Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers

[LoudLemur]

Cloudron should create short videos (desktop recordings) of how to accomplish tasks in Cloudron. I think this would have several benefits:

• Easy to follow tutorials
• Repository of Information
• Helping complete newcomers get up to speed
• Sharable content which could capture interest and attract users
• If you actually see something happening, it encourages you to do it

[BrutalBirdie]

@loudlemur I thought about doing just that multible times now.

[robi]

I have a few ideas around this too, as I discovered a contact form with video capabilities in both directions.

That way users can submit videos back based on a short video inspiration.

[BrutalBirdie]

Lets use this topic to collect some ideas what sort of videos would be best.

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As a note from myself. In my opinion.

The first video, if there is going to be a series, having Monkey See, Monkey Do in mind is informing the viewer of the consequences should be the first and most important step.

You can use and love a product for years until it fails and the monkey will be mad at the product, even if it was an user error.

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Your server, your data, your Cloudron. But more important your responsibility!

I already have a user in my mind, which just follows the X-th video on Cloudron Mailserver and everything works fine.
He uses Cloudron as his own private Mailserver for maybe two years.
Switches from Gmail to his own Cloudron Mailserver

But then suddenly the Data-Center is burning down (OVH Fire - The Register | OVHcloud Wikipedia) .
Oh no! He never setup the backup and only had it on the server drive!

Yes you can blame the user, but trying to mitigate this is very important.
Cloudron does a lot to ensure everything works as intended.
Cloudron will annoy you every day that your backups are not safe!

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There is so much more.
Finances? To make sure the user understands that if he commits to use Cloudron as his own private Mailserver, Nextcloud yada yada. He has to understand that he will have to pay for this server.

Legal stuff? OpenVPN? Nice! Here buddy use MY OpenVPN... Wait you downloaded REDACTED with my VPN and now I get a letter from company XYZ to pay for ¿? or a criminal charge?

This sounds so simple, I know but... Monkey See, Monkey Do

I turned down approximately 10 people from running their own Cloudron since I had to explain to them the consequences.
And after thinking about the consequences they decided they did not want such responsibility.
Which is OK! And its better to realize this early.

But! From those 10 people three came back and challenged them self.
And these three users are still running Cloudron and yes they hit me up now and then but my answer is almost always... Did you read the docs and if so did you ask the forum?

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Just my thoughts printed out.
Have a good night!

[robi]

@brutalbirdie said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

But then suddenly the Data-Center is burning down (OVH Fire - The Register | OVHcloud Wikipedia) .
Oh no! He never setup the backup and only had it on the server drive!

I'd modify this to, "We were back up in 30m as we had offsite Object storage backups which Cloudron makes it easy to 'set it and forget it'.

Then run through the restore process..

[BrutalBirdie]

@robi Yes of course this works! I am well aware of that and as I stated to often, backup and restore imho is one of the best features of Cloudron.

But Monke only setup Mailserver! Monke ignores error message!

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In my Head.

First Video

Disclaimer.
Informing about the resources.
Docs, Forum, Gitlab yada yada.
Consequences.

Second Video

Backups!
How to setup and even how to test your Backup (dry run)

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Everything else can be done after that.
But these two parts should come first.

[robi]

@brutalbirdie Gotcha, sure.. lessons can be good.

Then maybe mention Monkey2 who did it right the first time.

[micmc]

@brutalbirdie said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

@robi Yes of course this works! I am well aware of that and as I stated to often, backup and restore imho is one of the best features of Cloudron.

Yes and server MIGRATION (from almost any type to any type) is also a breeze, an incredible ease it's almost fun.

[ruihildt]

@robi This is probably the most useful. It's Chaos monkey testing and probably a scenario some user will face.

[privsec]

Video topics

1. How to properly setup/secure your server to a high level of protection
2. Navigating logs
3. Setting up volumes
4. Setting up multi-domain and groups on cloudron
5. Backups. Backups. Backups.
6. Migration/reinstalling from a backup
7. Packaging apps

[jdaviescoates]

@privsec said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

How to properly setup/secure your server to a high level of protection

I've not really done anything on this front, but I think part of the beauty of Cloudron is that you don't really need to.

I just purchased a Hetzner VPS (adding my SSH key during check out - there is no non-SSH login enabled on any of my servers) and installed Cloudron.

I've pretty much never touched the server again (other than to manually delete some old backups when I was running low on space - be nice if this could be done via the UI to eliminate this login-to-server use case too)

IMHO when most people start fiddling around with server settings to try and increase security they are more likely to break something/ leave something open by mistake and reduce security than increase it.

[LoudLemur]

@loudlemur I am pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction to this suggestion.

As with many things, it is not what you do, it is the way that you do it.

Drip
Instead of dumping all video content in one go, a drip release would be a more humane way of delivering the learning. Also, people might have time and curiosity for one video, and look forward to the next one.

RTFM

We can leverage our existing assets by using the documentation as the basis for a script. It could provide the plot (one aspect followed by another and another) and the skeleton of the dialogue in the video.

Newbies don't yearn to Read The F*****G Manual. They might watch a video of it in action though. The relevant section in the manual ought to be linked in the video, for reference.

Genre

The videos first need to catch interest, then hold interest and then ideally propagate interest. Instead of a dry-as-dust, bore people to death video, it might be worthwhile trying to create them as a ... horror movie! (Or a comedy... or ....) It might be a bit much to ask for the person who is knowledgeable about Cloudron to also have a sense of humour, but perhaps there is somebody around here who does... We should use that.

Afterthought

Many of our best ideas come after the event. In retrospect, things all could have been improved. We ought to create videos in such a way that there is space on screen for some textual messages that weren't mentioned during production. This might also be a fun way of adding some humour to an otherwise dry presentation.

Images
A simple stick man drawing in a paint application could be used as a low-effort way of adding some imaginative content. Memes. Animated GIFs. Reaction GFYs.

Sound
Funny sounds can be added easily to make the video more humorous, spooky or Wild West. For example, if you wanted to include a few "Boings!":
https://freesound.org/search/?q=boing

Distribution
Use a LBRY client to mount any videos onto the LBRY blockchain in a censorship resistant fashion (so that it is announced that the content is available from sources in addition to Odysee.com)
https://github.com/paveloom-f/lbry-desktop/releases

Use a (Cloudron deployed!) Hub/Comment Server/LBRY client to seed that content in addition to Odysee.com.

[BrutalBirdie]

@loudlemur said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

It might be a bit much to ask for the person who is knowledgeable about Cloudron to also have a sense of humor

Are you suggesting that using Cloudron and being knowledgeable about it robs you of all humor since it drains your life essence?

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Common we Germans are known worldwide for our humor

[nebulon]

@brutalbirdie said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

Are you suggesting that using Cloudron and being knowledgeable about it robs you of all humor since it drains your life essence?

spot on

[LoudLemur]

@brutalbirdie Haha! It is just that it might be too much to hope that somebody could be blessed both with such understanding and a funny bone.

[robi]

@jdaviescoates said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

I've pretty much never touched the server again (other than to manually delete some old backups when I was running low on space - be nice if this could be done via the UI to eliminate this login-to-server use case too)

Yes, the backup task should do that IMO, only keep what's written, and clean up all multipart uploads and stale files.

[JOduMonT]

@loudlemur said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

RTFM

Let’s make RTFM stand for Read the Friendly Manual or better make a new acronym such as WTFV or WTT for Watch the Tuto.

@privsec said in Monkey See, Monkey Do: Cloudron Video Explainers:

How to properly setup/secure your server to a high level of protection

For me, the highest level of protection is a server without access to the internet; then more realistically it is a server with access to the internet but where all the services are behind a VPN; such as OpenVPN, WireGuard, ...).

With a server open to the world, you are at the mercy of the developers (the one who develop the application such as Nextcloud, WordPress, ...)