Web · Live
Temanala
A place to write stories and get things off your chest online, anonymously if you want, with full control over who can read them.
Why it matters
What makes it stand out.
A safe place to write
Writers can stay anonymous and decide for themselves whether a piece is read by the public, by close friends or by no one.
Live and ready to try
Temanala is open to everyone. You can sign up, write and see for yourself how the product works.
Run like a real product
Nightly backups, alerts when the service has trouble, rate limiting, and a reporting and moderation flow are already in place.
Data under its own control
The database and uploaded files sit on a self-managed server instead of a third-party service.
The problem
Many people want to write down what they have been holding in, but social media is too noisy and too tied to identity. Writing there means being read by people you did not intend.
Who it is for
Anyone who wants to write about a person, a loss, life or themselves, and wants to choose whether it is read by the public, by close friends or by no one.
Key features
Write with or without a name
A piece can be published anonymously, so the story is separated from the identity of its author.
Three levels of visibility
Each piece can be public, for close friends only, or private.
A close friends list
Writers decide who is on their close friends list. The relationship is one-way, so no mutual approval is needed.
Quiet interaction
Likes, reposts, comments and notifications, without an algorithm pushing for volume.
Reporting and moderation
Readers can report a piece or a comment, and admins review reports on a dedicated page.
Verified accounts
Sign-up with email verification and password recovery through an emailed link.
The same approach can be adapted for
- Community platforms with user-generated content
- Internal journals or forums with privacy levels
- Social apps with reporting and moderation
Architecture
Temanala has two parts. The front end is a Next.js application deployed on Vercel. The back end is an API written with Hono and Prisma on PostgreSQL, running on a VPS with Docker Compose behind nginx.
That split lets public pages be rendered on the server and indexed by search engines, while data and uploaded files stay on a self-managed server.
The repository also contains a Flutter Android app that wraps the site. It has not been released on an app store.
Implementation details
Visibility as two flags. Public, close friends and private are stored as two booleans instead of one choice column. Pieces written before close friends existed keep their meaning without a data migration.
One-command deploy. A single script backs up the database, uploads the code, rebuilds, applies schema changes and restarts the service.
Backups that actually leave the server. Nightly backups are copied to another machine on a schedule, so losing the server does not mean losing the data.
Rate limiting in two places. nginx throttles request floods, and the API counts attempts per action for things like sign-in and registration.
Strict security headers. The site sends a Content Security Policy and refuses to be displayed inside another site’s frame. That is why this page links to the application instead of embedding it.
End-to-end smoke test. A script exercises the API against an empty test database to confirm the main flows still work before a deploy.
What can be verified
- Live and publicly reachable at temanala.vercel.app.
- The database and uploaded images are backed up nightly and kept for 14 days.
- The server sends an alert email when the API stops responding or the disk is nearly full.
- The source code is private.
Screenshots
