Simple open source app hosting

m4nu

@Ironia said: Can the 2FA field be set to a number field so on screen keyboards will load up in number pad mode?

Good idea. Vuetify even got a OTP field since I implemented this. Will add one or the other.

If post paid, are transaction fees large enough to make users with a single pod inefficient to invoice? Would it only invoice on months with a cumulative bill of at least $3 or something?

Stripe charges $0.25 fixed fee. I'll probably do pre-paid only with optional automatic top-ups of (which makes it similar to post-paid). Minimum top-up amount could be $15 or so.

m4nu

@SeanP said: What kind of container isolation do you provide, if any? Do you have (let's say) 100 customer docker containers running on a KVM VPS, or is it more segmented like 1 customer to a VPS or container or something?

Every pod is separate, even if they belong to the same customer. This allows for easy migrations and using specialized hardware for some apps. Like high-storage, high-CPU, etc.

SeanP

@m4nu said:
Every pod is separate, even if they belong to the same customer. This allows for easy migrations and using specialized hardware for some apps. Like high-storage, high-CPU, etc.

Awesome, thanks for clarifying. I set up an account, but it only added $20 in credit. Is that what it is going forward for the rest of the beta? If so that's fine, just wondering. Free is free, after all

m4nu

@SeanP said:
Awesome, thanks for clarifying. I set up an account, but it only added $20 in credit. Is that what it is going forward for the rest of the beta? If so that's fine, just wondering. Free is free, after all

Yes, it’s only $20 since a few weeks and we’ll switch to live payments in a few days.

If you still want more credits for testing, PM me your account email and I’ll add the difference for you.

SeanP

No worries, just checking. There aren't any apps available yet that set me on fire, just want to be ready when there are

How often are you adding new apps? What is the vetting process like? I'm sure they have to hit some particular metrics for easy of deployment and lack of necessity in in-depth config, right? Like if you made GitLab docker container available it would hammer your servers, same with the Minecraft docker container.

umzak

suggestion: in Available Apps, add a search box

m4nu

@umzak said:
suggestion: in Available Apps, add a search box

Already planned. And tags to filter.

pxnji

I checked on my umami websites there is a notif about the new version. I go to the pikapods dashboard and there is a check button about automatically update but its been a few days and its not update yet. Can you explain about the automatically updates system?

pxnji

@m4nu said:

@umzak said:
suggestion: in Available Apps, add a search box

Already planned. And tags to filter.

we need a sorting too like the lastest apps added and information about the version of the apps.

m4nu

@pxnji said:
I checked on my umami websites there is a notif about the new version. I go to the pikapods dashboard and there is a check button about automatically update but its been a few days and its not update yet. Can you explain about the automatically updates system?

I test updates before updating all pods. So there will be a few days of delay between the announcement and your pod running on the new version. It’s not automatic and likely won’t be in the future. On the upside you get better stability compared to pulling blindly from upstream.

I’ll add some tooltip text to clarify this better.

m4nu

Finished implementing the payment system with some adjustments based on the feedback I got: There is now a pre-paid option with credits and optional auto recharges.

All feedback still welcome. 😀

Will move on to updating a few apps now.

Ironia

Haven't tried actually charging a payment yet, but from looking at it my thoughts are:

I love that there is now an approximate cost per month.

If you've enabled real payments, maybe delete payment methods added before 1 day ago (or whenever you flipped over from test to real payment processing).

I can type a bunch of 9's in the recharge amount field. That should probably be limited to 3 digits. No opinion on an exact number, but I think there's often a cap to prepay credit to limit the risk of fraud with stolen cards.

If you ever add convenient number buttons (e.g. $10, $25, $50), maybe add a time-based button for like 1 year (estimated). I feel like it'd make sense to do like 3 months/6 months/1 year but shorter time periods might get people under the minimum recharge amount if they're light users.

I can't seem to manage/preview auto recharge options yet. Do I need to make a real payment first to enable the option?

alento

Hey,

I just set up a Bookstack instance. Liking what I am seeing of your new service so far ... just one slight issue. No email? Bookstack uses it for email verification of new users, so that is kind of a necessary function. How will you handle emails???

umzak

Currently there is only 1 server location, will there be another server location option? like singapore

m4nu

Thanks for testing and sharing your thoughts, everyone! 🙌🤗

@alento said:
I just set up a Bookstack instance. Liking what I am seeing of your new service so far ... just one slight issue. No email? Bookstack uses it for email verification of new users, so that is kind of a necessary function. How will you handle emails???

Would be best to allow adding one's own email service. I think Bookstack keeps it in some config/env file. Will make sure this is accessible and persistent.

@umzak said:
Currently there is only 1 server location, will there be another server location option? like singapore

Planning to add a US location pretty soon (talking to my colo guys in Boston already) and Japan to serve East Asia. I like Singapore too, but feel East Asia should come before SE-Asia. Also in the process of adding a second EU server for high storage apps, like PhotoPrism. Some apps will migrate there this week.

@Ironia said: I can't seem to manage/preview auto recharge options yet. Do I need to make a real payment first to enable the option?

Not implemented yet. Hopefully later today. There will be cases where auto-recharge won't work due to the bank asking for live verification. Those cases will need to top up manually or use another card. My own card does this with AWS for example.

umzak

maybe it's also good to display the most popular applications at the top, or there is a sorting by popularity, updates, alphabet, etc

m4nu

@umzak said:
maybe it's also good to display the most popular applications at the top, or there is a sorting by popularity, updates, alphabet, etc

Literally my other todo for the day. 😄

I'll add category tags first to find photo, wiki, monitoring, etc apps quickly. And a tag for popular apps, as you say. Roughly this UI of on/off tags:

m4nu

Done with the auto-recharge feature. And deployed a new server for PhotoPrism only, since that's pretty CPU-intensive.

Up next is the filtering/app tags.

m4nu

Tags are now up. Hope it's useful: https://www.pikapods.com/apps

Jab

This kinda suggest "popular" is enabled by default. I guess you wanted to somehow highlight it, but it's little missleading.

Tags are hit or miss mostly due to nature. This page needs a inline search searching in name, descriptions (and tags !)

m4nu

@Jab said:
This kinda suggest "popular" is enabled by default. I guess you wanted to somehow highlight it, but it's little missleading.

Agreed. Changed it to a simple icon instead of the color.

m4nu

@Jab said: Tags are hit or miss mostly due to nature. This page needs a inline search searching in name, descriptions (and tags !)

Also true. Was planning that already.

Jab

@m4nu said: Changed it to a simple icon instead of the color.

Now it's nicer, but actually selected filters could go green (like popular still do after clicking).

Now you can show that 'star' for popular apps next to app name! So if there is like 3-4 apps in filter/search that looks like doing the same thing - user will most likely click the star one - if it's popular, then it's prolly better/stable/notsucking/more peope use it etc.

m4nu

@Jab said:
Now it's nicer, but actually selected filters could go green (like popular still do after clicking).

Oops. Put the class on the wrong tag. Back to green now.

Now you can show that 'star' for popular apps next to app name! So if there is like 3-4 apps in filter/search that looks like doing the same thing - user will most likely click the star one - if it's popular, then it's prolly better/stable/notsucking/more peope use it etc.

Not a terrible idea really. Let me reflect on it for a bit.

umzak

@m4nu said:
Tags are now up. Hope it's useful: https://www.pikapods.com/apps

nice. now much better.
does this mean popular, the most used application on pikapods? it means applications that are in the popular category, based on realtime data, not hardcoded

m4nu

@umzak said:
does this mean popular, the most used application on pikapods? it means applications that are in the popular category, based on realtime data, not hardcoded

Yes, the most used apps on Pika. Not real time for now.

Ironia

Can there be a RevShare tag for things that have the badge? It would only apply to PhotoPrism right now, but I'm assuming that someday there will be more...

If the long term target audience is still people who are not super tech savvy then maybe pull tags like "analytics" and "database" out of the main cloud and put them on a second line. Keep the complete applications more up front and center so the target audience can focus on things they understand before they notice and get scared off by the developer tools.

m4nu

@Ironia said:
Can there be a RevShare tag for things that have the badge? It would only apply to PhotoPrism right now, but I'm assuming that someday there will be more...

There is already an icon next to rev share apps, but no tag filter. Not sure if someone wanted to filter for this. It's more informational, same as apps that need payment verification first (anything that can run code; keeps out crypto miners)

If the long term target audience is still people who are not super tech savvy then maybe pull tags like "analytics" and "database" out of the main cloud and put them on a second line. Keep the complete applications more up front and center so the target audience can focus on things they understand before they notice and get scared off by the developer tools.

Agreed, but in the case of the "database" category, we are talking about nocode DBs that re aimed at end users too. Not Postgres or MySQL. Will keep refining those tags, as more apps are added. The survey gave me a good idea of favored categories.

Aim for today is to add a comparison table to the frontpage to explain the difference between Google, PikaPods and running your own server. Also aimed at muggles to explain the pros and cons of each. And to finalize new servers in Hong Kong and the US to start with 3 regions next week. HK should be good for most of Asia and it's cheaper than JP or SG.

dylightful

BYOYM needs to be an option before PROD, other than that, fantastic work!

m4nu

@dylightful said: BYOYM

Thanks! BYOYM?