QOTO Announcements & Polls @QOTO@qoto.org

New feature here at QOTO! We now offer free and automatic SSL certs for any websites you host at QOTO.

Aside from being free, opensource, and no data collection to host your site with us, we now offer free SSL certs too. Just use our gitlab instance to publish your website on our servers by simply marking a tick box when you set it up you can request an SSL certificate that will be automatically obtained and renewed via lets encrypt. You also have the option of using your own SSL certificate or no certificate at all when hosting from our site.

If you dont want to bring your own domain name we also provide you a free subdomain on *.qoto.io that will also be https under our own SSL certificate.

To get started just open an account on our gitLab instance:

https://git.qoto.org

For more info on this feature check out:

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/custom_domains_ssl_tls_certification/lets_encrypt_integration.html

For information on using gitlab to host pages in general then check out this lengthier resource:

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/

As always if you have any questions reach out to one of our moderators such as @freemo

#hosting #qoto #gitlab #git

The QOTO Funkwhale service is back up, new hardware and more space. Open up an account if you dont already have one (and hit me up to get access to some high-quality libraries).

https://audio.qoto.org

#QOTO #Funkwhale #mastoadmin

The QOTO PeerTube service is now back up and running again on newer and bigger hardware, check us out.

https://video.qoto.org

#QOTO #PeerTube #mastoadmin

The QOTO discourse server is now back up and running at its usual address, but with all new, bigger, and better, hardware.

https://discourse.qoto.org

#QOTO #Discourse #mastoadmin

Great news, the QOTO services are starting to come back up on the new hardware/infrastructure.

So far our NextCloud instance ( https://cloud.qoto.org ) and our Gitlab instance ( https://git.qoto.org ) are both back up. Keep in mind things might go down in the next day or two as I continue to work on the infrastructure but backups are happening often so no worries.

I will continue to bring up the other services in the next day or so.

#QOTO #Mastoadmin #NextCloud #Git #GitLab

Our #QOTO secondary services (not the social media part im posting on here) will be going down temporarily as we move to a new infrastructure. As each service comes back up the community will be notified from this account.

Thanks for your patience, this is a big move for us but everything has been backed up and will be back shortly.

Our NextCloud instance located at https://cloud.qoto.org has just been upgraded to version 20.x

Enjoy!

#QOTO #NextCloud

Just a little update on what is going on at #QOTO.

Our Administrator @freemo has been working hard for about a week to completely recode our server architecture and eventually move over existing services to the new format.

As some of you know we use enterprise level infrastructure. currently that means we use Docker containers in a cluster formation with redundant endpoints.

However, the current way this is done is as individually managed docker containers using some nifty container layer automation to automatically renew and obtain certificates as well as scale. However by doing it as individual containers makes administering the system more difficult and can lead to bugs in the infrastructure (though thankfully we haven't run into those). As such we are moving over to using docker-swarm to maintain the cluster which will automatically handle replication and restarting containers should they fail.

This will mean quicker turnaround when updating services, little to no down time due to redundancy, and faster response time due to multiple load balancers across different regions.

While there may be some short downtime once we finally move the services over long term this should be better for everyone. We will keep everyone updated as this progresses.

In the meantime @freemo will be open-sourcing the scripts he wrote to bring everything online and manage the system. If any developers are interested in getting a copy for their own purposes please feel free to reach out to him.

#opensource #OSS #FOSS #FLOSS #AWS #Amazon #Mastoadmin #QOTO

Thanks to this post QOTO is currently being linked from HackerNews in the #1 spot. Our instance is getting a lot of exposure as is this very important issue.
QT: https://qoto.org/@freemo/104768328945937352

I am proud to announce that @Sphinx is now officially the latest new member of the #QOTO moderation team.

Everyone please extend a warm welcome to sphinx, we are very happy to have him on the team!

#mastoadmin #fediadmin #fediverse

As of today the delete account feature has been re-enabled on #QOTO. You no longer need to email a moderator to have your account deleted.

As some of you know we had previously removed this account because many users complained when they could not recover their account later. Since this feature provides ample warning we feel that mistake is on the user and ultimately this is overall a good decision.

Please be careful when using this feature and be aware of the consequences.

We would like to announce Moderator nominations for June 2020!

We will be selecting a new moderator to join our team this month and we encourage all QOTO users to voice their nominations and votes.

The moderator team has collectively chosen to nominate @Sphinx for the position but as always the moderation process is an open one and any user can nominate themselves or another for the position.

We welcome users to visit the discourse forum and either lend their support to a nominated user, nominate your own, or offer criticism to an existing nomination. These are decisions that effect all of us so now is the time for your voice to be heard.

https://discourse.qoto.org/t/nomination-for-moderator-june-2020/272

#QOTO #mastoadmin #fediverse #moderation

Important QOTO announcement!

We are currently debating language rule changes in our Discourse forum. The current direction is that we may eforce in the next day a english-only rule for the server (though likely we will make an exception for accounts that are already established on the server that dont speak english). We havent made the decision final yet but we will be in the next day.

Please, if this topic is important to you please contribute to the conversation on our Discourse forum. So far no one has objected but if anyone does we would like to hear from you..

https://discourse.qoto.org/t/final-proposal-restricting-posts-on-qoto-to-english-only/226

#QOTO

QOTO has now moved to closed-registrations. Users are free to invite friends to the server whom will be given priority. All future users will be screened for acceptance.

#QOTO

In one month our GitLab instance will have been running for a whole year.

We just upgraded our license and activated it. We have Ultimate (usually costs 100$ per user per month) for another year, free to all our users. Enjoy!

#QOTO

the #QOTO ToS has been officially been updated after an in depth conversation with the community.

No policy changes occur, we have simply changed the wording to more accurately reflect the moderation policies we have always upheld.

Be kind, be respectful, and you will always have a place here!

You can see our new ToS here: https://qoto.org/about/more

#mastodon #fediverse #mastoadmin

All of #QOTO's services have recently been upgraded to their latest versions. Let us know if you see any problems. Below is the full list of effected services.

NextCloud - https://cloud.qoto.org

GitLab - https://git.qoto.org

GitLab pages (including user hosted pages) - https://*.qoto.io

FunkWhale - https://audio.qoto.org

PeerTube - https://video.qoto.org

Discourse - https://discourse.qoto.org

#fediverse #mastodon #gitlab #git #STEM #Science #Software #programming #CS #nextcloud #funkwhale #peertube #discourse

Did you know #QOTO has one of the highest user retention rate of any server in the fediverse?

We do not and have never deleted inactive accounts. Despite this ~25% of our registered users are still active after over 2 years of operation. Compare this to most other servers and we see typically a retention of ~10% or less.

To me this is the most important statistic to measure the health and success of a server, ultimately it tells me the people who come to QOTO ultimately enjoy it here and want to stay!

#fediverse #mastodon

Whats the most important feature you'd like to see added to QOTO?