Hubzilla Outreach - outreach@gerzilla.de

Marketing: Thoughts to Help Create Interest about Hubzilla

Talya De Fay

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 13:49:35 +0100 last edited: Sat, 17 Nov 2018 05:05:32 +0100

!Hubzilla Advocacy
!Hubzilla Outreach
!M. Dent
!afterpod admin (rick)

I seem to be too new to have a rep built up enough to post on Hubzilla Advocacy, however, as I am getting a feel for Hubzilla I just wanted to share some ideas. Please excuse me if I repeat anything you already know as I realise I'm popping up at the last hour rather than the first

Matching Product To People
Although Hubzilla is a platform upon which it all can be done, I can't find much information on how it can be done. The few articles I've read are very "developer"y" which make it sound like its a developer to developer product only. I think this is a key point. Has there been any discussion on doing some simple fun feature articles?

"Fun How To" Articles
This article is the only user friendly one aka fun feature stuff I could find. Only due to searching did I find the user manual (I think) but it is not really user friendly. While It is a great resource, very comprehensive and well written, its heavy to read. The basic expectations today's audience has in information is simple format like the below headings:

I'm assuming that there would also be a matter of having time and people to help on anything that gets done. I was also thinking of  other self written articles platforms which will get good search positioning includes Quora, Linkin & Medium.. is there any others?

When I did some sales and marketing I found it helps to consider the public (aka audience) as a child.  In today's busy society people want:
     # To know the bits that matter to them (how it improves their life)        # In a few easy to read sentences
      # with big bright shiny pictures         # which is easy to follow
before the next bright shiny thing get their attention.
I think theres enough fun buttons to push on Hubzilla but nothings really been shared about them in detail.

Publicity Planning - Release of 3.8 (Part 2)

I saw this post which in in Hubzilla Advocacy as being important. It has the right idea. @philipp expanded on it to say:

Adressing the different groups in the homepage:
It's good that at hubzilla.org there are already the options "Register an account on HUBZILLA ⟩⟩ Start", "Try a demo" and "Run your own hub". If we draw on the different use cases we could make a sections there like: "Who wants to use Hubzilla?"
    1.People that are looking for an alternative to centralized web services like social media, blogging, cloud storage, calders, wikis ...
    2.Hobby Administrators who want to build a secure and privacy-respecting platform for themselves and their friends on a homeserver or shared hosting
   3. Groups, institutions or enterprises that look for a extendable decentralized collaboration platform, content management system or website generator.

Clicking on on of the three categories leads you to an extra section that explains why Hubzilla is a good pick for that particular usecase, provides examples how it has been used and how to go on from there. (e.g. sign up or install)

App Bundles
The last sentence I found particularly note worthy.
Having a list of what apps are best for which Group will help clarify how to use Hubzilla. Doing a series of articles focusing on one group at a time and the related apps in a simplied "How To" style will create some mini manuals on the web and spark interest. Lots of Photos and pictures included.

I am borrowing this from Nextcloud but they have already done something like this. I can just choose the bundle to download as Admin depending on what i want my users to be doing. As users don't know what Apps are best for them or how to use them it acts as a deterrence as it seems too vast with no direction.

I believe it would help Hubzilla enormously if there was anyone who is good at writing did some bundle articles talking only of one concept at a time. Philipp suggested something similar in the above quote. It is sound advice. Doing some How To articles in simple style will act as mini manuals to help people get started too.

User Friendly Manual
With permission, I was also wondering if someone could advice which apps would work best for each group when possible. I don't really know enough yet to know all it can do. But as I was going to do a channel In my spare time to put tips etc together for friends but then I thought I may as well try doing something for the end user. I'm thinking to cut and paste the manual with pictures etc. But not change any wording. Please let me know if that is okay.

Lastly, I really liked the Thought of the day (below)... It would make a great catchphrase if its not already.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Hubzilla is NOT a "does it all" platform. Hubzilla is a platform upon which it all can be done.

Well, thats the main thing floating around my mind for now. Hopefully I hope you dont mind a newbie piping up. Cheers.

https://gerzilla.de/settings/editor/?f=&rpath=/channel/talyadf

Creating Interest Marketing advocacy Hubzilla Bundling Apps Articles End Users

show all 4 comments

h.ear.t | tobias

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 14:14:14 +0100

Good points and you have now earned your first cred. :)
You certainly make a few good points. I think small yummy howtos are just getting more momentum, there seem to be a few people independently starting such things, partially in German where such a thing is even more needed as docs need to get translated and therefore ... well, I don't know, I just ignore German doco and speak English. But German happens to be a language I understand also.
I am just starting some publicity and writing stuff, so I am very thankful for the ideas, they stir up new. Originally I wanted to do an advent calendar of small howtos, partially interconnected, but my shifts are as such that I have to move it to 2019. One article per week should be doable, minimum.

Preconfigured bundles: had that idea too, but you mentioned it first in public. :) Needless to say I like it. My thought would merely be to offer such a dialogue during install. I am no dev, but that's my thought.
Mainly such a thing would be useful for "should rhis channel use fedeation? Then: activate the appropriate addons for the services you want and also add that some hubzilla features will not be available or work only partially, such as cloning. And privacy will be more open as a compromise with the other systems' and protocols' capabilities.

That's all I have time for now, but good points. Let's get more structured. Welcome.

CANNED HEAT - LET'S WORK TOGETHER
by HAAKIE48 on YouTube

h.ear.t | tobias

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 14:59:24 +0100

h.ear.t | tobias wrote the following article Mon, 09 Apr 2018 19:02:19 +0200

How to install Hubzilla in 7 easy steps on Debian 9 Stretch

Installing my favorite web suite aka Hubzilla on Debian 9 "Stretch" is a joy. Quick, straightforward and easy. I will show you how to do it in about 10 minutes or less.
Edit 09.04.2018:
Unfortunately certbot has seen some changes and will only work once installed from Debian backports. The package included in Stretch will no longer fetch you any certs. This tutorial has been updated to reflect this.

View article

View summary

What you will need:

Debian 9 basic installation (only deviation in my install was including "basic" and SSH-server, which actually makes sense as you need a way to remote control your system)
Existing domain, correctly configured and pointing to your server

All right then, let's start the Hubzilla installation party.

The Basics: Install the required dependencies:
apt install git apache2 mariadb-server php php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-mysql php-zip imagemagick

In order to install the new working certbot version from Debian Strech-Backports, we need to add that mirror to apt and enable pinning to make sure apt will not confuse these packages with the old ones from the main release pool.


echo "deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/stretch<< EOF
Package: *
Pin: release a=stable, v=8
Pin-Priority: 900
EOF

cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/stretch-backports<< EOF
Package: *
Pin: release n=stretch-backports
Pin-Priority: -10
EOF

cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/stretch-backports-certbot<< EOF
Package: certbot python-certbot python-certbot-apache python-acme
Pin: release n=stretch-backports
Pin-Priority: 100
EOF

Then we can use backports for the certbot installation.

apt update; apt install certbot python-certbot-apache -t stretch-backports

Webserver apache: Create vhost file /etc/apache2/sites-available/hubzilla.conf and enable vhost, enable the required apache module rewrite. You need to replace example.com with your own domain name.
MyDomain=example.com
Then paste this into your shell.


cat > /etc/apache2/sites-available/hubzilla.conf << EOF
<VirtualHost *:80> 
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    ServerName $MyDomain
    DocumentRoot /var/www/hubzilla
    <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/www/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks 
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/hubzilla_error.log
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/hubzilla_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
EOF

Enable the new vhost
a2ensite hubzilla
You might want to disable the default site (enabled automatically upon installation):
a2dissite 000-default.conf
Enable apache modules rewrite
a2enmod rewrite
Restart apache2 in order to activate all these changes
systemctl restart apache2

Download Hubzilla: clone the Hubzilla Git repository and chown everything to be writable to the webserver account www-data
cd /var/www/ ; git clone https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla ; chown -R www-data. hubzilla;

To create the database set your desired password first:
MyPassword=SuperSecret
Then actually create the database:

mysql -u root -e "create database hubzilla ; CREATE USER 'hubzilla'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '$MyPassword'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON hubzilla.* to 'hubzilla'@'localhost';"

SSL Encryption: create the letscencrypt certificates in order to use SSL and have certbot automatically configure your apache vhost to use SSL. Just follow the instructions. Let certbot configure your vhost to use SSL.
certbot
setup a cronjob
echo "*/10 * * * * cd /var/www/hubzilla; /usr/bin/php Zotlabs/Daemon/Master.php Cron" >> /etc/crontab
Finally: open your browser and follow the instructions.
https://my-hubzilla.site

https://hubzilla.rocks/articles/tobias/howto-install-hubzilla-in-7-easy-steps

Herbert Thielen

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:29:01 +0100

As we learned from Stefan Münz, some web hosting services support click-only-installations of Hubzilla (amongst several tools), e.g. Serverprofis. Didn't try it by myself, can't imagine to work without command line access. But that's more an admin feature and less a user perspective.

h.ear.t | tobias

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 16:39:35 +0100

Yeah. Different target groups. That was just an example for a quick and yummy howto I once did.

I too was amazed that there are actually hosters offering HZ as part of their one-click-and-finished portfolio. It's 100% do-able and I am very happy about that. Will have a look at them and their plans.
We really should create a public list for this kind of offerings. That will help a lot, I think.!

Hubzilla @ Kieler Open Source und Linux Tage?

Martin G.

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 20:01:28 +0200

!Deutschsprachige Nutzer !Hubzilla Outreach

Kieler Open Source und Linux Tage suchen nach Vorträgen

Hat da einer von euch irgendwas bezüglich #Fediverse allgemein und/oder #Hubzilla speziell geplant?

Tim Schlotfeldt ⚓

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 21:09:36 +0200

Noch nicht, aber das wäre eine Überlegung wert.

Vorher würde ich wohl wieder eine obligate Session zum Thema beim BarCamp Kiel halten wollen.

Forums killed by GDPR: How about inviting their users to Hubzilla?

Martin G.

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:41:50 +0200

You know, Hubzilla could maybe have used the #DSGVO a.k.a. #GDPR a.k.a. "European privacy law" to its advantage.

Especially in Germany (where lawyers are right now misusing GDPR as a "get rich quick" scheme without any clients telling them to), a number of privately-operated forums have shut down right before May 25th because they could impossibly comply with GDPR, some of them having been close to 20 years old like the German Depeche Mode fan forum. And I guess that nobody dares to launch a new German-speaking forum anywhere in the EU now, leaving the former forum users pretty much homeless if they neither speak nor understand English.

What we could have done is get into contact with these people and offer them a new home on Hubzilla, thereby increasing and diversifying its user community. Hubzilla can be used as a forum host all right even though such a forum looks more like a blog than a bulletin board

I guess it's hard to regather them now. Besides, I don't know if Hubzilla's current hub infrastructure can cope with hundreds or even thousands of people flocking in at once. And since we aren't talking about extremely computer-savvy FLOSS geeks who can set up a LAMP stack at the drop of a hat, I've got my doubts that this will lead to more people running public hubs.

In fact, seeing as we're talking about people who right now neither know what the Federated Web is nor how it works, and who are therefore likely to have trouble picking a hub (and wrapping their mind about them all being interconnected), they'll all pile onto the same hub until it's full, and when it's full, they'll believe Hubzilla itself is full. That's why launching one new hub for any community in danger of losing their forum won't work: It'll probably be overcrowded in no time.

(Same as with everything else. Why does everyone have a Gmail account? Why does everyone have an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy? And so on? Because choosing what everyone else uses is a no-brainer. That's why launching more than one new hub might not work either: Folks won't know which one to pick and all join the one with the most users.)

Next problem: It's hard to know about something like this happening in advance. German news media didn't mention anything about forums closing down due to GDPR before these forums were actually shut down. And then it was too late.

Last but not least, potential future hub admins (and probably also regular users) will have their doubts that Hubzilla is GDPR-compliant enough to not be shut down. As of now, I'm afraid these doubts are justified.

!Hubzilla Outreach

show all 4 comments

muppeth

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:03:41 +0200

Question is what was the reason for them to shutdown. GDPR is very broad. Its hard for me to realize what made those forums close down? They shared all credentials with 3rd party without consent? stored everything in open somwhere overseas? Used nonhttps connections? Stored passwords in plain text? What is the legit reason for closing down?

Martin G.

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:14:41 +0200

For example:

Impossibility to document everything that's done with visitors' and members' data down to the tiniest little detail.

Creating a fully compliant imprint was too difficult or downright impossible.

Impossibility to implement a functionality that wipes an 18-year-old forum clean of all data of any one user. Also, while it's about "private data", there is no clear definition of what exactly is considered "private" on a forum.

Having to negotiate with, for example, YouTube (and therefore Alphabet/Google) due to the exchange of cookies and IP addresses (these already count as personal data and fall under GDPR) for 10 years worth of embedded videos.

Having to negotiate with Google because everyone and their dog have been using Google Analytics because they were too lazy to implement their own analytics system.

And so forth. All this is stuff that German lawyers may get you for. And in the case of GDPR and in German understanding, "may" is already too likely to be shrugged off.

Last but not least, there are Abmahnanwälte looming over them like hawks waiting for prey plus the prospect of having to pay up to €40,000,000 if not fully compliant.

See, in Germany, GDPR compliance isn't understood as "that'll do". Germans are super-ultra-thorough. So are German lawyers, especially if there's something in it for them. So, in Germany, GDPR compliance means to fulfill every last paragraph and sub-paragraph to a tee, and if there are multiple ways of reading a passage in GDPR, assume the worst because so will greedy lawyers.

muppeth

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:22:05 +0200

But in case of embeds, you need to just change the privacy policy and say that this is happening or switch off preview renders.

Also as far as analitics go. The easiest way is switching it off. Problem solved. I think those old forums had other issues such as no https implementation, storing passwords in database in plaintext and other technical things that should not have taken place anyway.

Hubzilla in communities

Harper Pollock

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 19:16:57 +0200

With some problems (admin needed!) we try to make our instance an example of what Hubzilla can be for a goal oriented intentional community. Once we are done with deployment, we plan to quit all low-security communication channels, cancel Wordpress and static pages and route it all to Hubzilla.
The next step will be to deploy all resource-coordination applications and use them in our daily work.
Finally we plan to learn how to use Hubzilla as the central community app for our meta-project

CNI Data Metaproject
by cnicoop on CNI Cooperative

If you like this approach, you are invited to join and support us.

CNI-Coop Community-Network

muppeth

Sat, 12 May 2018 18:45:38 +0200

Very interesting project. We at disroot.org are trying a similar thing. We've started from a platform to offer services to people as a proof of concept. We are slowy working towards create a platform where poeple could easily duplicate the setup and collaborate to improve it, share knowledge and support.

It would be interesting to collaborate at some point.

We are also planning on moving to hubzilla as a goto social network (we will be phasing out diapsora once our hubzilla is production ready). At the moment we are focusing on theming hubzilla, setting up defaults, writting howtos and tutorials (also video) to make onboarding as easy as possible

muppeth

Sat, 12 May 2018 18:51:19 +0200

what type of admin help do you need btw?

Communities in Hubzilla

Thomas Runge

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 09:58:52 +0200

!Hubzilla Outreach

I think one of the great advantages of Hubzilla is the possibility to create forum-like communities with some special topic. This is a good thing to spread the word. If you are interested in Hubzilla and anything else: create a community (like I did for our regular pub meetings). I do not need to tell people about Hubzilla in the first place, but I tell them "we also have an online community to coordinate our meetings" and if they are interested I will tell about Hubzilla; if they are happy joining the community and don't care about the technical details I don't have to bother them with it.

You could create communities like that for any kind of group, scene, community, party, ... This will help bring people and "life" into Hubzilla. We do not need to talk about Hubzilla and funny cat gifs all the time ;)

With clones and nomadic identities someday someone will tell you "I like the idea of your book collector forum... is it in Hubzilla? I have an account in my old timer car community, maybe I will just clone it to your server."

That would be great!

Thomas Runge

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 10:28:27 +0200

I also think that regional communities are a great idea.

A topic related to a certain city or region makes it far easier to meet people who might be interested in your forum and are not on Hubzilla, yet, and tell them about your community ;)

Erik R

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 07:19:47 +0200

That is what we are trying to fire off from this hub, Askeröd is a small community in southern of Sweden with an engaged local group with focus of the time that has been (when there was a railway station) and the time that is to come (ability to live and work).

We are not many users yet and only few of them are active but we are know and there is invites sent to around 20 persons.

Thomas Runge

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 07:40:57 +0200

there is invites sent to around 20 persons

That is exactly what I mean with the advantage of regional topics -- you can invite persons far easier, when you know them or are able to meet them somewhere ;)

Hubzilla Outreach

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 01:34:42 +0200

Hubzilla Outreach updated their profile photo

New Hubzilla Outreach forum

Cat Gun

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 19:42:40 +0200 last edited: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 20:17:13 +0200

!Hubzilla Development !Hubzilla Support Forum !Hubzilla Advocacy

Inspired by @M.Dent, I've created forum for discussion of how to spread the word about Hubzilla. Discussion of general strategy and specific use cases are welcome.

hubzilla

Groups likely to be sympathetic to Hubzilla

Cat Gun

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 19:32:13 +0200

!Hubzilla Outreach

Cat Gun wrote the following post Thu, 12 Apr 2018 05:16:23 +0200

Groups likely to be sympathetic to Hubzilla
I agree with paulfree14's analysis that sex workers / sex worker rights activists are a natural fit for Hubzilla.

Other groups who are likely to be receptive to the virtues of Hubzilla:

* People upset with Google/Facebook selling their information to advertisers, Federal government.

* Darknet market users.  Reddit banned a number of drug related sub-reddits recently including some as innocuous as /r/beertrading.

* Gun enthusiasts.  Youtube has demonetized a bunch of gun video producers and banned several others.  Same for Reddit, Google Ads, and Facebook.

* Cryptocurrency enthusiasts.  They understand  and value the benefits of decentralization.  And they're currently under fire--Facebook, and Google have banned/will soon ban all cryptocurrency related ads.  Mailchimp will no longer allow cryptocurrencies to be marketed via their service.

* Indepence/rebel movements, such as the Catalonian independence movement.  During the runup to the secession vote, the Spanish government heavily censored the internet in the region.

* The unhosted / zeronet / beaker browser enthusiasts.

* Wikileaks and other whistleblower organizations.

* People living under heavy censorship regimes (North Korea, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe)

* Survivalists / preppers.

* Anarchists.

* Communists, Black Lives Matters / Antifa groups.

hubzilla outreach advocacy

Marshall Sutherland

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 02:36:51 +0200

* libertarians

Thomas Runge

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 21:06:31 +0200

What about:

* Familys who want to have their own private cloud with the possibility to connect to other hubs

* Companies who want to share information and data with customers and partners and need by law control over their data

* independent artists or freelancer who want to share their art under fair licenses without giving google or facebook every right in the book over their own work

* schools who want to create their own networks while at the same time teach interested students how webservers work, how you make a professionell blog with an editorial team, how to administrate a community, and so on

* ...

I absolutely aggree that the politicaly suppressed (for whatever reasson) like sex workers in the US or drug consumers in the EU or even larger political movements or rebel groups might be attracted to the idea of Hubzilla as an censorresistant network, and I guess they can use it. But please note that public posts will be federated to other servers and might be illegal even to host in some countries (like supporting drug selling would be in Germany, I guess) and so you put anyone running his own hub in danger of punishment (in Germany maybe jail, in other, really suppressing nations maybe even worse) -- hence your servers have to be blocked.

Some of the groups you named will propably be more interested in anonymous darknet communities (maybe also running Hubzilla, why not), but the clearnet is not a lawfree space and also not really anonymous.

Cat Gun

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 21:56:32 +0200

@Thomas Runge, yes, those are all good markets as well. Great suggestions!

And yes, public posts will be federated, so hubs will have to be careful with whom they connect. In my ideal world, the data would be encrypted, so that hub owners (or law enforcement) wouldn't be able to see the data in the first place.

Hubzilla Outreach

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 19:23:26 +0200

Hubzilla Outreach updated their cover photo

Hubzilla Outreach

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 19:19:49 +0200

Hubzilla Outreach updated their profile photo