{"id":357,"date":"2015-03-01T19:37:12","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T19:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/blog\/?p=357"},"modified":"2015-03-01T19:37:12","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T19:37:12","slug":"hermes-a-textboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/blog\/2015\/03\/01\/hermes-a-textboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Hermes – A Textboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internetless in London<\/h3>\n

Something strange happens when you’re suddenly disconnected from the Internet for a long period of time: You find other things to do. After cleaning the bathroom and tidying my room twice, beating some video games on my backlog, and somehow losing offline access to Spotify (thanks Spotify), it was time for something useful. It was time to watch a lot of Japanese drama.<\/p>\n

I’d already watched\u00a0Densha Otoko<\/em><\/a> before, but I remembered it being a particularly fun romantic romp, incorporating Japanese internet culture into the plot as a major driving force. Amazingly, it’s based on a true story. Well, as true as a story from the Internet can be. The plot revolves a nerd called Yamada, who is far more comfortable in the company of his excessive collection of anime figures than around people. One fateful evening\u00a0on the way back from an\u00a0otaku<\/em>\u00a0themed event, Yamada encounters a young woman being harassed by a drunk passenger. Mustering all of his courage, he steps in and promptly gets beaten up by the drunk. Fortunately, help arrives and Yamada is saved. The young woman asks for Yamada’s address so she can send him a thank you present.<\/p>\n

Once home, Yamada leaps on to his favourite Internet\u00a0textboard<\/em>, Aladdin Channel, and writes a post describing his experience and asking for advice. The plot continues with Yamada, dubbed the Train Man (Densha Otoko<\/em>) by the textboard, putting Aladdin Channel’s advice into action,\u00a0and attempting to win the woman’s heart.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0<\/em>watching the show, I figured I could do something productive at the same time. Hermes<\/em> is my first attempt at a proper, fully-featured Django application. Of course, Hermes<\/em> is a textboard.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What’s a textboard?<\/h3>\n

If you’ve ever been on an Internet forum, you’re already familiar with a different\u00a0version of the textboard. Textboards are piece of software that allow an administrator to create a number of boards<\/em>, on which users can post threads<\/em> and replies to those threads. The biggest textboard out there is 2channel<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(NSFW), on which the original ‘real life’ Densha Otoko<\/em> story was posted. It boasts over 600 boards covering a huge range of topics, and a healthy user base.<\/p>\n

With textboards, there are two main differences from your standard forum software:<\/p>\n