3 ms·

The decentralised web is going to live and die by UX, and by the way it's looking so far, it's gonna be mostly the latter. This is a thing with most P2P app ma

The decentralised web is going to live and die by UX, and by the way it's looking so far, it's gonna be mostly the latter. This is a thing with most P2P app makers for some reason — they have a vastly skewed understanding of what a normal user is capable of doing. It's safe to say if your instructions include compiling things, your target audience is not the general public. Heck, I have a P2P app, too (though not a Tumblr replacement: https://getaether.net https://getaether.net), and I worry about having to download an app is too much of a barrier. Which it probably is, compared to what centralised alternatives offer.

stevenicr 8y ago
Maybe an interim step would be to get these things into softalicious, fantistico (if it's still a thing), and similar auto installers that ship with basic cpanel / plesk hosting backends. I believe, and have used the auto installers many times with many different hosts to depoly a quick wordpress install. It's easy to make a few step tutorial to show how to install / launch when using those tools. Could be simple to set some sane defaults as well, like auto update daily, auto backup weekly. Handing over the UX to an auto installer makes the ux easier in some ways, and could also get the necessary scripts, dependencies, DB setups, permissions and more auto handled by the other with experience, and get the package pre-distributed onto thousands of shared hosting environments for easier discovery as well.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  I think there already exists modern versions of those things, where you install a main 'thing' and that thing installs other things for you easily. But installing that first thing is usually the tough part.
  - stevenicr 8y ago
    To be more clear, I am saying that it may be beneficial for some / more of these p2p open source federated decentralized projects to become added into the auto installers that are already out there and installed on thousands of hosting accounts, and will likely be installed automatically on thousands more. I'm not sure what is involved in getting softalicious to add your package into the mix, surely (hopefully) it's not too much work. This way you can point basic web surfers to a list of hosting companies that auto deploy softalicious or whatever other auto installers in the backend automatically. I'm pretty sure at least a dozen of the last 15 hosting accounts I setup came with at least one auto installer sometimes 2 or three. Almost all of the shared and vps hosting options that come with cpanel or plesk have had softalicious one click away in the main dashboard, with options to install scores of software packages. I missed this functionality when I tried out DO and vultr. 2 out of 4 of the dedicated servers I paid for had softalicious installed, one offered it as a monthly cost add on, the fourth one said it's up to me to add on packages like that. So most of the hosting I have done, and the kind of hosting that I recommend for most small clients, already comes with auto-installers setup. So the tutorial for most poeple would be, if you are hosting with one these 100 web hosts and have a plan that includes softalicious, click the auto-install, scroll down to movim, briar, nextcloud, etc. Click install. It will run it's magic and give you a web address to login and you are good to go. This is one of the fastest ways to install a wordpress that auto backs up and updates. (I know there are many horror stories about issues with wordpress having issues with autoinstallers doing code updates and not doing it the way a manual update may do things, but those are mostly long ago, and if there are a few backups already, then it's better for most people to get updates pushed compared to other alternatives in my experience). So, most shared hosting setups our there have already installed the 'a main "thing"' - if your federated package is available via that thing, it's a couple clicks away.
    - rolleiflex 8y ago
      This breaks a lot of things like being able to do auto updates, which is critical for security patches. The first version you install to Softalicious (or whatever else) better be good because you'll be living with that version on your network for a long time. In my specific case, my app actually isn't federated, it's truly peer to peer — I don't have this problem at all. It doesn't require any servers, just install it to your computer like you'd install a regular app, and it'll work its magic. It's basically Usenet, but your local computer (and everyone else's) is a server, and they patch their content graph from each other as it updates.
      - pdimitar 8y ago
        How is this platform called? I am very interested in something like this and even thought of making it, a number of times.
        rolleiflex 8y ago
        Aether - https://getaether.net https://getaether.net
      - stevenicr 8y ago
        No doubt it could break things, and I am sure that some of the less popular packages installed via softalicious and the like may have that kindof problem - however I think that has been solved, and a while ago. When you install wordpress via softalicious these days (maybe not this way some years ago) - but with most installs there are backend options within the softalicious isntaller you can check off like "auto update wordpress core, other checkboxes to auto update plugins" - auto backup weekly, monthly, etc. Wordpress also has options within it's backend that allow you to manually update core or plugins and themes, all seperately, grouped, or at regular intervals with plugins or other settings - so updating things is an option even if the auto-installer won't do it for you. There was a time some years ago when the WP people said auti-instllers srewed up updates and there were some real issues (like file permissions wrong) - but I have not seen any of those kinds of issues in years. I like the way your app sounds - especially if it can run on phones and tablets in a similar way. I hope things like this become easier to add to routers. The more easier to install things the better, so long as security patches are default easy too.

stevenicr 8y ago

Maybe an interim step would be to get these things into softalicious, fantistico (if it's still a thing), and similar auto installers that ship with basic cpanel / plesk hosting backends. I believe, and have used the auto installers many times with many different hosts to depoly a quick wordpress install. It's easy to make a few step tutorial to show how to install / launch when using those tools. Could be simple to set some sane defaults as well, like auto update daily, auto backup weekly. Handing over the UX to an auto installer makes the ux easier in some ways, and could also get the necessary scripts, dependencies, DB setups, permissions and more auto handled by the other with experience, and get the package pre-distributed onto thousands of shared hosting environments for easier discovery as well.

rolleiflex 8y ago
I think there already exists modern versions of those things, where you install a main 'thing' and that thing installs other things for you easily. But installing that first thing is usually the tough part.
- stevenicr 8y ago
  To be more clear, I am saying that it may be beneficial for some / more of these p2p open source federated decentralized projects to become added into the auto installers that are already out there and installed on thousands of hosting accounts, and will likely be installed automatically on thousands more. I'm not sure what is involved in getting softalicious to add your package into the mix, surely (hopefully) it's not too much work. This way you can point basic web surfers to a list of hosting companies that auto deploy softalicious or whatever other auto installers in the backend automatically. I'm pretty sure at least a dozen of the last 15 hosting accounts I setup came with at least one auto installer sometimes 2 or three. Almost all of the shared and vps hosting options that come with cpanel or plesk have had softalicious one click away in the main dashboard, with options to install scores of software packages. I missed this functionality when I tried out DO and vultr. 2 out of 4 of the dedicated servers I paid for had softalicious installed, one offered it as a monthly cost add on, the fourth one said it's up to me to add on packages like that. So most of the hosting I have done, and the kind of hosting that I recommend for most small clients, already comes with auto-installers setup. So the tutorial for most poeple would be, if you are hosting with one these 100 web hosts and have a plan that includes softalicious, click the auto-install, scroll down to movim, briar, nextcloud, etc. Click install. It will run it's magic and give you a web address to login and you are good to go. This is one of the fastest ways to install a wordpress that auto backs up and updates. (I know there are many horror stories about issues with wordpress having issues with autoinstallers doing code updates and not doing it the way a manual update may do things, but those are mostly long ago, and if there are a few backups already, then it's better for most people to get updates pushed compared to other alternatives in my experience). So, most shared hosting setups our there have already installed the 'a main "thing"' - if your federated package is available via that thing, it's a couple clicks away.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    This breaks a lot of things like being able to do auto updates, which is critical for security patches. The first version you install to Softalicious (or whatever else) better be good because you'll be living with that version on your network for a long time. In my specific case, my app actually isn't federated, it's truly peer to peer — I don't have this problem at all. It doesn't require any servers, just install it to your computer like you'd install a regular app, and it'll work its magic. It's basically Usenet, but your local computer (and everyone else's) is a server, and they patch their content graph from each other as it updates.
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      How is this platform called? I am very interested in something like this and even thought of making it, a number of times.
      - rolleiflex 8y ago
        Aether - https://getaether.net https://getaether.net
    - stevenicr 8y ago
      No doubt it could break things, and I am sure that some of the less popular packages installed via softalicious and the like may have that kindof problem - however I think that has been solved, and a while ago. When you install wordpress via softalicious these days (maybe not this way some years ago) - but with most installs there are backend options within the softalicious isntaller you can check off like "auto update wordpress core, other checkboxes to auto update plugins" - auto backup weekly, monthly, etc. Wordpress also has options within it's backend that allow you to manually update core or plugins and themes, all seperately, grouped, or at regular intervals with plugins or other settings - so updating things is an option even if the auto-installer won't do it for you. There was a time some years ago when the WP people said auti-instllers srewed up updates and there were some real issues (like file permissions wrong) - but I have not seen any of those kinds of issues in years. I like the way your app sounds - especially if it can run on phones and tablets in a similar way. I hope things like this become easier to add to routers. The more easier to install things the better, so long as security patches are default easy too.