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I've been using Hubzilla for years now, and have long remained a fan of both the project as well as its surrounding community. I want to do an Ars-style deep dive into Hubzilla's inner workings and what end users can do with it.
With that in mind, what kind of things should I focus on?
Some of the areas I'd like to talk about are:
- Signing up and configuration
- Using the directory to connect to people
- Channels, posts, formatting content
- Privacy Filters
- OpenWebAuth
- Calendar / Events
- Web Pages
- Cloud / File Sharing
- Theme Development
- Add-ons
- Cross-platform federation
If anyone has suggestions for other things I should try covering, let me know!
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@Mike Macgirvin @Andrew Manning
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a hubzilla without hubzilla framework.
i.e. a CMS that is hubzilla-enabled (wordpress with hubzilla plugin?) without owners realizing it or knowing about it.
users from the fediverse can just automagically comment on your site. other widgets are imaginable too.
i believe the blogosphere died only because of the lack of seamless social interaction, which only centralized services like myspace and facebook offered.
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One thing I've noticed with a series of recent newcomers, is that the first thing they expect is for Hubzilla to be some kind of Mastodon clone or even a Diaspora clone and are disappointed that it is not. I think one needs to set the scene before diving in.
Many of us have been living in a post-Facebook and post-Twitter world since 2010. We've built the tools we need to survive and thrive in this new world. Many of these tools don't look familiar or even useful to newcomers, and some may look bloody complicated. In this new world, we've been sharing videos and wedding photos/baby photos/ whatever privately with our friends and family for years. We're building wikis and blogs and personal "clouds" that all inter-operate and have social networking built-in. We don't even think of it as a social network any more, but more that in 2017 communicating with people across the planet is just part of what we do - it's part of our daily workflow. We aren't worried about site admins shutting down the site we're using. Our personal spaces are completely mirrored elsewhere or can be moved at the drop of a hat. We've got links to WordPress, Diaspora and Mastodon, we can import Outlook calendars from work, and drag and drop files from desktop or phone - and share all these things *privately* with friends, family, and/or co-workers if we choose. At first this world will seem alien and you'll probably think we're from another planet, but once you get past the initial culture shock - it kind of grows on you.
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For a guy who typically shuns the casting of Hubzilla in terms of a product to be sold, you sure can come up with some slick sales pitches, Mike.
We always enjoy your articles, @Sean Tilley . You might consider the fictional use case approach as a way to make the article more engaging and even easier to write. As we all admit, Hubzilla is software used primarily by tech savvy types, and while it gets more user-friendly every update, it is not something you can throw at the average person and expect them to succeed with it. As a result you may want to choose a technical scenario, such as a group of friends trying to start a software project or an advocacy group that is trying to organize activities. Along the way in this "story" it would be helpful to demonstrate what makes Hubzilla actually unique in the broader sense by showing two independent groups sharing information with privacy between their independent hubs; perhaps the software team wants to share some code privately with a security reviewer before release to the public. Maybe the advocacy group wants to share something privately with a journalist, or they want to raise funds by offering a paid subscription to some kind of newsletter which requires authentication for supporters. Kinda makes me want to write an article like that
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While the people Andrew talks about sometimes seem to be from another planet, none techies on this one used Hubzilla or Red or RedMatrix as a replacement for Instagram and Twitter feeds at an event with 300 people back in 2014 with NO training.
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@Mike Macgirvin
We aren't worried about site admins shutting down the site we're using.
If you considere that you are not admin and just a simple user. You still worry about shutting downs etc... Lastauth.com does not exist. Of course I expect the clone reply. I know some users who didn't have clone. And now they stay in Diaspora. That problem of finding a hub still exists. Except for people who are familiar with servers and know how to install it. For other people you are using the server of someone else and you must trust the admin.
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To become an admin of your own hub simply
- buy a domain for 10€ at selfHOST
- pay 1,50 € per month for the dynamic IP address
- buy a simple NUC or ZOTAC without van for 100-100 € or take your old hardware
- Install Debian on the NUC, ZOTAC whatever
- Run this install script that does all for you including
- installation of software
- certificate from letsencrypt (renews itself automatically)
- daily backup
- daily update of Debian and Hubzilla
Bonus: You learn a lot.
Bonus: Your data really stays at home.
Alternative: Use a shared host in a data centre instead of a NUC at home.
The costs are lower than owning a mobile phone that breaks at least once a year
No excuses!
/update/
@kris
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starred this post
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But Einar, you do understand that this list is still beyond the majority.
Hell, I've been self-hosting for years, I host my own Hubzilla instance, and I don't know what a NUC or ZOTAC is.
If there's a turnkey Hubzilla hosting service -- like masto.host for Mastodon -- then you might have a case.
But until then, kris still has a point: there's still a great deal of trust involved.
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hubzilla is not for "simple" administrators, but for people who know what to do, so... not everyone can be an administrator for an hubzilla hub. this is true, and those who have known these networks for some years, and all the old and new hub problems , can only confirm this.
you must be a Senior administrator to keep hubzilla going for years.
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@Woozle Hypertwin NUC This was no criticism.
Just a let's play and have fun, learn. You are the one that can change the world. Installing Hubzilla is not as complicate as one would think. Neither is it as expansive as one might think. You just have to take some time.
@Sean Tilley The feature to use tokens for guests might be interesting.
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I'd really like finally to understand exactly what Hubzilla is and does, because it sounds really interesting and something I think I'd like to take part in, but I've never been able to get my head around exactly what it is. So an idiot's guide would be much appreciated by me!
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You might read this idots guide And may be give some feedback to @Andrew Manning what is not clear enough.
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Oh, thanks; that wasn't available last time I looked into it.
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you must be a Senior administrator
Hey, definitly NOT. (Speaking for myself: I am neither adminstrator nor Mr. Brain like the main devs of Hubzilla. I am just an interested layman who spent some time.)
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to keep hubzilla going for years. ? Definitly YES.
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you are just an exception that confirms the rule ... all we know the many problems we have had during these years .. no one can disclaim
maybe you want to ask for @Seth Martin or others ?
In all these years just 4 or maybe 5 admins have managed quite easily to not have problems, or rather, to solve them without sweating blood, just 4 or 5 in how many? Hundreds? Everyone has problems, OK my friends.... but when the problems in the hubs become BIG, only a few people really work out.
So..not, hubzilla is not for "simple" admins, but for good admins.
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...or maybe the problem is another:
today everyone believes that can easily administer a site, on the one hand it is true, for certain sites, for certain software, but any person is not an administrator, to be an administrator you must have experience, you must know things, you must be an... administrator .
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@james_lamentus I can not confirm. "My" rules to save me from trouble are
- Leave most configs standard
- allow only few people on your hub
- stick to origin master and update Debian and Hubzilla and Plugins every day
- take always the most simple approach, for example letsencryt as simple shell script in favour of python letsencrypt client mess
- /update/ do not activate every possible plug-in to federate with "everybody". (I am sceptical what this does to the database if I think of the troubles with federations.)
- /update/ think before you change something at your hub
My hub now runs almost two years with two three single short disturbances- one blank white page because the plugins where not updated along with core. Solved
be by one single git pull - one manual change of the shell script for letsencrypt: They had to rename the project and changed the path to the config file
- /update/ Some weeks ago private messages became visible to others. Bad thing!. I deleted a clone that I forgot about and re-created a private group.
I would strongly recommend to use - "standard" installs via scripts to get Hubs that are comparable.
- keep the Hubs small
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Yes, these are important tips... that should be read before to start ...
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@herzmeister der welten Are you saying that that plugin exists, or you want it to?
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I know some users who didn't have clone.
Do you back up your home PC? If you don't, you can hardly blame Microsoft or Linus Torvalds if your hard disk fails. You don't even need a clone. You just need to save a snapshot of your identity once every few months, which is better than losing everything. I'm not responsible for saving your personal data from disaster. You are. I can give you the tools, but it is your responsibility to actually use them.
And now they stay in Diaspora.
Amusing. The reason why I created nomadic identity wasn't because of (at the time) Friendica sites shutting down, but because very large Diaspora sites shut down and everybody went back to Facebook. In 2017 Diaspora still doesn't have anything that will read their backup files and save an account, though it may arrive sometime in 2018. Hubzilla can read Diaspora backup files to some degree and keep their account and identity alive and it has had this ability for a few years now.
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Incidentally one of the design goals for Denim is to provide personal S3 storage options, so you can back up to and serve your online account and files from NextCloud or a dedicated NAS box or even Amazon if you want. This will make Kris' head hurt, but I'm not doing this for him. I'm doing it for me and other systems folks who see value in integrated/pluggable storage and aren't intimidated by building high reliability systems. Your average Mastodon user won't ever get their head around this, but those of you who are systems folks out there understand what I'm saying and what this implies.
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i dont know if it practically exists because hubzilla is easily flexible enough, it's a mystery
;)
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Just to be clear, Hubzilla has been awesomely simple for me. The death of my public hub was due to my failure to keep the backup location running and being too busy to pay attention to errors. All servers will experience issues and need immediate attention, so perhaps a managed server is a good suggestion for busy people, especially for a public hub.
On a side note, I could bring lastauth.com back to life with an old backup but I fear the the majority of channels were created by diaspora folks and would result in bashing of Hubzilla due to broken diaspora connections.
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This reminds me that I need to find a new place for a backup clone as all of mine are now dead.
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"On a side note, I could bring lastauth.com back to life with an old backup but I fear the the majority of channels were created by diaspora folks and would result in bashing of Hubzilla due to broken diaspora connections. "
I do not understand, since you have the opportunity to bring back to life the site, you should give it, so as to give users the ability to recover their data and profiles, and then clone in another hub. Also because, if I'm not mistaken, your site is dead from one hour to another, without giving users any chance, while in other cases the administrators have given enough time for users to clone. Give the users the time required to create clones on another site if you really can do it.
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"This reminds me that I need to find a new place for a backup clone as all of mine are now dead."
it happened to me already a lot of times, it seems that the precariousness of the decentralized networks (hubs/sites) is bigger than the great invention of Zot ... quite sad and discouraging.
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@giac_hellvecio
it happened to me already a lot of times,
Have you tried to export your ID and data to file? On a regular basis once a month or similar? Would be interesting to hear how a re-import to another Hub would do well for you. (I never did this.)
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what I mean, and I talk about various channels that I have/had and not just 1 or 2 , is that I have created a sea of clones during these last years, an ocean..., but it seems that the speed with which the sites/hubs die ( and therefore my clones) is bigger than my ability, time, possibility, to create clones. This that is daunting.
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@Vecchio Giac I'm sorry, I will revive lastauth.com and the reason it hasn't been done yet, is simply because I work 12-hours per day on an exhausting/stressful job. I'm still paying for the server in hopes that I can recover data whenever I get time to try with a KVM. LastAuth was having troubles, but NOT due to bugs in Hubzilla's code, and at the end, I mostly had it tuned up.
When I do revive the site, I'll make it clear that it's going to have federation issues without the creation of new channels.
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@giac "Precaution always pays off". If I am not the owner of the infrastructure I would ALWAYS make backups on a regular basis.
As you said it seems to be true that the Hubs in Hubzilla vanish sometimes. I can imagine that this is very unpleasant. Hmm. But why not create an own hub? That's Hubzilla and decentralisation is about. Getting rid of the cancer of centralisation of servers and on mobile devices, including DNS-Servers, Internet providers, Google (connectivity services, push messages, play store, cloud features,...)... you name it...
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I am unemployed since the days of Germany's world champion and I have no money...
Sean Tilley
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