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First time heard of irccloud today and I was interested since I've been running cheap-o VPS server mainly for irssi for past few years and this seemed like good

First time heard of irccloud today and I was interested since I've been running cheap-o VPS server mainly for irssi for past few years and this seemed like good alternative, but with quick testing this isn't a solid product. First problem I had is the same as every single cloud platform for stuff we have on desktop already (like cloud IDEs) why can't I customize things? Why can't I do simple stuff like hide my channel list/tree? I saw someone asked this feature via Twitter 2 years ago and Irccloud account replied "request accepted" or something and still nothing. Second more serious issue is chat history. It simply doesn't transfer from one device to next. If I have it open in one machine and open it on another the last instance will lose ALL latest chat history (in my testing at lest 30 minutes worth). This to me breaks the whole concept, you have no product. Whole point of this service is to provide easy access to the same IRC instance from anywhere, but if there is no chat history/log it doesn't provide that, it would be the same if I just joined with another client which I can do for free from multitude of different web based IRC clients. It's cool that you try to improve IRC, but first you really should probably get your product in working order.

aristidb 11y ago
Click "Load more backlog" and you will see the shared chat history. You can also download your chat history as a ZIP file, I think.
- 746F7475 11y ago
  Loading more backlog doesn't seem to be doing anything, maybe if there is no new messages? But at least it doesn't populate missing messages in the between. And what is the point of having to download and extract logs from a zip file? That's not good UX. My friends and I are completely baffled that this MOST basic feature doesn't work as expect. Here is how it should work: I log in at home and I get full history of the channel (or as much as they keep, but at least last 24 hours), so I can see what's been going on. Then I leave for work (I leave my client open at home) and during commute I might popin and see what is going on, again I should get full history regardless what has happened while I was gone (or if nothing had happened). Then I get to work and again I should get full history of all messages and all these clients should get updated history whenever there are new messages.
  - shawnz 11y ago
    > Here is how it should work: I log in at home and I get full history of the channel (or as much as they keep, but at least last 24 hours), so I can see what's been going on. Then I leave for work (I leave my client open at home) and during commute I might popin and see what is going on, again I should get full history regardless what has happened while I was gone (or if nothing had happened). Then I get to work and again I should get full history of all messages and all these clients should get updated history whenever there are new messages. I use IRCCloud every day and this is exactly how it works. History is shared between devices and is still collected even when you're not online. I'm not sure why it wasn't working for you.
    - 746F7475 11y ago
      Only thing I can think of is that they track your IP and won't send the history if you have two instances from the same IP address. But I don't quite get why they would do that. But we'll see, I'm willing to give it the 7 day trial and see if it's workable. There also seems to be python lib for it, so if the chat history works itself out I could write my own cli/gui solution and get rid of the channel list/tree thing
      - 0xFFC 11y ago
        >Only thing I can think of is that they track your IP and won't send the history if you have two instances from the same IP address. But I don't quite get why they would do that. That is not the case.there is something funny going on with his/her client. I use ircloud for past 6 month and it is excellent.I always use it from home which is basically a one ip address shared between 4,5 device.and I always can load my message from different devices.
        746F7475 11y ago
        Just now I tried to connect with my phone (iOS) and I can get to the channel, but I can not see anything that happened since last evening (when I first tested the app out). I can see the log before (15:30 on Sunday), but nothing from then on (I moved to desktop) until now (7:45 on Monday morning). Thats over 12 hours of missing logs and I can't find a button that would load more logs and swiping directions doesn't load either. I can't check on browser because for some reason (I'm guessing corporate proxy) the site doesn't load, but I'm not really holding my breath. So far this product doesn't really provide me any value over free solutions on the go and at home/work changing between machines just ssh-ing to my ircbox and attaching to irssi session seems more reliable.
jwheare2 11y ago
As a web app, it's actually a lot easier to make modifications than desktop software, without needing an unwieldy encyclopaedia of settings checkboxes. For things that are common requests, we work on adding appropriate settings, but it's impossible to give everyone exactly what they want, so custom user stylesheets and scripts are generally the answer. Check out https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/irccloud https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/irccloud for some examples, have a look on our wiki: https://github.com/irccloud/irccloud-tools/wiki https://github.com/irccloud/irccloud-tools/wiki or join our #themes channel on irc.irccloud.com for info and help on customising the ui. Often, the best community extensions get integrated into the app, but we're still a small team so it can take time :)
jwheare2 11y ago
The issue of the missing chat history is actually a rare bug we have at the moment combined with bad timing. When we're under heavy load (e.g. Freenode is netsplitting) our cache can get backed up. The cache is where your logs are served from when you reconnect a client. At the moment we don't do a good job of detecting a slow cache and re-requesting from the primary log storage, but we're working on a fix for that, as well as improving cache performance so it doesn't get backed up as much. It just so happened that there was a large split on Freenode earlier today, around the time you posted this message.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  Your systems have to be seriously fucked up if freenode netsplitting causes "heavy load" this is super easy to parse text data we're talking about. Edit: 4 downvotes but nobody interested in explaining why it makes sense for freenode netsplits to break the entirety of irccloud (which they do, regularly).
  - cmrdporcupine 11y ago
    My guess is you're being downvoted for profanity and negativity, nothing about technical explanations. Try rephrasing your question in a way that the parent is more likely to respond to.
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      >My guess is you're being downvoted for profanity and negativity, nothing about technical explanations. The negativity is very well deserved, shit code is shit code. IRCCloud is a service with less than 200k registered users (being optimistic here, realistically the number is closer to 143578) out of which maybe 10% are active (that's being super optimistic too) so that brings us to about 20k users. With ~20k connected users the service can barely manage to remain operational when any of the bigger networks experience netsplits, which happens all the time. IRC networks are constantly getting DDoSd. If their service can't even deal with normal everyday load, that's a sign of serious issues. The only conclusion is that IRCCloud must be very badly implemented and suffers from serious technical deficiencies, I believe "fucked up" is appropriate here. This isn't a daycare, if someone finds "fuck" offensive they should probably just pull out their ethernet cord.

aristidb 11y ago

Click "Load more backlog" and you will see the shared chat history. You can also download your chat history as a ZIP file, I think.

746F7475 11y ago
Loading more backlog doesn't seem to be doing anything, maybe if there is no new messages? But at least it doesn't populate missing messages in the between. And what is the point of having to download and extract logs from a zip file? That's not good UX. My friends and I are completely baffled that this MOST basic feature doesn't work as expect. Here is how it should work: I log in at home and I get full history of the channel (or as much as they keep, but at least last 24 hours), so I can see what's been going on. Then I leave for work (I leave my client open at home) and during commute I might popin and see what is going on, again I should get full history regardless what has happened while I was gone (or if nothing had happened). Then I get to work and again I should get full history of all messages and all these clients should get updated history whenever there are new messages.
- shawnz 11y ago
  > Here is how it should work: I log in at home and I get full history of the channel (or as much as they keep, but at least last 24 hours), so I can see what's been going on. Then I leave for work (I leave my client open at home) and during commute I might popin and see what is going on, again I should get full history regardless what has happened while I was gone (or if nothing had happened). Then I get to work and again I should get full history of all messages and all these clients should get updated history whenever there are new messages. I use IRCCloud every day and this is exactly how it works. History is shared between devices and is still collected even when you're not online. I'm not sure why it wasn't working for you.
  - 746F7475 11y ago
    Only thing I can think of is that they track your IP and won't send the history if you have two instances from the same IP address. But I don't quite get why they would do that. But we'll see, I'm willing to give it the 7 day trial and see if it's workable. There also seems to be python lib for it, so if the chat history works itself out I could write my own cli/gui solution and get rid of the channel list/tree thing
    - 0xFFC 11y ago
      >Only thing I can think of is that they track your IP and won't send the history if you have two instances from the same IP address. But I don't quite get why they would do that. That is not the case.there is something funny going on with his/her client. I use ircloud for past 6 month and it is excellent.I always use it from home which is basically a one ip address shared between 4,5 device.and I always can load my message from different devices.
      - 746F7475 11y ago
        Just now I tried to connect with my phone (iOS) and I can get to the channel, but I can not see anything that happened since last evening (when I first tested the app out). I can see the log before (15:30 on Sunday), but nothing from then on (I moved to desktop) until now (7:45 on Monday morning). Thats over 12 hours of missing logs and I can't find a button that would load more logs and swiping directions doesn't load either. I can't check on browser because for some reason (I'm guessing corporate proxy) the site doesn't load, but I'm not really holding my breath. So far this product doesn't really provide me any value over free solutions on the go and at home/work changing between machines just ssh-ing to my ircbox and attaching to irssi session seems more reliable.

jwheare2 11y ago

As a web app, it's actually a lot easier to make modifications than desktop software, without needing an unwieldy encyclopaedia of settings checkboxes. For things that are common requests, we work on adding appropriate settings, but it's impossible to give everyone exactly what they want, so custom user stylesheets and scripts are generally the answer. Check out https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/irccloud https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/irccloud for some examples, have a look on our wiki: https://github.com/irccloud/irccloud-tools/wiki https://github.com/irccloud/irccloud-tools/wiki or join our #themes channel on irc.irccloud.com for info and help on customising the ui. Often, the best community extensions get integrated into the app, but we're still a small team so it can take time :)

jwheare2 11y ago

The issue of the missing chat history is actually a rare bug we have at the moment combined with bad timing. When we're under heavy load (e.g. Freenode is netsplitting) our cache can get backed up. The cache is where your logs are served from when you reconnect a client. At the moment we don't do a good job of detecting a slow cache and re-requesting from the primary log storage, but we're working on a fix for that, as well as improving cache performance so it doesn't get backed up as much. It just so happened that there was a large split on Freenode earlier today, around the time you posted this message.

ryanlol 11y ago
Your systems have to be seriously fucked up if freenode netsplitting causes "heavy load" this is super easy to parse text data we're talking about. Edit: 4 downvotes but nobody interested in explaining why it makes sense for freenode netsplits to break the entirety of irccloud (which they do, regularly).
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  My guess is you're being downvoted for profanity and negativity, nothing about technical explanations. Try rephrasing your question in a way that the parent is more likely to respond to.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    >My guess is you're being downvoted for profanity and negativity, nothing about technical explanations. The negativity is very well deserved, shit code is shit code. IRCCloud is a service with less than 200k registered users (being optimistic here, realistically the number is closer to 143578) out of which maybe 10% are active (that's being super optimistic too) so that brings us to about 20k users. With ~20k connected users the service can barely manage to remain operational when any of the bigger networks experience netsplits, which happens all the time. IRC networks are constantly getting DDoSd. If their service can't even deal with normal everyday load, that's a sign of serious issues. The only conclusion is that IRCCloud must be very badly implemented and suffers from serious technical deficiencies, I believe "fucked up" is appropriate here. This isn't a daycare, if someone finds "fuck" offensive they should probably just pull out their ethernet cord.