Self-hosted Webapps in Portablefreeware? Share your thought

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stanmarsh
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Self-hosted Webapps in Portablefreeware? Share your thought

#1 Post by stanmarsh »

hello all!

i've been testing self-hosted webapps using portable servers (e.g uniserver, usbserver) for personal/private use, while i was skeptical at first, these app are actually pretty useful.

i was able to run several webapps successfully without any/much editing which i liked.

im currently using

kanboard - http://kanboard.net/ - todo list
freshrss - http://freshrss.org - simple rss
shaarli - http://sebsauvage.net/ - delicious like bookmarks
owncloud - http://www.owncloud.org - file management
tagspaces - http://www.tagspaces.org - was able to install/run but cant see the local files. - file management

my goal is to replace all desktop apps with webapps in the future. as of now they cant compete with full blown desktop apps like for file management, but some webapps like shaarli dont have desktop equivalents.

does anyone have the same setup/experience? kindly share your thoughts here. thank you!

and would it be allowed to have webapps listed on portablefreeware? they are sort of portable app.

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Andrew Lee
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Re: Self-hosted Webapps in Portablefreeware? Share your thou

#2 Post by Andrew Lee »

I am partial to single-page HTML/JS apps that can be loaded in the browser for execution, and I use a handful of them myself. In fact, we had a discussion about this issue here:

http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 053#p69053

But PHP apps that you host on your own PC? That just doesn't feel right for TPFC. Aren't there better sites eg. freshmeat.net for this kinda thing?

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webfork
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Re: Self-hosted Webapps in Portablefreeware? Share your thou

#3 Post by webfork »

I actually predicted this was the future of portablefreeware, but it doesn't seem to have gone that way. I'm mostly annoyed that the setup / config process has not yet been made smooth and easy yet. The last time I tested it -- for example -- MediaWiki was still a pain in the butt to get going without digging into config files. The first person to set a web server standard with components and easy-to-run add-ons is going to have a huge project on their hands.

---

Edit: one (unfortunately non-portable) effort on this front.

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webfork
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Re: Self-hosted Webapps in Portablefreeware? Share your thought

#4 Post by webfork »

webfork wrote:I actually predicted this was the future of portablefreeware, but it doesn't seem to have gone that way.
An update here after almost 9 years. An open source platform for hosting web apps either locally on your machine or as a local server. Unfortunately this is only available on Linux, but hopefully it will find it's way to more platforms in the future.

"Sandstorm enables non-technical end users to install and run arbitrary software on servers they control. Apps may be downloaded from an app store and installed with one click, like installing apps on your phone. Each app runs in a secure sandbox, where it cannot interfere with other apps without permission."
From the about page: https://sandstorm.io/about

Homepage: https://sandstorm.io/

Care of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192777

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Andrew Lee
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Re: Self-hosted Webapps in Portablefreeware? Share your thought

#5 Post by Andrew Lee »

This is a really nice idea!

Just to clarify, web apps are what's known in the business as PWA (Progressive Web Apps). There was even a time when people thought it might replace the proprietary apps on smartphones, but alas it never happened. PWA are still 2nd class citizens on the 2 major smartphone platforms.

To curate open-source webapps and make them easily deployable on a self-hosted platform is definitely something I can get behind.

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