Cloudron Forum

@girish Generally I prefer frequent, smaller releases because big releases are more likely to contain bugs.

Slow and steady progress is less exciting, but it's usually more sustainable.

@marcusquinn I created a ticket on Hetzner a couple of hours ago with the following information....

Hetzner now offering some useful pre-built "Apps" for server instances.
https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/5544/hetzner-now-offering-some-useful-pre-built-apps-for-server-instances

Cloudron.io is “the bees knees” https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/idiom-day-the-bees-knees#:~:text=When you refer to something,are a number of theories.

DigitalOcean and Vultr offer one-click install https://www.cloudron.io/get.html. Why not Hetzner?

@marcusquinn Trying to persuade engineers (and artists) to focus less on engineering (and art) and more on marketing is a constant struggle for me. Engineers and artists invariably create stuff they like yet tend to overlook the actual needs of the customers whom their creations purportedly serve.

Put simply: Hetzner's VPSes are relatively cheap yet (apparently) good. Ensuring one-click Cloudron exists on Hetzner VPS is a "non-trivial" marketing issue, although it is an irrelevant engineering issue.

TL;DR Once a day, can my laptop running several Cloudron applications connect to my Hetzner VPS (running the same Cloudron applications) so that the Cloudron applications on my laptop will display the same data as the Cloudron applications on my Hetzner VPS?

I want to easily be able to verify I actually have working backups. In other words, I don’t want to find myself in the unenviable position of having my server go down, only to find out that I didn’t have working backups.

Because I have an old laptop computer sitting around gathering dust I wondered if there’s an easy way to do the following…

1. Install several Cloudron applications on my Hetzner VPS.
2. Install those same Cloudron applications on my dusty old laptop.
3. Once a day, have my laptop connect to my Hetzner VPS, transfer the relevant data, and then, using some DevOps magic (or perhaps even a simple bash script), update itself so that at that instant, my Hetzner VPS and my laptop would have the same data for the Cloudron applications indicated above.
4. Then I would like to login to my Hetzner VPS, so that I could find some data, used by one of the Cloudron applications I had installed, that had changed within the last 24 hours.
5. Then I would like to login to my laptop (from within my home network), so that I could verify that my laptop had the same data mentioned in the previous step.

For example, let’s say I had been using Nextcloud on Tuesday morning. Let’s say that Tuesday night I was to say to myself, “Let me see if document XYZ which I created earlier today on my Nextcloud running on my Hetzner VPS is on my Nextcloud running on my laptop.”

If I were to find document XYZ on my laptop and successfully open document XYZ on my laptop, then I would be confident that my data on my laptop used by Nextcloud was up-to-date. However, if I failed to find document XYZ on my laptop, then I would be concerned that my data on my laptop used by Nextcloud was not up-to-date.

Finally, for three Cloudron applications or more, I presume the above scenario would require me to have two premium Cloudron accounts: one for my Hetzner VPS and one for my laptop.

@fbartels said in How can I easily verify I actually have working backups?:

Hi @yeku,
yes there are ways to verify your backups, but no not in the way you are describing.
This is described at https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#dry-run
Basically:

you install a machine for your cloudron (could be a virtual machine, maybe you even always just return to a certain snapshots of the VM itself)
you click through the wizard and perform a restore from within cloudron
you verify the restored data
you thrown your machine away and restart the process

Something like a cold standby that you can just update with the latest data is not possible.

Thank you very much. That sounds like it would work very well for me.

I urge you to consider creating a screencast of the process, uploading it to YouTube (or another streaming provider), and then linking to that video from somewhere like Cloudron Docs -> Guides -> Verify your backups.

I imagine the link might be....

https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/verify-your-backups-can-be-restored

From a marketing perspective, it's crucial to explain to Cloudron users and prospective Cloudron users that they can quickly and easily verify/restore their backups. It will give them peace of mind.

@marcusquinn I agree. For many users Penpot seems like an excellent alternative to Figma, particularly because Adobe purchased Figma back in September 2022.

I suggest you pay a freelancer on Fiverr.com to proofread https://docs.cloudron.io/ because they are riddled with egregious spelling and grammar errors. For example...

dis no look vry proofesional.

Does it?

Pro tip: Spellcheckers are a thing. Use them when creating verbiage that will be customer-facing!

whn u chats wiz ur frends, speling annd gramar nott soo importunt.

But if you want people to pay you $180 per year to use Cloudron, well, ummm, yeah... break out that spiffy little spellchecker you've got gathering dust in your closet (/sarcasm) and pay a native speaker to proofread your text.

@rstockm said in Penpot - Design Freedom for Teams:

Adobe purchased Figma

That assertion is false: Adobe has not purchased Figma. In fact Adobe announced their intention to purchase Figma. Of course an intention to purchase is not a purchase.

"Adobe (ADBE) stock fell Friday on news that the U.S. Department of Justice plans to block the software giant's $20 billion acquisition of Figma." Source: Adobe Stock Falls As Feds Move To Block $20 Billion Figma Purchase

Generally, big tech has become very unpopular in the USA over the last few years. Generally, chastising big tech is an easy way for politicians to burnish their image with voters.

However, in this case I have surmised (like many other observers), that, realizing that $20 billion was a ridiculously high price to pay for Figma, Adobe's board of directors decided to use the U.S. Department of Justice to nix the deal. Figma seems to be a very popular and very good product, but $20 billion was an utterly absurd price.

Like most tiny tech companies, Cloudron has very poor marketing. Here's a suggestion that I hope you find helpful. Selfishly, I want to see Cloudron succeed because I like what you guys have to offer.

Instead of, "Contact us for Enterprise and Priority Support plans (starting from 720 USD per year)" I suggest you offer hourly, prepaid phone call/video call support as follows,

"We offer scheduled phone call/video call technical support in English for X US dollars per hour. To schedule a support session you must first prepay for at least one hour of technical support. That is, we require you to pay us a retainer.

After we have received your payment, we will send you an email with a link to our webpage where you can schedule phone call/video call technical support sessions.

For each session, we charge per minute, with a fifteen minute minimum. For example, if you were to speak with one of our technical support representatives for 8 minutes, we would deduct 15 minutes from the retainer you had paid us; whereas, if you were to video chat with one of our technical support representatives for 42 minutes, we would deduct 42 minutes from the retainer you had paid us.

For example, you might choose to pay us 5X for 5 hours of scheduled phone call/video call technical support in English. In such a case, once those 5 hours were exhausted, you would need to prepay for at least one more hour of scheduled phone call/video call technical support in English if you wanted to receive more scheduled phone call/video call technical support in English from us.

We record all phone call/video call technical support sessions so that we can review them to assure you receive excellent service as well as to resolve any disputes about, for example, support quality or billing. In other words, if you claim, 'I got terrible technical support' or 'I only spoke with a technical support representative for 26 minutes, yet I was billed for 55 minutes' we would, of course, review the recording we had made. We would also provide you with a link (which you could download for up to 365 days) of the audio or video recording we had made."

A huge marketing problem that Cloudron faces is this: most companies are going to be extremely reluctant to go with Cloudron unless they can get phone call/video call technical support. But many of those companies probably aren't going to want to pay $720 because they are worried that Cloudron won't offer good phone call/video call technical support in English and because they have no idea how much of that support they will need.

Hourly prepaid makes it much, much, much easier for a manager at a company to say, "Well, we can test out Cloudron's phone call/video call technical support in English for one hour for $ X to see if we like it."

Obviously some companies will require "on demand" technical support, but Cloudron probably is too small to offer that sort of technical support at this time. Therefore, at least to get started, it's probably better for Cloudron to require customers to schedule phone call/video call technical support in advance.

In the long run, many customers probably won't accept only being able to avail themselves of scheduled phone call/video call technical support; rather, they will require phone call/video call technical support "RIGHT NOW because we are having an E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y!" (I suppose you might charge double or even triple for that sort of technical support). Furthermore, other customers might require support in their native language (such as French or Japanese) Sure. Eventually Cloudron might need to offer "right now" support in various languages. And yeah, Cloudron might charge different prices for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 level technical support. But remember, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Offering scheduled technical support in English is good; it's not perfect.

Now I will be intentionally harsh, because, well, in my experience most nerds tend to be arrogant and ignorant when it comes to taking advice about how to properly run a business.

"Pay us $720 now for support we will give you in the future, because, c'mon we're really good guys who you can trust" is, well, ummmm, errrr, wellllll... terrible marketing. When nerds run companies, they often come up with inane lines like, "Contact us for Enterprise and Priority Support plans (starting from 720 USD per year)" That's an excellent way to significantly thwart Cloudron's ability to grow and thrive. In other words, bad marketing has stunted Cloudron's growth. Yeah, this last paragraph was harsh. I know. I wanted to increase the chance that my message was received "loud and clear."

And yeah, there's a very good reason that most successful companies are not run by nerds. They tend to myopically become obsessed with technology (such as engineering) and poorly perform crucial tasks such as marketing, employee recruiting, and employee retention.

Generally (but not always), serving customers properly as well as attracting and retaining excellent employees, is usually much, much, much more difficult than solving, for example, the engineering problems a company faces. But nerds like to solve technical problems; therefore, that's what they tend to do. As the adage explains, "When you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

It seems to me that, at least for now, Cloudron doesn't need to add any new "bells and whistles" (technology such as more apps!). Instead, Cloudron needs to figure out how to properly market itself as a trusted and reliable technology partner so that it is viewed by potential customers as being worthy of working with.

When IBM purchased Red Hat for approximately $34 billion in 2019, they weren't primarily purchasing Red Hat's technology (intellectual property). Of course they weren't. IBM was primarily interested in purchasing Red Hat's customers, employees, and Red Hat's reputation as being a trusted and reliable technology partner.

Become like Red Hat. Become a trusted and reliable technology partner.

@girish I presume the purchase will never go through. I would not be surprised if Adobe ends up with a new CEO within a year or two because, it seems to me, that trying to buy Figma for $20 billion was inexcusably foolhardy.

@girish Good for you! Usually, but not always, "slow and steady wins the race." In other words, I like to see small, frequent releases; I abhor huge, infrequent releases. I am not alone in this. See, for example, The Art of Shipping Early and Often.

@girish Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate that. After glancing at https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/4423/what-s-coming-in-cloudron-7-0 I became queasy (nauseous). I am being serious. I am neither an engineer, nor do I like engineering. But I've done enough basic system administration (and played a little with Ansible and Terraform) to understand the web of complexity you guys will need to overcome to turn cloudron into a viable company.

The belief that "DevOps will make things easier" is true... for end users like me. But for engineers like you, the reverse is true. Sys admins needed to do a lot of repetitive (grunt) work. But nowadays DevOps has essentially transformed system administration into a form of software development which, I suppose, you probably find interesting.

Without engineers the rest of us would be living in trees and caves. Keep up the good work!

@scooke Oh. I see. That makes sense.

@marcusquinn Yeah. I was in a fraternity when I was in college. It was like the movie Animal House... but worse. Looking back on it I'm embarrassed by what I did. But it was fun at the time. College itself was a big waste of time for me.

@girish Yeah! This is excellent news! Penpot will be a welcome addition.

@jdaviescoates Good! I want them to succeed. I neither want to deal with DevOps freelancers nor do I want to do sys admin myself.

@girish

is an example of the type of screencast I urge you to create.

If you guys are too busy, you could probably get a very good screencast made for ≈25 US dollars on a site such as Fiverr.com. In such a case you might send a message such as the following to Fiverr sellers (Fiverr "freelancers") whom you had identified as good prospects...

"Here's an example of the type of screencast we want.

. We intend to upload it to YouTube. We intend to link to it from Cloudron Docs -> Guides -> Verify your backups https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/verify-your-backups-can-be-restored."

Of course you would first need to create https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/verify-your-backups-can-be-restored so that the Fiverr sellers you contact can clearly understand what you need them to do.