Bonfire Social 1.0.5 is out! 🔥
Archipelago mode means instead of open federation (connect to everyone, then play whack-a-mole blocking bad actors), you can now choose to federate *only* with a hand-picked allow-list of trusted people or servers. Communities can link up into an "archipelago" of like-minded "islands" with shared rules, ideal for tight-knit groups, neighbourhoods, assemblies, co-ops, or orgs that want to connect with each other but not necessarily the whole internet.
We also added new admin throughput controls as our latest take on "calm empowerment": simple defaults first, curated overrides next, and full advanced control behind an explicit gesture. In practice, you can keep a busy instance responsive by picking a speed preset, prioritising certain kinds of activity, or fine-tuning each background task queue, no config files or restarts needed.
Also new in 1.0.5:
- Faster search, now powered by Sonic
- Broadcast announcements to everyone on your instance
- Embeddable widgets: put your pinned posts on any website
- PGP-encrypted system emails
- Plus lots of improvements and fixes (federation, polls, media, accessibility, mobile)
Blog post and changelog: bonfirenetworks.org/posts/bo...
