Would i mess up my installation by softlinking my Shared Drives into a folder in my Nextcloud folder? I think it would be very handy to be able to access any of my files from anywhere via my nextcloud install. I would be doing this to a user account not an admin account if that matters. But i am “System Admin” and owner of the computer in question.
Also if i did try this and saved to one of the soft link folders would it go directly into my Shared Drive?
One of those things you know you should not do but wonder about anyhow.
I tried doing it this way when I originally set up my cloud, but eventually decided to change my approach. The problem is that when you make changes on the shared drive outside of the cloud, it doesn’t automatically pick up the fact that changes were made, so Nextcloud’s database of which files are there gets out of sync with what is actually there.
So yes, you can do this, but be aware of the potential downsides. I chose to keep the NAS and cloud files separate, and I move or copy them through a Nextcloud client when I need cloud access to them. As for access to all other files, I run a VPN and just connect to that if I ever need something that isn’t cloud accessible.
In general I think the recommended approach would be to allow Nextcloud to be the authority over all files it manages, and any changes to those files have to be done through a Nextcloud client (web/desktop/mobile).
Symlinks are not supported and may cause issues.
Okay that was what i wondered. I gained access to the nextcloud directory so i can make a physical backup. Saw how simple the file system actually was and thought i would ask.
I have not gotten my VPN to work on my DDWRT nor do i know how to setup an FTP site (yet). Work does not allow access to a VPN but let me right into nextcloud. Not defending my reasoning for wanting to try it. Just letting you know the reasoning for my thoughts. Thank you very much for the information.
I will see if i can setup a VPN on something other than my router as it may work better.
Does occ files:scan also scan softlinks? In this case you could run that command (with option to only rescan new/updated files as cron job for example. But yeah as Jason mentions it is not supported and I would always prefer the official methods/api, for example add certain folders as local external storage.
Actually more specifically, symlinks will bite you if you link to a directory which contains that symlink, creating an infinite loop and causing lots of problems as you can imagine. That’s what I ran into, and I think a big reason it’s not supported in Nextcloud. 
When you say work does not allow VPN, what exactly do you mean? Is it that they don’t want to add a firewall rule to enable access on that port, or something else?
FTP in my experience is a pain to set up and use, and I question how secure it is.
Any time i try to connect to any VPN at my desk it will not connect. Pretty sure the I.T. guy said the firewall they have blocks any VPN related port. It honestly is not a big deal. Just thought if this would have worked that would be one less service i might have to try to set up. I am getting Linux but there is a heck of a learning curve.