The last week has been a busy one, but I've been listening to feedback and have a few of the most requested features live on chainBB.
As always, the beta is available here:
Not sure what chainBB is? Here's a few posts to get you started:
- chainBB.com - a blockchain forum platform for Steem (by @jesta)
- ChainBB - A Review of what may become way bigger than steemit.com (by @cryptoctopus)
- Diversifying My Steemit Experience: In Over My Head With Awesome ChainBB (by @prufarchy)
New forums
Earlier in the week, if you're a chainBB user, you probably noticed the homepage fill up with a ton of new forums. I sifted through all of the suggestions for forums and created as many parent forums and sub-forums as I could fit, and I think it turned out pretty well.
There's a broad set of topics now listed on the homepage. More suggestions have been made since then, and I'm considering those and figuring out the best placement for them as well.
Keep the suggestions coming (as the sidebar suggests), I've been reading the posts and taking notes :)
New Menu Bar
A few days ago I updated the menu bar to start containing the information about the user who is logged in. The goal is for this tiny menu to be very functional on both Desktop and Mobile browsers, which is why it's so compact for the time being.
The menu bar has the following items:
- The chainBB.com link, which brings you to the homepage no matter where you are.
- The "gift" icon appears when you have pending rewards, and won't be there if you don't. More on this below.
- Your user avatar, which if clicked on, drops down to a navigation for quick links regarding your account.
- A checkmark to let you know you have connected to the blockchain.
Claiming Rewards
You can now claim your post and curation rewards directly through chainBB (with your posting key)!
Every minute or so chainBB will now scan your profile to determine if you have pending rewards. If it's found, the small "gift" icon (as shown above) will appear. If you hover over this gift, it will display the rewards you have available to claim, and gives you a nice big button to lay claim to them.
One click and done.
While I still don't have anywhere to display your account balances, being able to claim them as you're surfing the forums is a nice step forward.
Accessing your Account
Next to the rewards indicator, there's a display that shows your user avatar. Clicking on this will give you a link to view your profile as well as a button to sign out with.
These controls used to be over on the left hand column, which has now been removed, and will free up some space for a new navigation which I'm currently working on.
If you are not logged in, the space where your avatar would be is now the "Sign in" button, which works just like the previous iteration and pops up prompting you to get started.
Post Preview Mode
Previewing posts has been requested more than any other specific feature to date. Now there's a purple button on the area you create posts that you can click for a preview.
I choose to do this slightly differently than steemit.com, and not show a live rendering of your post as you're working on it. The reasoning behind this is that I didn't quite know exactly where to put it, and honestly I'm not sure it's really needed. Clicking the preview button will open a popup window showing you the actual rendering of the post as it would appear on chainBB.
For example:
NOTE! To exit the preview mode, there's an "X" in the upper right, OR you can click any of the darkened area to exit, OR you can hit ESCAPE on your keyboard :)
New servers on the way!
I have spent the last 24 hours working on building a new server for the chainBB beta. I'm anticipating switching over to it within the next 24-48 hours.
If you've run into one of those yellow warning messages at the top stating "chainBB is out of sync", that's because we've seen a tremendous surge in steem activity lately, and the public servers Steemit Inc offers have been swamped. I've noticed this happen multiple times over the last week and it really causes some problems when posts don't show up for 10 minutes or so.
So to prevent this from happening again, I just leased a new dedicated server (~1TB SSD storage + 32cores + 96gb RAM) that will serve as the new chainBB API + steemd host. It's processing the blockchain as we speak and building all of the forum indexes, and once finished, I'll begin the migration.
There might be a bit of downtime during this migration as DNS switches over. I'll try to do this in the middle of the night (late night US time, super early EU time) to impact as few people as possible.
The best part about this is that the rewards chainBB has earned are funding this new server :)
More new features on the way
I've got a number of features I'm testing locally right now, a few of which I'm incredibly excited about. I've got a few other projects that need attention today, and I'll be taking the first few days off at the beginning of the next week, so expect another update in about a weeks time!
Thank you
A big thank you to all the users who are using the forums, providing feedback, and helping me track down bugs. An even bigger thank you to all of you that have been helping spread the word about the platform! chainBB over the last few days represent 1% of all posts happening on the Steem blockchain! That's an incredible milestone and we couldn't have done it without everyone chipping in and participating.
is there a food category on chainbb. I frequent that category on Steemit, but can't seem to find it here on the forum.
A food forum! That's a great idea.
Maybe like so:
- Food - Recipes (#recipe, #recipes, #cook, #cooking, ???) - Dining (#restaurants, #restaurant, #dining) - ???Any thoughts on what else category wise we could use to break it down?
These are now live - open to suggestions on what to add to it.
I love what you did! The recipes are so easy to find now. Exploring the category now.
I like the way you have separated the dining from the recipes. That looks perfect to me. I was going to suggest separating by type of food, but I think the way you have done it may allow me to see a post about new foods I might not really be familiar with. Really nice job on the forums.
This. Is. Fricking. Beautiful! thank you
I'm getting a little addicted to chainbb!
I really like the way the chainbb is organized. I can find the post that really interest me much easier than when I'm on Steemit.
Thank you @jesta for creating ChainBB. You are an outstanding Earth being.
Thanks for all your hard work. Better and better everyday.
pages are definitely loading faster. very nice :)
good update ^_^
Would you help me understand the value of using ChainBB? After reading what you shared here and the posts you link to, it seems if I post on ChainBB, my posts are still going to Steemit where they are earning rewards and they have a greater opportunity for discussion because of the ability to remain at the top of ChainBB each time a new comment is posted and because of category sorting?
Sure, I'll give it a shot.
When you post to either chainBB or Steemit, they both submit the Steem blockchain, and are shared on both sites. The steem blockchain is what's generating the post rewards, independent of whatever site they are posted on.
Both chainBB and Steemit have different mechanisms for "surfacing" content (i.e. displaying it to readers). Steemit uses a model that is dependent on upvotes and weighted by the voters, then surfaces the content much like reddit would, where the most weighted/upvoted content gets displayed most prominently. chainBB on the other hand doesn't care how many votes a post gets, and the posts that are displayed at the top of each forum are the posts that have been active the most recently.
With those different mechanisms in place - they both help different kinds of content earn rewards in different ways. Steemit creates a "dog pile" effect, where once it's trending, everyone else jumps on, and helps those big posts earn bigger rewards. chainBB on the other hand keeps surfacing posts that are actually getting comments, which helps the posts with active participation earn rewards.
So while both of these sites are based upon the same set of data, one is focused on surfacing the best content (Steemit) and the other is focusing on surfacing the most active content, by category (chainBB).
thank you for the explanation!
@jerrybanfirld good post gonna start using it myself I think
I will definitely try chainBB.
Couldn't test chainBB until yesterday because I'm on extremely slow internet atm and the connection reliably timed out before anything was displayed. Now it's faster than steemit.com sometimes. Love the UX, love the BB style. @jesta, you have again done incredible work, thank you! Looking forward to making my first post on chainBB.
The initial page load is pretty big and takes a couple seconds, but after that first load, it should be pretty quick.
I need to go through and make that initial load better!
Wow, impressive stuff! I love the layout and design and have been wanting a post preview button since I joined Steemit. I really like how organized the categories and layout is - makes it super easy to find relevant topics. Keep up the great work!
Yes, the layout is more streamlined and seems to have a better way of viewing things.
Any idea if Steemit plans on adding in "groups" or something similar? Like on reddit it is a subreddit, on forum websites it would be a subforum. The way Steemit works, when you search for something it is hard to actually get to that page.
Say you want to look at the beach tags. Typing in beach brings up a bunch of peoples posts, not the actual subsection of beach(or the actual tag "beach"). To get around that I figured out I can just type this
https://steemit.com/trending/beach or https://steemit.com/created/beach or https://steemit.com/hot/beach.
This is very annoying to have to do. The main groups on the right side of the page bring you directly to the tag/section. I hope they can fix that. When someone searches "beach" and there are a lot of posts tagged as the beach category it should take them to https://steemit.com/trending/beach, not a search page with a bunch of posts that may or may not be tagged beach(because it searches for keywords in the title/post itself/tags.
End rant lol! :)
Yep! Steemit Inc is working on what they're calling "Communities", which are ways to allow open/closed post submission groups and moderation, as well as reward sharing mechanisms. They'll be how steemit.com lets you build categories/groups like that.
I'm also planning on integrating these communities into chainBB. Right now, forums are a collection of posts based on tags and authors. This chainBB forum is configured to show posts with the first tag of
#chainbb. But once communities can exist directly on the blockchain, chainBB will also be able to latch onto those collections of posts and build a forum around it.It's going to be a good year for Steem.
@jesta has been great - very engaged and supportive - particularly at accepting and implementing suggestions. I've made a bunch of improvement suggestions and jesta had one of the bigger ones implemented later the same day. Keep it up! #chainBB is looking very promising - let's keep working to improve it! :)
When you update to the communities settings, will it reset all the content on the site since you are currently using tags?
I don't plan on getting rid of tag-based forums, I think they still have some merit.
If someone running a forum that was based on tags decided to swap it to a community based forum, yes, those posts wouldn't display anymore. I think you could just add past posts into the community at that point too.
Who are Steem's major competitors, ie block chain based social media?
Ok Will have to check this chainbb out for myself.
I write about silver. Here is my latest post: https://steemit.com/silver/@hgmsilvergold/if-you-are-a-silver-and-gold-stacker-this-is-for-you
If I may make a suggestion, when you post on chaibBB and it gets uploaded to steemit maybe it can have a chain symbol so people know that is where it was posted. If that is possible.
It is brilliant on the mobile. Just chillin and commenting. And it has better typeface than steemit.
Thanks for making chainbb! It's a very nice way to browse the blockchain and interact with new people, and I've been having tons of fun using it in the last days!
I'm really excited to learn about the features you are teasing about ;) I'm sure it will be great!
can't agree more, good job @jesta
gonna be cool as much effort you put into it
thumbs up :-)
Commenting from ChainBB (as usual!). You're the man, @jesta! ChainBB just keeps getting better. I'm so excited to see what the future holds for the platform!
So if the ChainBB is build on the Steem blockchain, does this drain its capicity?
Also, is there money/Steem/SP/SBD involved or something?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by draining its capacity. ChainBB is built on the STEEM blockchain. Any website like steemit, ChainBB, busy.org, etc., is just a GUI that formats posts on the STEEM blockchain in a user-friendly and visually appealing manner. So yes, money/STEEM/SP/SBD is indeed involved. When you upvote a post on ChainBB, you are broadcasting an upvote of the post to the STEEM blockchain. This upvote can then be seen on steemit, ChainBB, steemd, etc.
Thanks for your quick response :-)
I don't seem to find te same posts on ChainBB as I can find here, why is that?
Any post on the STEEM blockchain can be viewed on ChainBB. @jesta just has the forums set up so not every post is displayed on the front page(s). To jump from steemit to ChainBB and vice versa, use this bookmarklet made by @lukestokes:
https://beta.chainbb.com/chainbb/@lukestokes/steemit-chainbb-bookmarklet-for-chainbb
Whenever you are viewing any post on steemit or ChainBB, simply click on that in the bookmarks bar and you will have the same post on the other website.
well this was certainly an informative thread to read --- never knew there were more sites than Steemit 'built' on Steem's blockchain; my mind is literally blown. Thank you.
There more too: busy.org, esteem.ws and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head.
I don't know what you mean by draining it's capacity, so not sure how to answer. Maybe just explaining a bit will answer your questions though :)
chainBB performs the same actions for users on the Steem blockchain that steemit.com does. It's like the difference between using the outlook vs gmail - they both do email, just differently, yet with the same protocol. Both steemit/chainBB both share the same blockchain, so every action on one is done on the other.
As for money involved - there is a 15% reward beneficiaries split with @chainbb when posting via the site. Steemit.com is 75% to the author and 25% to the curators, while chainBB is 60% to the author, 25% to the curators, and 15% to chainBB. These funds are going to be used to help pay for expenses in building chainBB.
Hope that helps!
PLEASE HELP! https://steemit.com/hack/@jonipilo/alert-to-all-hacked-owners-of-steem-in-this-article
Congrats on the new server, next milestone 10% of all posts on the steem blockchain.
Baby steps haha, maybe 2/3% first ;)
I'm not opposed to explosive growth, but I want to at least get the new server online first haha.
This great, thanks for sharing the updates @jesta. Appreciate your efforts!
You are the man, @jesta !
I've had limited time to really read through longer posts like this, but your projects in particular tend to interest me greatly. I'm going to make a point to set aside your last few posts and read them closely.
You've been certainly busy with chainBB! These new updates look great. Congratulations on the increased popularity, always seems to be good and bad. Good because adoption is growing, bad because that usually means way more work in a shorter period of time. Keep up the great work
Congrats Chainbb and thank you for developing such a good forum, I have been using it for commenting lately, your forum is user-friendly, more importantly, you did listen to feedback and make further improvements! great works !
Thank you for updates , great chainbb team we have..mush respect
Thank you so much @Jesta
Finally joined ChainBB!
Looks so fantastic!
I loved forums back in those days. I love it now even more. :)
Lovely updates.
@jesta - this looks fantastic and the maintenance fee is more than reasonable.
Similar to all the existing forum software/plugins - is there any way to embed a version of this in an existing website? I have several niche websites, adding a forum with steemit incentives would encourage people to spend more time on my website and learn about Steemit too. You could still charge the maintence fee (or perhaps even a slightly higher one for the additional hassle).
Not yet, simply because the project is only about 2 months old.
The goal is to support that hopefully this year. I have a ton of ideas on both free and paid offerings that would let you build forums around the existing communities you have. I'm still in the planning phases for a lot of this so the details are all a bit fuzzy.
Well done. Your commitment to advancing this is real and palpable. Internet 2.0, social media 2.0 etc. This (blockchain) is the disrupting force.
@jesta, I am very excited and excited to see the future that will happen to the platform!
Good job. I love people who are smart enough to be off making millions, but share, teach and improve for all...
I think it would be cool if we could make a Steembay so we can exchange or sell items within our community...
Maybe the spammers would stick to this area.
@watchout2017
Domi
upvote
@jesta how do people get so many upvotes on their posts and comments?
Congrats on the new servers. Keep it up
Impressive stuff! I love post preview button and think that topics are really easy to find in chainbb. One topic that is missing is #spanish. Keep up the great work!
Great work and very interesting layout. I will be checking it out soon.
please upvote,reply,resteem and follow @victorvazco thank you, you're awesome!
thanks for the tools really we all apreciate and from thailand we say hello
I was wondering when reward claiming functionality was coming. Watching this become a completely separate entity from steemit is pretty cool. Great work @jesta.
You are amazing @jesta
Good information and is very helpful. Thank you.
Great work, as always :)
That's a beast of a server. How much does it cost?
Thumbs up for the preview. I missed it :)
Keep on pushing, you are doing excellent job.
Chainbb.com is looking good, I like that you added the preview before posting
This looks AWESOME!!!
It is getting better and better, all for one and one for all! Namaste :)
I made my first post in chainBB one hour ago! :) Wanted to try it out. Very nice work yo have done there @jesta, really like it.
Best solution, much better in this way. Btw I found the Preview button without help ;) Take a look if you have some time at my Pds at the end of the post, lol!
Looking forward to see more nice developments in cjainBB.
Cheers!
Congratulations @jesta!
Your post was mentioned in my hit parade in the following categories:
Your platform is excellent, but can you explain the science of upvotes? I noticed that when I replied to some content in the general forum, I seemed to get 7 upvotes and 39 cents immediately, but in some others it was no different from me posting on steemit. At first I thought I understood how to implement the use of chainbb in my content flow but then as results seemed less consistent, I couldn't deny the benefit and advantage of using it but couldn't quite understand the process behind what I was doing differently or when, why, and how, it would get me desired results.
It's just dependent on who see's the post and decides to vote on it. There's nothing magical that chainBB does different than steemit, besides organizing the content differently. chainBB is designed to highlight active conversations and discussions, which will likely have a better chance at getting votes from the users reading.
I don't think there will ever be any consistency in the rewards you earn as someone posting, since it depends on the other users who read and vote :)
OK. lol. Thanks for clarifying.
Thank you for your efforts!
Wow! Thaks a lot for the update buddy !
Might have to just check it out. Thanks for the info.
more great info
This is great! I didn't realize all the incentives in here. I feel like I found an easter egg in steemit!
Hi.
A question about the payout.
I learned that, for every post from chainbb, author will get only 60% of the payout, am I get it right?
But, from the payout I get today, why do I still get 75% (25% to curator) from the "potential payout" amount shown in Steemit?
For payout that I received yesterday, I even get 90% of the potential payout shown.
All posts mentioned I published them via chainbb.
Do I misunderstand something?
You are correct about the chainBB percent.
The way curation rewards (the 25%) works is somewhat strange, which is probably what's throwing you off. During the first 30 minutes of the post, a portion of the curation rewards are surrendered by the curators to the author. This causes you to earn >75% when posting via via Steemit.com.
I'm not sure how you accomplished that via chainBB though - do you have a specific post as an example? I'm going to guess that the curation and chainBB rewards did come out, but the value may have fluctuated due to the price of Steem changing, and that's what caused the increase.
Hi @jesta
This one, I get 90%
https://steemit.com/chainbb-general/@ygern/hello-to-all-fellow-steemians-from-my-lovely-cutie-niece
More than 80%:
https://steemit.com/chainbb-general/@ygern/they-are-my-trading-mentors-lets-get-prepared-for-the-new-week
and, 75%
https://steemit.com/chainbb-general/@ygern/they-are-my-trading-mentors-lets-get-prepared-for-the-new-week
Seems like I never get anything that is 60%
Hrm, I think there's a display issue on how steemit.com is reporting those payout values. It looks like they aren't showing the benefactor rewards like chainBB earns on those values.
The numbers they show are the values after the split comes out.
I see. Thanks for clarifying :)
wow your the man pal... keep up the amazing work
nice updates. I am new and like the way I can navigate on chainbb.
Seems ineresting :)