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I have a large family (many siblings, their SOs, some siblings of SOs, some cousins, etc). Many of us are not on Social Media, and the “group text” became unten

I have a large family (many siblings, their SOs, some siblings of SOs, some cousins, etc). Many of us are not on Social Media, and the “group text” became untenable. I was able to get everyone to buy in on Slack sometime in 2017… it was great for awhile. Eventually, we hit message limits, and I wasn’t thrilled about Slacks data policies. After a bit of research, I landed on Mattermost. I explained the reason for the shift, and migrated the whole family over sometime in 2019. As far as the family is concerned, the process was painless, and other than the lack of collapsible threads (recently fixed as mentioned in TIFA!) everything has been great. I run the whole thing on a $5/mo VULTR VM, that also also acts as a WireGuard and PiHole server. On the backend, I’ve only had one major bump [0]- I went too long between server upgrades (I think I jumped from 5.21 to 5.29). The SQL encoding changed and caused messages to stay “unread.” Took me a day to find/correct the issue, and it’s been smooth sailing ever since. [0] https://forum.mattermost.org/t/solved-after-upgrading-to-5-29-messages-fail-to-mark-as-read/10816 https://forum.mattermost.org/t/solved-after-upgrading-to-5-2...

gz5 5y ago
As former Slack users, threaded messaging is huge for us. I wonder if teams who landed on Mattermost before using an alternative which used threaded messaging feel the same way? Note: you do need to flip the feature flag to try it out: Account Settings > Display > Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta).
- paulddraper 5y ago
  Threads are deal killer for Slack. Twist is kinda unreliable and flaky. But I'll put up with anything to get sane threading.
- XorNot 5y ago
  I don't understand this post, are you saying threaded messaging in Slack is good?
- snuxoll 5y ago
  Personally I cannot stand threaded messaging - maybe it’s the IRC user in me, but I cannot stand having new messages randomly pop up at random points instead of at the bottom. If you have a discussion that is longer term or needs a separate context then spin it off to a different/new channel, otherwise I’ll spend forever searching for it again anyway.
  - feanaro 5y ago
    This is an UX problem. There's supposed to be a list of threads so that you can find the one you're looking for easily. A thread is essentially a lite channel which shares all of the members of the original channel automatically.
    - toadi 5y ago
      god I have hundreds of threads and I hate it....
  - spockz 5y ago
    Mattermost has both! Messages always appear in sequence. Replies in a thread are visually identified as reply including the thread it is part of. This way you can do both grouping of discussions and follow the discussions from higher over.
paxys 5y ago
I have wanted to do something like this for a while, but I don't want to end up becoming tech support for my extended family and friends. So will stick to WhatsApp groups.
- jka 5y ago
  Maintenance overhead is a genuine problem and a real opportunity, yep. It'd be nice to see it become as safe and easy to run an infrastructure service (like Mattermost) as it is to manage and update apps on a phone. We're not too far off from that; small computers like the Raspberry Pi - or even smartphones themselves - could act as servers, and then container images could be used to package and distribute application updates. Persistent data management becomes an issue at some point.. but that's already true for on-device chat messages. Perhaps SyncThing or similar tools could help there.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    > It'd be nice to see it become as safe and easy to run an infrastructure service (like Mattermost) as it is to manage and update apps on a phone. Sandstorm is basically this. Requires a bit of setup at the start, but afterwards installing apps is like installing phone apps, the apps and Sandstorm itself update automatically, etc. For example, here's a Rocket.Chat instance I just spun up with a few clicks: https://sandstorm.terracrypt.net/shared/uaFeexA3f3mlU77m6nvJk748mgD7y-8vjOgaYHJxPaw https://sandstorm.terracrypt.net/shared/uaFeexA3f3mlU77m6nvJ...
    - random_kris 5y ago
      Last time I interacted with sandstorm I saw that is not getting any updates? Is this still true ?
      - ryukafalz 5y ago
        It's no longer supported by a company so its pace of development has slowed, but it's still an active project, albeit one run by a small number of volunteers. I'm sure they would appreciate any contributions.
programmarchy 5y ago
Were you able to get push notifications working? From the setup guide it reads like you need custom builds for iOS and Android for those to work.
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  I get push notifications from the mobile and mac apps.
- agnivade 5y ago
  You only need custom builds if you want to use your custom push notification server. Since push notifications are handled by GCM (Android) / APNS (IOS), for some customers, they fail compliance regulations. If you just want to self-host mattermost, push notifications should work out of box.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I'm normally a self-host maxi, so respect for your solution. But may I ask why you didn't use Discord? I self-hosted a Matrix server for family chat reasons but the encryption key changes (Let's Encrypt) and frequent need to re-login became a hassle for me and the "membership group" at large. Tried out Discord, haven't looked back. My mother-in-law even created her own Discord "server" (all done very easily in-app) with no help from anyone. Very slightly worried about content not being in my control, but shopping lists, pictures of the cat being cute, and requests to pre-heat the oven aren't high on my snooping paranoia list.
- fomine3 5y ago
  I'm not the GP, but lack of multi account support on Discord would be a blocker. I don't want to expose my "gamer" profile to my family.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Why couldn't you use the --multi-instance command line option?
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Thank you, it's good to know, but is it supported on mobile apps? I think it's more problem on mobile, because on desktop, mostly Discord can be used in browser so Chrome profile or Firefox container works.
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Oh, I don't really use it on mobile :( . It's on my work laptop where like you I keep my private and work accounts separate :) . You could certainly do it with multicontainer on android firefox but not on iphone :( . I suppose you could install multiple browsers in that case but again I only need in emergency situations on my phone.
    - zeromomentum 5y ago
KronisLV 5y ago
Hmm, based on what i've heard, Mattermost is indeed pretty popular software - it seems to have a whole bunch of integrations with other platforms, for example, GitLab! That said, personally i use Rocket.Chat, which has been pretty easy to self host: https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ I'm sure that someone who has experience with both could drop by and share their experience, but if nothing else, it's at least nice to have these options to choose from. Either way, i can definitely confirm that most of these platforms indeed are very well off on smaller VPSes, as long as you don't have too much data in them (think file uploads rather than just messages). Getting more support for something like that in the company that i work in, however, is another story entirely. For a while they tried Nextcloud Talk, but it was a bit too barebones: https://nextcloud.com/talk/ https://nextcloud.com/talk/ And ever since, sadly, there has been little to no interest in setting up another self-hosted platform, even if there are teams whose old messages are eaten away by Slack's limitations, the management seemingly having little to no interest in paying a bit of money for it.
- martingab 5y ago
  We run a stupidly simple (though small scale) gitlab instance in docker (official image its kinda one-click install). You get mattermost automatically, just need to enable it in the gitlab config and it will install/run mattermost within the gitlab container without any troubles. So if you already have (self-hosted) gitlab, mattermost is easy to setup and maintain (actually no extra effort at all). Depends of course on the number of users, I guess... The integrations with gitlab issues/groups/etc are also look neat but are barely used tbh. Cant compare with rocket.chat.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> After a bit of research, I landed on Mattermost. I explained the reason for the shift, and migrated the whole family over sometime in 2019 Now that's an achievement I rarely hear, Here I am ostracized from the family and friends for not being in their WhatsApp groups.
- leokennis 5y ago
  My experience with being "the person who wants others to switch to the non default option" is that you need to be willing to do all the work: set up, helping people get started, technical support every day of the year, if something breaks because of (in this case) a Mattermost change take the blame, apologize for features that are missing or working differently than in the default option, live with the slight condescension of other who now have to make "all this effort" to install one extra app etc. So either nemosaltat is incredibly lucky with his family, or he is an extremely patient person. Kudos either way.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    That's true but switching family to secure solutions which doesn't require any maintenance say like Signal itself is turning out to be impossible. I'm talking from my experience in India, WhatsApp has embedded itself deeply in the lifestyle, It is not just a messaging app but 'The gateway for Internet' as smartphones are the first computer for the majority. So they see a personal connection to it, It has disproportionate level of trust leading to severe misinformation/disinformation issues; Especially alarming during pandemic w.r.t vaccination. Everything from Govt. messages to banking messages arrive on WhatsApp. I've given up trying to convert people to secure solutions and so I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a VM to receive WhatsApp messages via email[1]. [1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-messages-through-email/ https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
  - nemosaltat 5y ago
    This has been exactly my experience. My family is used to me advocating for various “security best practices.” I’ve always been the “family tech support guy,” so I have ~15+ years of accumulated goodwill. Some folks were a little more resistant than others, but so far there’s been enough family/social pressure. I’m not the most patient person, but I’ve made extra efforts to be patient with this. I’ve also done everything I can to include/involve interested family members in the process. We have a channel dedicated to feedback on Mattermost itself, and I’ve been able to recruit a few folks to help me evangelize. I may not be able to change the world, but I can make a difference to those closest to me. I am extremely fortunate to have a family that humors me.

gz5 5y ago

As former Slack users, threaded messaging is huge for us. I wonder if teams who landed on Mattermost before using an alternative which used threaded messaging feel the same way? Note: you do need to flip the feature flag to try it out: Account Settings > Display > Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta).

paulddraper 5y ago
Threads are deal killer for Slack. Twist is kinda unreliable and flaky. But I'll put up with anything to get sane threading.
XorNot 5y ago
I don't understand this post, are you saying threaded messaging in Slack is good?
snuxoll 5y ago
Personally I cannot stand threaded messaging - maybe it’s the IRC user in me, but I cannot stand having new messages randomly pop up at random points instead of at the bottom. If you have a discussion that is longer term or needs a separate context then spin it off to a different/new channel, otherwise I’ll spend forever searching for it again anyway.
- feanaro 5y ago
  This is an UX problem. There's supposed to be a list of threads so that you can find the one you're looking for easily. A thread is essentially a lite channel which shares all of the members of the original channel automatically.
  - toadi 5y ago
    god I have hundreds of threads and I hate it....
- spockz 5y ago
  Mattermost has both! Messages always appear in sequence. Replies in a thread are visually identified as reply including the thread it is part of. This way you can do both grouping of discussions and follow the discussions from higher over.

paxys 5y ago

I have wanted to do something like this for a while, but I don't want to end up becoming tech support for my extended family and friends. So will stick to WhatsApp groups.

jka 5y ago
Maintenance overhead is a genuine problem and a real opportunity, yep. It'd be nice to see it become as safe and easy to run an infrastructure service (like Mattermost) as it is to manage and update apps on a phone. We're not too far off from that; small computers like the Raspberry Pi - or even smartphones themselves - could act as servers, and then container images could be used to package and distribute application updates. Persistent data management becomes an issue at some point.. but that's already true for on-device chat messages. Perhaps SyncThing or similar tools could help there.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > It'd be nice to see it become as safe and easy to run an infrastructure service (like Mattermost) as it is to manage and update apps on a phone. Sandstorm is basically this. Requires a bit of setup at the start, but afterwards installing apps is like installing phone apps, the apps and Sandstorm itself update automatically, etc. For example, here's a Rocket.Chat instance I just spun up with a few clicks: https://sandstorm.terracrypt.net/shared/uaFeexA3f3mlU77m6nvJk748mgD7y-8vjOgaYHJxPaw https://sandstorm.terracrypt.net/shared/uaFeexA3f3mlU77m6nvJ...
  - random_kris 5y ago
    Last time I interacted with sandstorm I saw that is not getting any updates? Is this still true ?
    - ryukafalz 5y ago
      It's no longer supported by a company so its pace of development has slowed, but it's still an active project, albeit one run by a small number of volunteers. I'm sure they would appreciate any contributions.

programmarchy 5y ago

Were you able to get push notifications working? From the setup guide it reads like you need custom builds for iOS and Android for those to work.

jonnycomputer 5y ago
I get push notifications from the mobile and mac apps.
agnivade 5y ago
You only need custom builds if you want to use your custom push notification server. Since push notifications are handled by GCM (Android) / APNS (IOS), for some customers, they fail compliance regulations. If you just want to self-host mattermost, push notifications should work out of box.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

I'm normally a self-host maxi, so respect for your solution. But may I ask why you didn't use Discord? I self-hosted a Matrix server for family chat reasons but the encryption key changes (Let's Encrypt) and frequent need to re-login became a hassle for me and the "membership group" at large. Tried out Discord, haven't looked back. My mother-in-law even created her own Discord "server" (all done very easily in-app) with no help from anyone. Very slightly worried about content not being in my control, but shopping lists, pictures of the cat being cute, and requests to pre-heat the oven aren't high on my snooping paranoia list.

fomine3 5y ago
I'm not the GP, but lack of multi account support on Discord would be a blocker. I don't want to expose my "gamer" profile to my family.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Why couldn't you use the --multi-instance command line option?
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Thank you, it's good to know, but is it supported on mobile apps? I think it's more problem on mobile, because on desktop, mostly Discord can be used in browser so Chrome profile or Firefox container works.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      Oh, I don't really use it on mobile :( . It's on my work laptop where like you I keep my private and work accounts separate :) . You could certainly do it with multicontainer on android firefox but not on iphone :( . I suppose you could install multiple browsers in that case but again I only need in emergency situations on my phone.
  - zeromomentum 5y ago

KronisLV 5y ago

Hmm, based on what i've heard, Mattermost is indeed pretty popular software - it seems to have a whole bunch of integrations with other platforms, for example, GitLab! That said, personally i use Rocket.Chat, which has been pretty easy to self host: https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ I'm sure that someone who has experience with both could drop by and share their experience, but if nothing else, it's at least nice to have these options to choose from. Either way, i can definitely confirm that most of these platforms indeed are very well off on smaller VPSes, as long as you don't have too much data in them (think file uploads rather than just messages). Getting more support for something like that in the company that i work in, however, is another story entirely. For a while they tried Nextcloud Talk, but it was a bit too barebones: https://nextcloud.com/talk/ https://nextcloud.com/talk/ And ever since, sadly, there has been little to no interest in setting up another self-hosted platform, even if there are teams whose old messages are eaten away by Slack's limitations, the management seemingly having little to no interest in paying a bit of money for it.

martingab 5y ago
We run a stupidly simple (though small scale) gitlab instance in docker (official image its kinda one-click install). You get mattermost automatically, just need to enable it in the gitlab config and it will install/run mattermost within the gitlab container without any troubles. So if you already have (self-hosted) gitlab, mattermost is easy to setup and maintain (actually no extra effort at all). Depends of course on the number of users, I guess... The integrations with gitlab issues/groups/etc are also look neat but are barely used tbh. Cant compare with rocket.chat.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> After a bit of research, I landed on Mattermost. I explained the reason for the shift, and migrated the whole family over sometime in 2019 Now that's an achievement I rarely hear, Here I am ostracized from the family and friends for not being in their WhatsApp groups.

leokennis 5y ago
My experience with being "the person who wants others to switch to the non default option" is that you need to be willing to do all the work: set up, helping people get started, technical support every day of the year, if something breaks because of (in this case) a Mattermost change take the blame, apologize for features that are missing or working differently than in the default option, live with the slight condescension of other who now have to make "all this effort" to install one extra app etc. So either nemosaltat is incredibly lucky with his family, or he is an extremely patient person. Kudos either way.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  That's true but switching family to secure solutions which doesn't require any maintenance say like Signal itself is turning out to be impossible. I'm talking from my experience in India, WhatsApp has embedded itself deeply in the lifestyle, It is not just a messaging app but 'The gateway for Internet' as smartphones are the first computer for the majority. So they see a personal connection to it, It has disproportionate level of trust leading to severe misinformation/disinformation issues; Especially alarming during pandemic w.r.t vaccination. Everything from Govt. messages to banking messages arrive on WhatsApp. I've given up trying to convert people to secure solutions and so I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a VM to receive WhatsApp messages via email[1]. [1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-messages-through-email/ https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
- nemosaltat 5y ago
  This has been exactly my experience. My family is used to me advocating for various “security best practices.” I’ve always been the “family tech support guy,” so I have ~15+ years of accumulated goodwill. Some folks were a little more resistant than others, but so far there’s been enough family/social pressure. I’m not the most patient person, but I’ve made extra efforts to be patient with this. I’ve also done everything I can to include/involve interested family members in the process. We have a channel dedicated to feedback on Mattermost itself, and I’ve been able to recruit a few folks to help me evangelize. I may not be able to change the world, but I can make a difference to those closest to me. I am extremely fortunate to have a family that humors me.