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My Public Inbox

Ben Halpern on February 23, 2021

I'm going to pin this post to the top of my profile so there's a place for anyone to publicly ask me a question, and I'll do my best to reply when I can.

I'm happy to offer advice primarily on the intersection of software, entrepreneurship and career.

Happy coding!

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George Nance

How did you grow enough of a following to launch a social network? Any advice for someone who wants to do the same?

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Lorenzo

Yes, can you please give us advice about how to grow an audience as a dev?

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Ben Halpern

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't stop working on the project for 10 years, even if traction took forever. Then I methodically worked on content creation and observing what stuck and could lead to further opportunities. It was years of growing on Twitter before even typing rails new for what became DEV.

Giving myself the room to do a lot of observing while methodically building helped ensure some amount of success. But it's also an area that combines several different skillsets of mine.

FWIW it's going to be way easier for folks to build from scratch on Forem (the extraction from DEV we're working hard on).... We'll soon launch a Forem app which will act as a discovery mechanism for independent Forem social networks hosted in a distributed way, but discoverable through one app.... It's going to be really really cool.

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Syed Faraaz Ahmad

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't stop working on the project for 10 years

You must have had exceptional belief in DEV community then

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Lorenzo • Edited

Thanks for answering!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

You must have had exceptional belief in DEV community then

I had belief in my own interest in seeing an improvement in online communities. My sense was that I wouldn't get bored of trying to help because I really cared. So with that in mind I also promised myself I wouldn't give up.

In prior ventures I'd either gotten bored or given up primarily because I either didn't truly care about the mission deep down, or got involved with people I didn't like or respect as founders and people. I made sure with this venture to solve for some of those fundamentals early on and let the success come with patience.

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Elena Williams

Sorry if I missed it, but how many years has it been (since the 10-year stop watch started, anathem-style)?

My snooping suggests ... 8-ish? Though this could be completely misguided.

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Yuki Kimoto

Thanks for your public inbox. I'm searching for the way to communicated with people.

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Ben Halpern

🙂

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Christopher Wray

Do you now make enough money to support yourself with DEV?

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Ben Halpern

DEV (Forem) was once a ramen story (not paying ourselves, running out of money etc)...

But now the company is pretty well funded and building a very sustainable business model around hosting Forems.

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Christopher Wray

Awesome 👏

Congratulations. I will do my best to read that other article.

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Iain Freestone • Edited

Hi Ben, is there any way to get analytics on a post made to dev.to? The number of views figures are nice to see but would love to be able to track where the visitors came from.

Thanks for the great work on this site.

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Temani Afif

Hi Ben, I hope you don't mind I used your avatar to create a Loader meme: dev.to/afif/i-made-100-more-css-lo... ?

PS: You may have missed my ping so I am writing you here.
Cheers!

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Ben Halpern

Sorry I saw it, but didn't react. I love it 😅.

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Galtzo • Edited

Are you familiar with the concept of "invariants"? It is a query you write with SQL, or via ActiveRecord, that should have a specific count result, usually 0.
For example, the count of users with invalid data should be zero.

I have no idea how my Forem account broke, though I suspect it was related to when my Dev.to account was deleted/banned and accused of being a bot.

Even since then my Dev.to access has worked, but I can't login to Forem, and the reset password, just goes in circles, never showing an error, but also never actually resetting my password. I'm guessing it is because user.save is returning false.

Might be worthwhile having an invariant that check for users with a particular type of data characteristic, like my Forem account currently has, to make sure they are able to use the product.
Account is peter dot boling at gmail dot com.

Cheers!

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galtzo profile image
Galtzo • Edited

I am unable to sign up for an account on Forem. I am unable to login to Forem. I am unable to request a password reset on Forem. When you accidentally deleted my dev.to account, it must have banned me on Forem also. Is this something that can be resolved? I would ask support, but they lied to me (or you did, still unclear?) about the manner in which my account was deleted, so I am not comfortable messaging them again. You have a public face, so I'm inclined to believe your explanations over theirs.

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Galtzo • Edited

Shortly after posting that last comment I got an email that my Forem account had been locked due to too many failed login attempts. I used the link to unlock my account. I used the "forgot password" link to request a reset password link, and the email did actually come through! But upon attempting to set a new password, I was dumped back into the same cycle. Submitting the form clears it, and displays no messages. Logging in, in the hope that the reset might have worked, does the same. No error message. Just reloads the login form. Please unlock my account (for real this time)!

In case you missed it in my first message, I suspect that my user record is unable to be saved, due to some invalid state.

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Max Phillips

Hi Ben, I read the manifesto essay for Forem recently and was quite excited to see so many of the issues with the current state of the internet expressed so eloquently :)

I was wondering if you have any advice for building successful business models for open source software?

Thanks for starting this, I'm excited to see more community focused software in the future!

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Ben Halpern

I was wondering if you have any advice for building successful business models for open source software?

Pay a lot of attention to what is established and working (read up on open core), but merge that with an exploration of what hasn’t been tried in the space you’re in — what is the unique way you’ll apply some good established ideas?

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Max Phillips

Thanks for the reply! I hadn't heard of open core I'll read up on that. I'm currently studying arts and social media at university, and its been very interesting to see how the design choices made by platforms are impacting their use (although also a bit maddening at times).

I think Forem's community-first approach is definitely the right track to be on. The values of open source seem to be pretty well aligned with the direction social media should be taking, though its surprising how rarely open source is considered as an option for that sort of every-day-person-facing software.

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krishna kakade

Hello Ben
i hope you know me a little bit about
but still I am krishna kakade. Currently I am in my last year of computer science and engineering from India and mostly working in web development related technologies. and i am interested in joining the devto/forem frontend development team as fresher student because i love to write blogs for forem and also i would to like to join core development team of forem and i also have to learn ruby and rails but i will learn it i can join within next 15 days you can also check my personal website here:- krishnadevz.github.io
and resume here :
I am ready to work hard and consistently for the betterment of the company's products.
thank you
have a nice day
kind regards
krishna kakade

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Ben Halpern

Would you be thinking of this as an internship/apprenticeship sort of opportunity?

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krishna kakade • Edited

Yes and also I am about too graduate in next two months thank you 😊

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krishna kakade

any updates ?

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krishnakakade profile image
krishna kakade

?

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Alexander Isora 🦄

hi Ben. i'm a big fan of your meme Monday threads 🤓

check out what these guys are doing: twitter.com/johnrushx/status/16615...
they are building a social network. 20 strangers gathered together to build a web app.

perhaps you to join as a chief memologist 🙂

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Ben Halpern

Where's the discord link? I might be missing something, but I'm curious :)

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Alexander Isora 🦄

it is discord.gg/78pkDrAW
then navigate to the "DevHunt" channel.

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Arthur Coudouy

Hi Ben! I scheduled my first post today and as I'm often traveling, I'm not sure which timezone is the sheduler using (for some context, even my computer is not on the right timezone right now 😂). Can you help? Thanks!

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Arthur Coudouy

Hey @ben, not sure if you saw my message! Cheers

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Ben Halpern

I’m not sure off the top of my head but I believe it’s your local time based on the browser.

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AbuTaherMuhammad

My parants said, "don't do comment often, Try to listen people".
Now seniors are saying,

Image description

Bro, I'm confused. Having a lot of conflicts! What's your openion?

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Olivier Guimbal

Have you started many projects that could become companies to you ? Which proportion of your ideas did you actually start writing code for ?
If so, what was your reciepe to know if a project is worth it ?
And how would you know when persistence on a project becomes obstination, and that it is time to abandon it ?

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Ben Halpern
  1. Yes, by personality and interests I'm not company company company, I really appreciate non-commercial initiatives, but generally my creative impulse is fiddling on stuff that could become companies.
  2. In the past: like 90%. I'm out of the "side project" phase of my life so I can dedicate my time to building the company, but in the past I've not hesitated to write a little code just to even tease out my excitement for the project.
  3. Having a clear path to actual distribution and customer growth is probably the biggest thing. If it's unclear who the hell might wind up actually adopting it, it's hard to pursue.
  4. I think if there is no path to adoption/distribution it may be worth abandoning, but a huge breakthrough for me with DEV was just deciding not to abandon it as a rule. So I selected something I knew would keep my personal interest even if it took a long time to reach adoption. So the first year+ was extremely methodical laying of the groundwork for some future growth.
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Oleg • Edited

dev.to utilizes gamification elements to greatly engage community. Do you think this might work for open source project contributing? XP for merged PRs, closed issues, specific issues as Challenges, also Leaderboard etc...

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Ben Halpern

I think it could, but has to be genuinely fun and rewarding. Can't just be grinding.

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GrahamTheDev

Hi Ben

I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying interacting with the community you, Jess etc. have built.

I have 2 questions:-

  1. Is there anything on the roadmap to make the editor better. Things like selecting text to add bold etc. or better yet a list of the liquid tags that you can click to insert a template for them as I am constantly having to look them up as a new member!

    1. How do you select people for the podcast? I was interested in this post advertising an upcoming podcast on accessibility but don't know what you all want to see before considering someone to talk on a subject! (and I suppose the third question is has the podcast gone ahead with a different title as I can't find it!)

Once again thanks for a great platform!

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GrahamTheDev

p.s. edit seems to be broken for me the last couple of days so obviously those should be numbered 1 and 2 🤣🤣

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Bobby Iliev

No questions at the moment, but just wanted to say thank you for the great platform!

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Ken Savage

Ugg can't believe I'm a noob once again in a new field asking noob questions.
Here goes...
Hey Ben, I consider myself an intermediate html/css coder (learned the basics back in 1999 and had some front end jobs 1999-2005 before getting into marketing).

I've hired a few devs to help me make some projects but I want to learn to code up my own CRUD apps. I'm real good marketing them but not so much yet building them.

I'm kinda turned on by the JS/React/Node vibe. Started taking a course at freecodecamp.
Besides reading articles from dev.to what else should I be using to learn my way into the semi-literate javascript world?
Thx!

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Ben Halpern

I'd consider signing up for a structured course of some kind, maybe video, or something.

I transitioned from learning the basics of HTML back in the day to full-fledged software development in this way.

Even if it isn't going to be your specialty, you may want to consider also adding a course on the basics of programming in a generalist language like Python or Ruby just to make sure you're thinking about programming and not just hacking your way through webdev where it's easier to "cheat" because you're sort of technical enough. At least for me, I needed to get a bit further from my comfort zone to really have the fundamentals stick.

Does that make sense?

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Coderslang: Become a Software Engineer

Hey Ben! Thank you for this AMA.

Is there an ETA for the first stable/public release of Forem?

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Ben Halpern

We've been hesitant to give a date on some of this because there's been a lot of discovery needed on both stability of the hosting options while at the same time ironing out all the edge cases where historically with DEV we've been able to dip into a coding environment and for this to run effectively it shouldn't need that. With that being said, things are getting a little clearer:

The first stamped down supported self-hosted option. I don't know exactly when the release will be, but we're pretty close here... Expect an ETA soon. I don't want to make any promises but we're finally seeing the finish line.

For our hosted version, Forem Cloud, while it's stable for us, the thing we need to work out is orchestration so we can effectively automate the management of n number of Forems. This will come in the second half of this year.

Thanks for your patience! Our end goals are incredibly ambitious and Forem is going to change the Internet!

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Coderslang: Become a Software Engineer

Thank you, Ben! Looking forward to the release.

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Manu Miu

Hey Ben,
Thank you so much for creating this amazing dev community! I highly appreciate all your sweat and tears you've put into building it!

In your comment here you're saying that you're "building a very sustainable business model around hosting Forems".

May I ask what your business model is? So how do you make money (or what are your future plans to make money) with dev.to?

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Hiro

Hi Ben. Hope you are doing well.

I am enthusiastic about becoming a member of CodeNewbie. What is the process for joining the team?
If possible, how can I join a certain organization on the dev.to?

Thanks in advance.
Codenerd

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smit-agravat

I am a mechanical engineer, I tried a lot to find a good job but i think I choose wrong path, now trying to change my path i was always interested about computers i learned programming along with my college course i know python, HTML, css, javascript, Typescript, angular and now started learning React i want to become a front-end developer is there any chance of my success because i don't have degree in computer science or Information technology and if there is a chance then can i get a job as intern because I think i know stuff but in real world things are different and maybe I need little bit of experience of industry..... Thank you.

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alesbe profile image
alesbe

Hi! I don't know if you still check this public inbox, but I'll throw my question! 🙌

How something like Dev.to / Forem sustains itself without any ads or required payments? I've seen a lot of projects like this one and always wondered how they do it.

Keep up the good work! I've discovered dev.to a few weeks ago and I'm loving it!

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Emanuele Bartolesi

I would like to create a dashboard with statistics for dev.to and some recommendation based on AI.
Of course, I need to get the information for all posts on dev.to.
I didn't find an endpoint on the API, do you know how I can retrieve all contents?

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Venkatesh KL

Hey @ben,
Thanks for the awesome platform. I have 2 queries for you

  1. I have configured my following tags & the feed criteria pretty heavily. After time flew, I am finding it hard to make the changes to make it more relevant. Is there a way to reset my configuration on tags? It would be super helpful if there's an option.
  2. Please share any nice article with tips on configuring tags. I would like to configure once it's reset 😁
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Sean Allin Newell

How's the fam?

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Ben Halpern

I haven't been able to see most of my family in over a year (Canadian), but generally doing pretty well. I'm very grateful for the Canadian government assistance through the pandemic for the folks in my family who have needed it.

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Elsa

Hi👋

I have a doubt Ben.
I know you are he co-founder of Forem

Do you work in Forem only, or in another company?
Because Forem is completely free for users.
Then how do you make money?

So I asked, there is nothing wrong with what I asked.

Forgive me if I heard wrong

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FOLASAYO SAMUEL OLAYEMI

Hello friend.
Can I privately chat you?

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Ben Halpern • Edited

Sure, email me?

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saint_vandora profile image
FOLASAYO SAMUEL OLAYEMI

Yes.
Here is my email below
folasayosamuelolayemi@gmail.com

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saint_vandora profile image
FOLASAYO SAMUEL OLAYEMI

Big chief, I will appreciate it if you can also help in sharing and liking this article:
dev.to/nluxai/unlock-the-future-yo...

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DariusPirvulescu

Hi Ben,
Hope you're doing great. Thank you for opening this line inbox.

Your personal website is unique and special. I'm love it and keep it in mind as a inspo for when I will create mine (future date not specified).
I sometimes show it to people when we talk about personal websites, but lately I noticed that it's down.

What is happening? Did it create a black hole and swallow its host? Did it consume all the mobile data in the world?
And most important, will it be back?

Cheers,
Darius

P.S. the website in question: benhalpern.com/

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Ben Halpern

Yeah, I messed up something with DNS and haven't gotten around to fixing it yet 😩

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Posandu

Just wondering how many notifications per day you get on DEV?

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Memphis.dev team

Hey Ben!
i would love to discuss with you about creating dev-community foundations and maybe interest you to take a look on our OS project on Github :)
github.com/Memphis-OS

please contact me if you can - saar.c@memphis.dev

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Mitch Jackson

Thanks for bringing us dev.to!

How do you like your coffee? Pour-over, french press, keurig? Milk or sugar? Light, medium or dark roast?

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Ben Halpern

I think I prefer medium roast, but as I don't have a strong preference, I like to mix things up. My favorite coffee treat is a good artisan latte on a cool fall day (like, I don't know what exactly I mean by "artisan", but I used to live in Brooklyn, which is full of great takes on coffee) but too many lattes are not great on the ole waistline, so I usually take my coffee black.

My wife and I got this Jura machine as a wedding gift and it is really amazing. Probably not something we'd have ordinarily budgeted for.

coffee

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Tawhid

Hey man.Hope you are doing great.I sent you an email from tawhidbinomar@gmail.com .
Care to check it out?

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Flavius

How are you doing?

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007hyno profile image
Paras Rawat • Edited

How do u create this beautiful social media website like what do u use for Front_End , Back_End and Data_Base?
This website inspires me a lot to build my website like this.😊
Inspirational 😇😇

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Grocker • Edited

I'm really curious can you name me one product that is some how popular in the Crypto space and that has absolutely nothing to do with gambling and is based on web3? And what is your opinion on web3?

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Zikitel22

What would be the topic you want to discuss after 5th+ beer with fellow dev guys :))

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rain_37 profile image
Rain

Hi guy, site link in your profile is broken.

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Bek Brace

What's your favorite food ?

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Emanuele Bartolesi

how many active (or not) users has dev.to at the moment?

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Sean Allin Newell • Edited

Do you think companies would ever choose a Forem instance over their own blog attached to their wordpress site?

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Andrew (he/him)

What advice do you have for an American moving to Canada?

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marcellothearcane

What's the roadmap for moderation? There's some things I'd like to see!

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Ben Halpern

We will have a more well-described general roadmap soon. If you want to see something implemented please advocate for it on an issue on GitHub or start a discussion on forem.dev

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Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

Hello Ben, I don't have a question, I just wanted to say thank you.

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Ben Halpern

Thanks for stopping by!

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marthaelax profile image
Angeiͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥͥ

Hi Ben, wondering why did you remove the unicorn and just keeping the heart for reactions?

Did you or someone else wrote an article about that?

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Ben Halpern

We are moving to more customizable reactions, and temporarily removed the unicorn as part of the process.

It will be back soon. We have are currently working on the step to bring it back, and it will be live as soon as we ship.

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Vijay Singh Khatri

Hey @ben

You are amazing with this, I know and well aware of dev.to's journey.

I know your success; Want to have a quick chat with you regarding dev.to

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Akash Deshpande

Love this idea Ben!

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Ben Halpern

Thank you :)

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Miloslav 🏳️‍🌈 🦋 Voloskov

Yo, I can't message you, it just says this:

However it worked on August 22 (my last message).

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lepinekong

Hi Ben,

Github markdown supports Base 64 image, could dev.to also ?

Thansk.

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Ben Halpern

Probably could, if there isn’t an existing issue about this, how about making one?

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Sh Raj

Please notice the thing what I said about jsfiddle embedding here :-

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sh20raj profile image
Sh Raj

You should create a chat option @ben

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Kevin M. Mansour

The Lanuch date of dev.to site .. As I searched in google but did not found any information

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Rahul Jha

I just found out about your website. Pretty freakin' dope. Absolutely love it. ♥️

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TMTP messaging protocol

Are there recommendations/guidelines for building an audience on DEV?

If not, could you draft some?

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Pratyay Banerjee

Hi @ben, could you please give some feedback on this project? Thanks! ^_^

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Gedalya Krycer

Hi Ben!

Is it possible to use the dev.to API to pull account-specific information (page views, reactions, etc) without dealing with CORS?

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PeakDev