Options for GNU Social server setup

Related discussion: ​https://quitter.se/conversation/2262019

Below GS refers to GNU Social

Plain GNU Social

Just a custom theme

Pros:

• updates and maintenance easy since we are working straight from upstream
• all GS features work as designed, e.g. polls, groups etc

Cons:

• no auto-updates

GNU Social + meteor

Pros:

• we are still pretty close to upstream, just using meteor service in addition
• auto-updating UI
• GS features such as polls etc should work

Cons:

• some users don't like auto-updating, and some claimed it to be a bit "messy" (see quitter discussion above)
• having the additional meteor service has some extra maintenance overhead, although from my own experience setting it up for dev.social it doesn't seem so bad

tech notes

Some helpful links from @vinz

​http://www.verbosity.ca/statusnet-identica-ostatus-microblogging/getting-real-time-updates-statusnet

​http://whird.jpope.org/my-statusnet-meteor-and-realtime-setup/

​https://github.com/vinzv/gnusocial/tree/master/meteor

GNU Social + qvitter plugin

I'm not very familiar with the details of this one.

Pros:

• nice-looking interface which reminds of Twitter (easy to attract user of that service)
• it handles auto-updates in a manner which some people prefer to meteor, i.e. it just displays e.g. "3 new posts" instead of disrupting the time-line
• from discussions with @hannes2peer@… I have the understanding that auto-updates are just the JavaScript client polling, so no additional service (such as meteor) is needed

Cons:

• AFAIK the qvitter UI does not yet implement all GNU Social features, and at least on Quitter.se you sometimes have to fall-back to the old UI, this is ugly and confusing for new users

GNU Social + chimo's updater

chimo says it's experimental and not well tested

​https://github.com/chimo/gs-wsRealtime

Pros:

• looks like a really neat WebSockets-based system, i.e. real-time, not polling

Cons:

• setup and dependencies looks pretty heavy (although I'm not very familiar with PHP dependency management)
• "Ratchet doesn't support SSL. One work-around is to use nginx to proxy those requests."