Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps
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As we all know, there's often multiple apps performing the same function.
From my experience, there's been just a handful of apps that actually ever gets used in daily work & personal life.
Eg, for my business and clients, that's Vaultwarden, Privatebin, Nextcloud, EspoCRM, Ghost, Wordpress, Gitea, Drone, Grafana. You can run almost any business size and type with those. Perhaps adding Joplin Server, Redash or Metabase, and some of the other private apps we use for monitoring etc.
I think a Staff Choice badge for the ones we find to be the best of the rest might help others in their evaluation priorities, and perhaps also help reduce the number of me-too apps for a function that are rarely used, but cost a disproportionate amount in maintenance time.
Maybe add a blue "verified" badge, since they are all the rage
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
As we all know, there's often multiple apps performing the same function.
From my experience, there's been just a handful of apps that actually ever gets used in daily work & personal life.
Eg, for my business and clients, that's Vaultwarden, Privatebin, Nextcloud, EspoCRM, Ghost, Wordpress, Gitea, Drone, Grafana. You can run almost any business size and type with those. Perhaps adding Joplin Server, Redash or Metabase, and some of the other private apps we use for monitoring etc.
I think a Staff Choice badge for the ones we find to be the best of the rest might help others in their evaluation priorities, and perhaps also help reduce the number of me-too apps for a function that are rarely used, but cost a disproportionate amount in maintenance time.
Maybe add a blue "verified" badge, since they are all the rage
@marcusquinn Isn't this specific to each use-case? Maybe a "hot" or "popular" tag would be more fitting. For example, I was looking for the best way to sync my calenders and ended up using Nextcloud but many others recommended Radicale.
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@marcusquinn Isn't this specific to each use-case? Maybe a "hot" or "popular" tag would be more fitting. For example, I was looking for the best way to sync my calenders and ended up using Nextcloud but many others recommended Radicale.
@humptydumpty I think "Staff Choice" or "Editor's Pick" is a well understood concept. It only means what it says. I don't know anyone that would want 3 x webmail apps as an example, first question for a newbie: which one's best? Maybe I'll try the one the platform developers also use.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@humptydumpty I think "Staff Choice" or "Editor's Pick" is a well understood concept. It only means what it says. I don't know anyone that would want 3 x webmail apps as an example, first question for a newbie: which one's best? Maybe I'll try the one the platform developers also use.
@marcusquinn I agree with you there. I did exactly what you said until I settled on my current apps.
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@humptydumpty I think "Staff Choice" or "Editor's Pick" is a well understood concept. It only means what it says. I don't know anyone that would want 3 x webmail apps as an example, first question for a newbie: which one's best? Maybe I'll try the one the platform developers also use.
@marcusquinn said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
@humptydumpty I think "Staff Choice" or "Editor's Pick" is a well understood concept. It only means what it says. I don't know anyone that would want 3 x webmail apps as an example, first question for a newbie: which one's best? Maybe I'll try the one the platform developers also use.
It is a nice idea.
For email, I think I would pick SnappyMail. For forum software it is a bit more difficult, may be ... Discourse.
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Instead of adding a "Staff Choice" badge, imho we need a five star module and maybe comments like in the other app stores. That shows the actual usage of the apps in the world, rather than staff usage. But not open to the world (the Cloudron app store is not a directory like alternativeto.net) - only for users with an account for the Cloudron app store.
But beware of the lifetime spent on moderationPronouns: he/him | Primary language: German
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Instead of adding a "Staff Choice" badge, imho we need a five star module and maybe comments like in the other app stores. That shows the actual usage of the apps in the world, rather than staff usage. But not open to the world (the Cloudron app store is not a directory like alternativeto.net) - only for users with an account for the Cloudron app store.
But beware of the lifetime spent on moderation@luckow Interesting ideas! I guess it might help to keep track of some KPIs on their source-code, eg: number of Stars on GitHub, Last Updated, Activity Graph.
I suppose a link to the source origin will show all of that though. I've always thought it would be handy to add that to the documentation links on each app, as well as their website.
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Instead of adding a "Staff Choice" badge, imho we need a five star module and maybe comments like in the other app stores. That shows the actual usage of the apps in the world, rather than staff usage. But not open to the world (the Cloudron app store is not a directory like alternativeto.net) - only for users with an account for the Cloudron app store.
But beware of the lifetime spent on moderation@luckow said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
That shows the actual usage of the apps in the world, rather than staff usage
Yeah, do @Staff have data on which apps are actually most used by Cloudron users?
I struggle to believe that it is really these which are marked as popular?
But perhaps it is?
Also, I note that https://www.cloudron.io/store/index.html doesn't have a "Popular" section like the app store within Cloudron itself does.
We could also do this with polls or something to work out which app are most loved by Cloudron users (I guess this is what @luckow was getting at with five star rating stuff?)
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@luckow said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
That shows the actual usage of the apps in the world, rather than staff usage
Yeah, do @Staff have data on which apps are actually most used by Cloudron users?
I struggle to believe that it is really these which are marked as popular?
But perhaps it is?
Also, I note that https://www.cloudron.io/store/index.html doesn't have a "Popular" section like the app store within Cloudron itself does.
We could also do this with polls or something to work out which app are most loved by Cloudron users (I guess this is what @luckow was getting at with five star rating stuff?)
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well there's the api which shows ranking/installcount: https://api.cloudron.io/api/v1/apps - that could be used for some kind of popularity filter (which I'm doing on my site)
@msbt said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
the api which shows ranking/installcount
Does that match up with the "popular" apps in the app store?
Care to share the ranking/ install count of the apps here? (I'm not familiar with the API). Thanks!
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@msbt said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
the api which shows ranking/installcount
Does that match up with the "popular" apps in the app store?
Care to share the ranking/ install count of the apps here? (I'm not familiar with the API). Thanks!
Just browsing through and expanding stuff on https://api.cloudron.io/api/v1/apps it looks like the most popular 5 apps are:
- Nextcloud (seem right)
- Guacamole (find that hard to believe, also not in Popular)
- WordPress (seems right).
- RocketChat (could be)
- OpenVPN (could be, I guess)
Apart from Guacamole this seems like the same list a "Popular"
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Just browsing through and expanding stuff on https://api.cloudron.io/api/v1/apps it looks like the most popular 5 apps are:
- Nextcloud (seem right)
- Guacamole (find that hard to believe, also not in Popular)
- WordPress (seems right).
- RocketChat (could be)
- OpenVPN (could be, I guess)
Apart from Guacamole this seems like the same list a "Popular"
@jdaviescoates said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
Guacamole
Thanks for doing that. I had a look through the API @msbt kindly linked and it would have been more enjoyable if the name of the application were alongside the InstallCount.
Anyway, now we know Nexcloud is so popular, lets ask why people are using it. How does it help?
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@jdaviescoates said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
Guacamole
Thanks for doing that. I had a look through the API @msbt kindly linked and it would have been more enjoyable if the name of the application were alongside the InstallCount.
Anyway, now we know Nexcloud is so popular, lets ask why people are using it. How does it help?
@LoudLemur said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
Anyway, now we know Nexcloud is so popular, lets ask why people are using it. How does it help?
Well, if you looks at things like:
https://stackshare.io/collaboration
https://stackshare.io/business_toolsYou'll see that some of the most widely collaboration and business tools use are:
Google Workspace (primarily Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, but also Meet)
Slack
TrelloIMHO Nextcloud (with either OnlyOffice or Collabora Online for Docs, plus SnappyMail for email) is probably the best open source replacement for Google Workspace. Nextcloud Talk doesn't quite replace Meet, but it's great for small meetings, so almost does. See also Jitsi.
Also, Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud Deck apps provide fairly decent replacements for Slack and Trello too (although see also Element, RocketChat, and Mattermost as other Slack replacements, and WeKan, Taiga, Vikunja and Kanboard as other Trello replacements).
(BTW, small thing @staff but I just noticed that is you search the app store for "tasks" WeKan doesn't come up, it should)
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Is this still talked about in 2025? I struggle myself to find "the best" or at least "the most popular" option in the App Store. @marcusquinn idea to use Github Stars mirrors my manual approach. Should be straight forward to implement with the github API given a known repo URL.
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Think I mentioned elsewhere but "Popular" is just a hardcoded list of apps
It's not some dynamic list.Personally (not speaking for Cloudron), I am reluctant to offer any app recommendations even outside the App Store tbh. What if we recommend something and the business model of upstream changes? These days this is quite a common occurrence. Things get abandoned, change license, change business model etc. I don't want to be part of the decision-making of our end user. This puts the burden on end user to read more about the upstream project and the company behind it, and in some ways I want it to be that way (mostly, because I don't have any additional insights either).
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Think I mentioned elsewhere but "Popular" is just a hardcoded list of apps
It's not some dynamic list.Personally (not speaking for Cloudron), I am reluctant to offer any app recommendations even outside the App Store tbh. What if we recommend something and the business model of upstream changes? These days this is quite a common occurrence. Things get abandoned, change license, change business model etc. I don't want to be part of the decision-making of our end user. This puts the burden on end user to read more about the upstream project and the company behind it, and in some ways I want it to be that way (mostly, because I don't have any additional insights either).
@girish said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
Think I mentioned elsewhere but "Popular" is just a hardcoded list of apps
It's not some dynamic list.Perhaps just making it dynamic would go some way towards addressing this need?
I get why you don't want to recommend stuff, but can't see any harm in users knowing what's actually popular
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@girish fair points. And I agree "Recommended/Popular" is difficult for all the reasons you mentioned. Something like GH stars imo just gives a datapoint for exploration to the users and still leaves the choice to them. (A bit like IMDB ratings on movies sites :)) In my experience they are a strong indicator of what to expect from a project in terms of maturity, usability and support.
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Think I mentioned elsewhere but "Popular" is just a hardcoded list of apps
It's not some dynamic list.Personally (not speaking for Cloudron), I am reluctant to offer any app recommendations even outside the App Store tbh. What if we recommend something and the business model of upstream changes? These days this is quite a common occurrence. Things get abandoned, change license, change business model etc. I don't want to be part of the decision-making of our end user. This puts the burden on end user to read more about the upstream project and the company behind it, and in some ways I want it to be that way (mostly, because I don't have any additional insights either).
@girish said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
I don't want to be part of the decision-making of our end user.
Totally get this. You're already part of the opportunity-making for end users like me. This is why I stick around, you and the team really have some good heads on your shoulders.
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@girish fair points. And I agree "Recommended/Popular" is difficult for all the reasons you mentioned. Something like GH stars imo just gives a datapoint for exploration to the users and still leaves the choice to them. (A bit like IMDB ratings on movies sites :)) In my experience they are a strong indicator of what to expect from a project in terms of maturity, usability and support.
@perelin said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
Something like GH stars
Couldn't hurt to suck such data in and display it when available (much like https://selfhosted.libhunt.com/categories does with both GH stars and activity), if possible.
Of course there are an increasing number of great apps that aren't on GH too though.
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Think I mentioned elsewhere but "Popular" is just a hardcoded list of apps
It's not some dynamic list.Personally (not speaking for Cloudron), I am reluctant to offer any app recommendations even outside the App Store tbh. What if we recommend something and the business model of upstream changes? These days this is quite a common occurrence. Things get abandoned, change license, change business model etc. I don't want to be part of the decision-making of our end user. This puts the burden on end user to read more about the upstream project and the company behind it, and in some ways I want it to be that way (mostly, because I don't have any additional insights either).
@girish said in Add a"Staff Choice" badge/filter to App Store apps:
I don't want to be part of the decision-making of our end user.
First off: im new here. Just discovered Cloudron a few weeks ago. Super impressed! And quite a nice community. And here goes my point: You are already part of the decision making. Or at least together with the community that votes for packages to get included. The App Store is already a curated selection
But I can see the direction you are coming from. I mean in the end a feature like GH Stars would safe me 2 clicks, so I would say its definitely a nice-to-have and nothing more.Thanks for the good work!
