The adventure is just getting started

After this overview, all that’s left is to wish you great times on this new version. We do our best with our limited means to make the user experience as good as possible on the site. And to move forward faster, we need your feedback to know what’s working well and what still needs improvement. We’re not stubborn about anything and we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves to improve whatever can be improved. We’ll say it again, NovaFuture is an open project where everything is set up to let talents fully express themselves. So whether you’re a coder, a designer, an artist, a host, a translator, or simply yourself: Join NovaFlow and let’s move forward together. Because there’s strength in numbers and we’re way better off building something together than moping around on our own 🙂

Before we part ways, one last important note: As things stand, a free media outlet like NovaFuture can’t exist without its readers sharing the content. Our advertising budget is easy to add up since it’s exactly zero. Search engines like Google bury non-commercial sites at the bottom of the pile and it’s the same story with mainstream social networks. And this disguised censorship is getting worse and worse now that there’s an extreme stench wafting over from the American tech world. But fortunately, we still manage to move forward like a submarine thanks to alternatives such as DuckDuckGo and Qwant, the underground web, and the Fediverse networks.

So if you want to follow us and support us, you can subscribe to our Mastodon, Lemmy, Bluesky accounts or RSS for the purists. And above all, please remember to share all of NovaFuture’s content far and wide. We’re counting on you 😉 Thanks in advance.