Obviously he thinks Nextcloud should bring management tools for offering hosted cloud services with one click, in order to make a few quick bucks. I don’t even want to know what his budget for hardware is and how he plans to offer redundancy, backups and decent performance, if he thinks someone will develop a custom hosting platform for a few 100 bucks. Probably it is better if this project doesn’t come to life. There are already enough cheap and unreliable providers of hosted Nextcloud services out there and if someone doesn’t know how to build such an infrastructure, maybe it’s better to leave it alone. This is just my impression and my opinion on subject.
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What you are after is not in the scope of Nextcloud. You are talking about an hosting scenario.
You have an excellent API and you can use that in combination with other hilling type software.
If yuh want to do stuff en masse for loads of users, use the shelf or the API.
The system itself should imo not contain any payment gateways or other features to check if a user has paid or not.
I am using Nextcloud professionally and has done so for several years. I do host for others and i help some companies doing this at scale.
Outline what you need and get someone that can do an integration with some type of billing system for webhosters.
/Johan
(And can @rakekniven or some other moderator move this to the right place?)
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No @rollanders , I said something else. I said that from the administrator account the features you have are very limited. And I agree with you for example, from the phone is not usable.
But who talked about infrastructure? But you don’t even know me haha but how do you say certain things? It is you who are pointing the finger at me for no reason.
Look what I’m saying can work in favor of even people with brilliant minds like yours.
Hi @SmallOne thank you for your message. Finally 1 serious answer. I believe you were the only one who understood perfectly what I mean without offending
I would not call my self a brilliant mind. But I think what you ask for is out of scope for a software like Nextcloud. And I really hope they are not going to spend their tight rescources in implementing such things directly to their core product. 
Anyways I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it under any circumstances. But please try to do it right, if you choose to go any further… Good luck.
which would be? what do you suggest?
Ugh…
NextCloud wasn’t meant to be (ab)used as a pay-to-use client, which means your entire idea will not work unless you, yourself, personally, add a payment system, add a way to confirm said payments, and then to write some code to build a usergroup/add a user to a group.
Something you and even I could probably do with a bit of googling…
I just don’t see how you can be somewhat upset over the fact that you’re basically asking to turn NextCloud into something it isn’t. At least not for the majority of users, and I do not believe many will want to add the option to paywall your cloud services.
Alternatively, given that your entire idea is… Rather worthless, why not set up a payment system that has nothing to do with your cloud and then manually process said payments by manually adding them to a group?
Problem solved.
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i agree, it’d be great to see these features evolve !
user groups, maintenance and config, more details in contacts and users contact details
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@StarSmasher44 thank you for your message.
My idea is not useless. You are considering something useless that could also be useful to you. I work with more than 500 customers who pay at different times and at different times.
Nobody ever said that NC has to become paid. If you have the ability to create paid packages, you can also offer free packages.
NC is open source, correct? So if I need to develop something, I look for a developer and development, whether it’s a free or paid feature for my clients. If I want to use NC to offer paid services, nobody forbids me from doing it and it’s not the wrong thing.
The much more detailed admin panel works in your favor too.
@punkyard YEEEESSSS!
Dear @mrplunk,
it is very simple. I the screenshot you showed is very clear. You are not an administrator.
So, there are two ways to go for you:
- Go to the administrator of the Website and let you show the rest.
- Install nextcloud for yourself and login as Administrator.
In both ways you will see how much different the Admin panel is, when you login as Administrator.
This is mine.
Kind Regards
friemmedia
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In a medium size or even most small size companies, you would use an LDAP as backend, and NC is part of your enterprise, hence you would usually not manage anything user related directly in NC, except maybe external users (Customers, partners etc.). In fact I use OpenLDAP in my private setup even, as I am more confident in securing the credentials in build-for-purpose hierachical object oriented database, build from scratch to secure authentication and ensure authorisation. On top of that, it gives me the power of overlays, hence as this is just a small user base, I can use autogroups/dynamic groups, to enable simplified role based access control.
Through a carefull design and NC app enablement and configuration, everything is now managed and controlled through group memberships, and my interface to work with that, is either Apache Directory Studio, or a clean web based solution, which also provided me with extended and much more powerfull signup capabilities, aswell as password self service.
I can assure you that taking that route, you will not be using the useradmin panel excepton very rare cases.
You need to have the ability to automate things if necessary. Currently, you cannot do this with NC. You can write all the solutions you prefer but the fact remains that NC is a product without a valid administration dashboard.
To automate you use the CLI, hence the OCC library and functions, not the web gui.
OCC gives you all the power of administration - even creating users in LDAP. As it is CLI, it can be scripted, remotely executed through SSH, scheduled and much more. On top of that OCC gives you much more choices and parameter options, aswell as much more powerfull upgrade options.
For anything automated or aministrative tasks which is server wide, I only uses OCC now. For creating users in batches, or if creating and modifying users accordingly to defined different “stereotypes”, it makes good sense to use a script, which will always set the excact values as intended. However if Nextcloud is your only application, I will meet you halfway and say that in that case, it COULD be a more streamlined admin interface. However with all those apps adding capabilities, that will be almost impossible.
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The definition to be valid is? Covering your use case?
Absolutely no. In the previous message, I explained my idea already. I explain you again, no problem. Any other script or cms you use has a separate admin dashboard. If you plan to use NC privately, this setup may be fine. But if you want to develop large and above all automated projects, NC is not the software for you. NC’s current dashboard is really poor and it is useful only for those who manage “small” projects with a fairly average amount of work. Look yetishare script, look the admin dashboard and later maybe we can talk again about NC.
@mrplunk we understand: you are right.
Tens of thousands admins are just not intelligent enough to notice that their usage of existing admin-panel is just wrong.
All companies using NC for paid services are doing everything wrong.
And then there is you. The lighthouse.
So please enlighten GH with a feature-request on what you think is missing.
Let’s make this perfectly clear. For your special usecase you might be right. But I doubt that your suggestion(s) would have a benefit for everyone.
3 Likes
I already explained my opinion in the previous messages. And I never said other admins aren’t smart enough. I’m pointing out one thing that’s missing about NC, don’t put other people in the middle of nothing.
I don’t want to explain again how NC could be improved.
You are not a user who likes criticism, you are not a user who can take advantage of criticism so for me the discussion is closed here. I leave you in your way of thinking and seeing things.