Criticism of this forum

[sunny]

I think this forum is a tired joke. You don’t get any real help here. You can find many amounts on Google. But very many are simply unanswered. That brings you nothing to register and ask. Nobody helps their inexperienced beginners who need help. That has been shocing me since I am strong here.
As I see it, other users.
Just the instructions on how to put a mail here is super complicated and opaque.
Here any imagined NC professionals have opened their camp to show every beginner directly how small and stupid he is and that he should rather pay money for support.
I think the forum is a large marketing mesh from the NC company itself that give no help so that people buy their support. The mods and admins are sure to sit here in the company as an employee and slice all the lost beginners into money.

I have to say it has the impression for me.
I look around for a better forum. Because here you don’t get an answer to anything.

Really a shame.

[NaXal]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your negative experience.

I am a beginner.

I have have been in this situation before, as this forum isn’t spoon feeding the way I also expected things to be.

I am not going to defend against the negative experience of yours but I can only share about my own experience since different people come from different backgrounds & different level of technical knowledge about the platforms

As a non technical user, Yes, initially I too felt disappointed for not finding enough spoon feeding meterial

After spending sometime here, I realised few things

• Nextcloud Company isn’t providing day to day support here.

• It is an user to user communication platform and users are spending their time by volunteering

• However, Nextcloud or deployment platform maintainers are active here since for critical issues, they do reply & participate in the discussions promptly

Since, day to day tasks about how to do this or that or what to do if I am stuck here or there is mainly answered by fellow users out of their volunteering efforts. That leads to delay in response time for someone knowledgeable to come up and handle that support request.

I have seen Nextcloud Devs or deployment platform maintainers expressing their understanding about the gaps in “documentation” to make it full proof so that the number of how to do this or that type of support questions can be reduced with proper FAQ & robust documentation

Since this project is an open source project, they have always inviting more and more people to join in to contribute in those sections where gaps are present. Support section is definitely something which needs more active helping hands

You are right, I agree with you. I too have spent more time in Google by visiting 3rd party blogs or websites to suppliment the slowness of this forum

However, but I accept this since the software or Dev’s are clear about what to expect from a free & open source product with community edition or community support.

I am sure devs are maintainers will read your comment so it would be very helpful if you may please elaborate by adding the link of the thread which you feel went unanswered

That would be a constructive discussion and would help those who run the show to introspect & figure out further actions to avoid this kind of helplessness

Thanks.

[JimmyKater]

Thanks @sunny, thank you for your wise words and insights.

And for trashing the people who actually tried to help you with your somewhat wayward setup and you claiming no one helped you.

It’s also not really helpful when you reopen 2 year old threads and then wonder why you can’t get any answers there.

Of course, this is all the problem of the “forum”.

It’s never the user who causes problems, it’s always and only the stupid tools.

Well, you want to look for another forum? Then do that. Have fun!

But as a businessman, you should also bear in mind that there are things for which you do have to invest something. After all, your data should be secure, since you’re storing it in a place that’s accessible from the world.
And yes, the supporters at Nextcloud GmbH know how to deal with setups like the one you described. You should talk to them. BUT: it does cost money.

Here in this forum you are in the Nextcouldcommunity user forum. We usually deal with home user problems and setups here. And we also help a bit beyond that. But there is no guarantee of help. Nice private people sacrifice their free time to help other, hopefully equally nice users.

Perhaps you should take this aspect to heart in your further search, because it won’t be much different there than it is here.

Apart from that you’re still welcome here to ask your questions and hopefully find someone who CAN help you.

Cheerio
Jimmy

[SysKeeper]

@sunny

The mods and admins are sure to sit here in the company as an employee and slice all the lost beginners into money.

Most of the mods and admins are actually volunteers as well, not employed by Nextcloud GmbH and just trying to help

I am not sure to which of your topics and posts your criticism is directed to, but around christmas it gets a bit quieter on this community as well, so the last few days might not be an ideal reference time.

[sunny]

It surprises me that my criticism is received so positively. And it is absolutely clear to me that it happens in the leisure of the members.
I am very in many open source community forums. And most of them have at least 2-3 members who passionately help where they can. Because you have a passion for the software and like to use free software to use other people to use it.

It needs people who have a passion for free software. And I also find it great that Nextcloud provides its solutions to everyone.

I here that advanced questions are answered rather than the question of completely new users who have no basic knowledge. And I referred to the general situation and not just my questions. If you are looking for a problem, you quickly end up in dead threads here in the forum. And often with similar problems and questions that have new users. It’s just a shame. And of course it is about the participation.

Maybe the Self Hosting is still a sneeze.
Most do not have these problems. Because they use Nextcloud through cloud providers.

I also browsed the documentation through intensely.
And it is valuable to offer a solution for everything or to convey basic knowledge effectively.

It is difficult to ask targeted questions if you don’t have anyone who can answer them.

My unanswered questions are here at the moment

Where can I find the nextcloud config.php

In which docker container is the “/ver/www/nextcloud/config/config.php” in a portainer/docker environment? I would like to edit my menu bar and the account menu entries. But I don’t know in which of the ongoing containers I have to look and find it. im using Nextcloud 30 AIO on a debian server with portainer.

and

Nextcloud Talk Push-to-Talk aktivieren

Hallo ihr Lieben, ich habe gelesen das es für Talk durch aus eine push to talk funktion gibt. Wie kann ich dies für meine User aktivieren? Ich hab vollen Zugriff auf meine Cloud die über Docker auf meinem Homeserver gehostet wird. Ich kann also in die Eingeweide rein wenn nötig. Ich nutze die neuste AIO Version von Nextcloud. Danke für die Hilfe

(in english: How do I scene the push to talk function in NC Talk)

With answering the first question of where I can find the relevant NextCloud Configuration file in a Docker Portainer area, I would have been really good.

EDIT:
Ok the most important question was actually answered to me that I was looking for all the time to make further adjustments.

[tflidd]

@sunny

If you are looking for a problem, you quickly end up in dead threads here in the forum. And often with similar problems and questions that have new users. It’s just a shame.

For some specific problems, it can take some time because for many private installation some use cases are rare. And you need the chance that someone with advanced knowledge picks up your question and gives an answer. And also, many people don’t share back when they’ve found a solution.

Not sure if an advanced or deep-dive tag or something like that would help?

[Kraligor]

It’s not a problem of the forums IMO. Nextcloud is complicated and requires kowledge of its underlying technologies, if you choose to set it up bare metal. There are tons of how-tos on the internet, all with the same problem: They (best case) get you up and running, but done in a way that makes sense to the writer of the how-to.

And when the inexperienced user eventually runs into an issue, they have no idea what to do, because they’re lacking context. And they don’t know what questions to ask, and how to ask them on the forums, so they receive no help.

I blame “SET UP YOUR OWN NEXTCLOUD IN 10 EASY TO FOLLOW STEPS”-style of articles. They should just promote AIO/Docker instead. And don’t get me wrong, setting NC up bare metal is a great learning experience, but that’s a different state of mind than setting it up for a (home) production environment.

FWIW, I’ve always received great help here. In many cases I managed to help myself after getting suggested some new ideas.

[sunny]

Yes, that’s how I feel. If I get new impulses and have a little bit of basic knowledge, a lot comes on its own. I don’t think a normal Nextcloud user does not necessarily want to change. I was able to adapt my cloud very well so far with the interface.

I have the feeling it is relatively easy after reading for the individual points.

Now I’m daring to the config.php and I think everything will go well.

[Michiel_Breur]

Hmm,
i think people are helpful enough, i also teach ‘don’t give a man a fish teach him how to fish’.
If everything were just cp and forget? That would make people lazy.

I started with Nextcloud a few days ago and got it pretty much up and running thanks to this forum and their members. Just now i finally got the stupid ‘pretty urls / .htaccess’ headache worked out. How i did it isn’t pretty but for now it works (haven’t rebooted yet )

Sure i got some apparmor BS to figure out, errors to clean but i hope i can figure some stuff out on myself.

I think i’ll put a guide up myself to get that stupid .htaccess to work.

[tflidd]

@Kraligor

Nextcloud is complicated and requires kowledge of its underlying technologies, if you choose to set it up bare metal

If you take away too many obstacles and make the initial setup super smooth, you’ll learn the stuff later but the hard way (nothing works any more, where is my data?).
There is a nice writeup on a few topics, you should go through:

101: Self-hosting information for beginners

Self-hosting is managing your own applications and data instead of relying on external services. It offers greater control, privacy, and customization but comes with a steep learning curve. Before diving in, it’s crucial to understand that self-hosting requires technical knowledge and can be time-consuming. Technical Knowledge Self-hosting requires technical knowledge. Be prepared to learn at least basics about ALL following topics: Linux Essentials: Familiarity with the Linux operating syst…

[Kraligor]

@tflidd

If you take away too many obstacles and make the initial setup super smooth, you’ll learn the stuff later but the hard way (nothing works any more, where is my data?).

Depends on what your goals are. Most people without prior knowledge, I’m guessing, want a self-hosted cloud. And if they go the bare metal route, most of them will follow some copy-paste tutorial on some random article on the internet, and ultimately end up in the situation you describe and become frustrated. Because they don’t want to learn new tech, they want a self-hosted cloud. And those people should be using AIO in the first place.

[Michiel_Breur]

Even more experienced users get frustrated lol,

I’ve been working with computers for over 30 years give or take, hobby becomes work…

Started on DOS, Windows 3.x ->95 etc…
Played around with Linux when redhat came on 7 disks (CD’s for the younger kids).
And for the most part nextcloud bare metal was a breeze to install, i tried snap and docker… they were a pain (for me) and as soon you go ‘outside’ off the ‘standard’ stuff things become more complicated.

Waaaay back when there were no forums to browse and find solutions for problems you had, everything had to be figured out yourselves. Sure if you had access to internet and some BBS you could maybe find people that had the same issues. If i’m honest these days, i have no clue what IT education looks like but i feel the easy access to help made people dumb. Encountered people that couldn’t install freakin MS office.

[wwe]

I agree many just want a “self-hosted cloud” but people without deep technical knowledge tend to underestimate efforts and skills required to run (some) system, handle backups, updates etc. It doesn’t really matter which path you choose even with AiO many many “admins” are completely lost once something takes an unexpected path and doesn’t work itself.

there is no such thing like a self-hosted cloud application completely reliable and secure with good data recovery and resilience running in every situation and on each hardware and could be operated by a dummy. The problem is there are many different technologies working good in general… but at some point you hit an issue and this is the point where you need the understanding how thing are tied together and sometimes you really need follow the whole path of 5-7-10 steps one by one to understand the root cause… in other words you have to learn fishing rather take the fish an cook it. it doesn’t matter which specific technology you take - many are good, Docker, Snap, NCP AIO - all could run reliably but each of them needs some level of understanding and major concepts like http, database, clients, DNS, TLS, backup remain the same and the admin must understand to operate and troubleshoot them sooner or later… and somebody wants a system which “just runs” they should choose a managed Nextcloud operated by professionals.

[Kraligor]

Fully agree. And again, I’m blaming clickbaity articles for the wrong attitude many users start off with. AIO requires less knowledge (or rather, knowledge of fewer underlying services), but if something does go wrong, it can still be a major issue for someone without knowledge and without interest in gaining that knowledge.

I don’t think any of this is something Nextcloud has any influence over though. Authors will keep promising FREE SELF-HOSTED CLOUD SET-UP IN 30 MINUTES, and people will keep believing them (and why shouldn’t they?), and people will keep getting frustrated.

And I’ll keep telling people who ask me about Nextcloud to start off with AIO, but don’t expect it to be easy.

[SamanthaSass]

I understand this frustration as I’ve shared many of these same feelings. For my part I believe that there is a problem in too many open source projects that the people who are going to use the project are also developers who are well versed in underlying concepts and how endlessly study the documentation and are always using the bleeding edge version and keeping up to date with the latest information as soon as it’s released.

I manage a NextCloud install for an organization in my (exceedingly rare) spare time. I’m not expecting miracles, but my experience with updates doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the current system, and after looking up how to backup and reinstall the system, I’m surprised that there isn’t a better system considering that this is now the 3rd time I have to do this.

As to AIO requiring less knowledge or being easier, I’d argue that it’s worse in that the updates are no longer handled by the base system and now require a separate process, and updating is a very manual process that takes the entire system offline for minutes, or days if you haven’t updated in the past 2 months. Based on my experience, AIO is much worse than the local install.

[sunny]

@SamanthaSass

Based on my experience, AIO is much worse than the local install.

That sounds terrible. I will only upgrade it in the most extreme emergency. It’s already working well. It’s enough for my purposes. The only thing that could make me do this would be a security risk that exists. I think that’s how many people handle it. Or do you always have to chase the latest features?

[SysKeeper]

@sunny

I will only upgrade it in the most extreme emergency.

Sorry, but this is a terrible way of handling it. While I understand that some people don’t need / want to chase the latest features, staying on an old (even worse: unsupported) version is always a security risk, especially on a internet-facing product like Nextcloud. There might be even non security related bugs that you suddenly encounter which might be fixed already.
But I guess that’s inline with what everyone already said, getting it up and running is easy, but keeping it up and handling issues is often forgotten. Self hosting comes at a cost, be it knowledge, time or both.

I said that before somewhere on here, but I started using Nextcloud with version 12 personally, and never encountered any real issues with updates. The same instance is now running at 30. I know other software products that are more troublesome to keep updated …

[tflidd]

If you want to master a self-hosted solution, setting it up is only the first step. Do a full backup and restore, manage updates, … (and probably a few more) are further steps required before thinking of setting up a “service”.

AIO, NextcloudPi, virtual machines etc. have helped to make all this much easier. However, if you stop after installing a first test setup, you will certainly encounter problems later fully unprepared.

[Kraligor]

To be fair, I don’t have much experience with AIO, but how does it compare to sudden wrenches thrown in your installation, like Redis getting replaced by Valkey? That was something unexpected taking 2 hours away from my day, when after an OS update my Nextcloud was down, because their automatic migration script didn’t work properly.

And that would have been a hard stop for someone who just wants to have a self-hosted cloud without paying for it.

[SamanthaSass]

The installation I manage has 1 critical user account that is shared by 5-6 people. This is a shared data store for a projection tool, so you can create an event on one device and it will update all other devices in a few minutes. So that is the only critical account in our system. That information gets backed up from one computer to a separate data store every couple of months since losing an event isn’t critical, but having to rebuild the 30GB of data that runs everything is. We’ve used dropbox in the past.

So when NextClound breaks, the solution is to reinstall, recreate user accounts, and then reupload the data off one of the clients. This last time I took the recommendation to use the AIO docker images. Seemed like a good idea at the time as the NC pages recommended it. Previous install was always up to date since the system handled updates, so it was “set and forget” but docker it seems is the worst of everything in that it doesn’t update automatically, it isolates your control, but it’s not a real VM, so taking a snapshot doesn’t work. The other thing is when you watch the how to install AIO videos, nobody ever mentions that you have to set up the backup tool to get automatic updates.

when I first installed NC everything I read was that it was the best of this type of application. Now I’m less certain about this, and the responses in this forum don’t exactly mitigate any of that. And apparently because the update system can’t seem to handle an out of date installation, I get to uninstall and reinstall again next week. This however will be the last time, if it breaks again, I’m looking for something else.