As many of you have noticed (and pinged me about) recently there has been an uptick of spam on Zig NEWS.
Spammer accounts have been a constant problem since the creation of the website and I've been manually deleting accounts & posts over time.
Since the end of 2023 there has been a serious uptick in posting though and no matter how unrelenting the moderation is, those posts will always have some window of time where they exist on the frontpage, ruining people's experience.
Some people have suggested to enable some form of post approval system but unfortunately this is not possible as the CMS Zig NEWS is built upon (Forem) doesn't offer the feature.
I've originally chosen Forem out of convenience because I wanted to a blogging platform up and running quickly for people who also want the convenience of not having to setup their own blogs and not having to share manually links to their writing.
So while starting with a pre-made solution (ie convenient but not perfectly tailored) was part of the plan, it seems we're approaching a time where we need to move towards something better.
For those who have not heard about it yet, I'm working on my own static site generator called Zine (https://zine-ssg.io) and my plan is to take some of the components developed for Zine and use them to build a new Zig NEWS.
This is a long term plan as Zine itself is still very much alpha software, but now you know the direction I'm headed towards.
In the meantime I've disabled new email signups on Zig NEWS, which means that only existing accounts will be able to login using an email address. New users will have to use GitHub to signup for a new account.
That said, if you're reading this and you don't have (nor want) a GitHub account, ping me at loris@zig.news and I'll send you and invite that will allow you to sign up with an email address.
Top comments (3)
Does this mean that "zig.new" will disappear, or become something else because there are also good things? Suggestion: include the Zig version number, as some documents no longer work in "0.11.x and higher."
That's a good suggestion, thank you. It will take a while before I start working on a new Zig NEWS though :^)
I forgot that the online translator might have access to the page as it currently does.