How to create a forum with Nowhere
Forums in nowhere (see previous issue) are currently the most interesting website type. The forum itself exists in the link, like all nowhere pages. But what about posts and chats? For these, Nostr is used. Not only that, but the posts and even the npub used are completely encrypted. Nostr relays will never know what you post in a nowhere forum.
First steps
To create a forum, go to nowhere and click the “create” text at the top-right. Then click on “Forum”. You will see this page:
Enter your npub. On forums, this is required. Then enter the other details. We are creating a forum for this very magazine here.
As you can see, the preview of the forum starts appearing as all needed details are now filled. Next, we create an icon. We can set a color and a font here, among other details. I have chosen monospace font on a green circle here.
Topic Creation
Next, we set topics. This forum is for both the english and the german edition of my magazine. Thus I create two topics.
Settings
Now it gets really interesting. The settings page allows you to customize your forum to your likings.
First, Identity settings. Here you can set how users login in your forum. You can require them to use a NIP-07 extension (bad for mobile), use ephemeral (temporary) keys, or both possibilities.
Next, Privacy Mode. If set to true, the forum will not fetch profile data from Nostr relays. Otherwise it will.
Then you can set the post size limit. Standard is 5000 chars.
Next, Web of Trust (WoT) settings. You can set these for posts (new threads), replies and chat. More on chat later. Depth 0 means, only you as the creator can post/reply/chat in this forum. Depth 1 grants there rights to whoever you follow on Nostr. Depth 2 expands these to people the profiles you follow follow. Depth 3… I tnink you can imagine. Of course, if set to “No limit”, everyone can post, reply or chat.
Next, you can define a list of banned words. Posts and replies containing these words will be hidden. However, people might see this as censorship, so be careful when using this.
We have 4 checkboxes next. “Enable post sharing” allows single posts to be linked so you can directly link to a specific post. “Enable QR sharing” places a QR code button to the top right. A QR code will be shown so that another person can scan it with his phone, leaving no digital trail. “Enable salt (censorship resistance)” places a salt shaker button in the top right. Clicking it brings up a textbox where you can enter a salt. Doing so creates a new space in a forum with different posts and chat. Useful when your forum is overrun but you don’t want to create a new forum from scratch, or if you want a secret space for a limited number of people or for any other reason. “Enable torrents” creates a Torrents tab between the Posts and Chat tab to the right of the topics. You can share torrents in such forums.
Verification
The verification page shows your verification phrases for both your Nostr profile and your forum (or any other nowhere site, this is the same on all site types). The verification contains 6 to 12 unique words where you can make sure you are on the right forum.
You can also expand the view to view all phrase lengths between 3 and 12 words for both creator and forum. It wil also show you how long it takes to crack these.
Share Link
Now it’s time to share your forum. You can simply click the “Reveal Link” button to share the forum.
However, this link is not signed. If you have an npub set and a NIP-07 extension installed (needed for forums), you can sign by clicking the black “Sign & Reveal Link” button. Signed links produce a different forum than unsigned links btw. So let’s sign the link.
Btw, if you want to create a private forum and ensure only specific people can ever open it, you can even encrypt your link with a password. However, the magazine forum will remain unencrypted.
And you can look how a link is compressed to keep it as short as possible.
The Finished Forum
But it still looks empty. So let’s make a post. After logging in with either your NIP-07 extension or with an ephemeral key (“Post Anonymously”), click on the “+ New Post” button. Then let’s write something.
The post appears now in the topic you are in, in this case “General”.
You can click on the post to open it as a thread, where you can read all replies and also reply yourself.
The magazine forum’s verification phrase is spice · canoe · age · stadium · wild · slot.
A bad combination
If you set ephemeral login only but set WoT to any option (0 to 3), no one will ever be able to use that forum. You can tell from the grayed out New Post button.
Btw, …
Forums also have a dark mode.
This article originates from issue 2 of my personal magazine.
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