What is Camphouse?

Camphouse is a simple, open-source, and self-hosted social media platform. It is designed to be easy to use and easy to deploy. It is built with Node.js, MongoDB, and Vue.js. It was originally called Aqurilla but was renamed to Camphouse in 2023.

How did Camphouse come to be?

Camphouse was originally created by a friend of mine for someone he knew who wanted to make a social media platform. He asked me to help him with it, and I agreed. We started working on it in 2022, and it was initially called Aqurilla. However, after some time, we had a falling out with the person who wanted it, and we decided to rename it to Camphouse. We continued working on it and eventually released it as an open-source project in 2023.

The Motivation Behind Camphouse

The primary motivation for creating Camphouse was purely for fun. My friend and I wanted to build something that included features like direct messages (DMs) and group chats. We had no intentions of creating the next Facebook or Twitter; we just wanted to build something simple and enjoyable that we could host ourselves.

Technological Choices

We chose Node.js because both my friend and I specialize in it. For the database, we opted for MongoDB because it was the easiest way to handle the data we wanted to store. However, this choice has presented some challenges, such as difficulty with migrations. For the frontend, we selected Vue.js because we wanted the application to be reactive and easily manageable within a single Docker container.

Is Camphouse good?

No, from the start we knew that what we were building was not going to be the next Facebook or Twitter. We just wanted to build something simple and easy to use that we could host ourselves. We have no plans to monetize it, and we have no plans to make it into a big thing. We just want to keep it simple and fun and something we could learn from.

Why open-source?

We decided to open-source Camphouse as a way to let others use the project as a reference or as a starting point for their own projects. While it isn't the best code, we think in the time we have spent on it only being a few months, it can serve as a reference for others.

Conclusion

Camphouse is a testament to what can be achieved with a bit of curiosity and a lot of enthusiasm. While it may not be the most polished or feature-rich social media platform, it embodies the spirit of open-source: learning, sharing, and collaborating. We hope that others can learn from our project, contribute to it, and perhaps use it as a stepping stone for their own ideas.