My advice is not specific to Matrix but other self hosted private services. Some of this may or may not be feasible with Matrix.
- Whether family or friends, always suggest it as a "fallback" for when "preferred service" is down and to use when discussion ultra-sensitive topics or sharing financial files. With time they may just stay connected to it if the friction to do so is low. It has to be their choice, not yours.
- What helps? Add more incentives such as perks that "preferred service" does not offer. No file size limits. No or few file type limits. No content filters. Add emoji's or gifs that align with their inside jokes and their style of humor. Keeping random people away is very important. Making your friends and family administrators or moderators and let them decide how it operates. Do not moderate or power-trip over your friends or family or they will leave. Database and file backups become even more important but they will feel in control of a thing. Have a keyword or code word they all learn means to go check the private platform that "primary platform" would not recognize. Maybe when they see "Turtle Farts!" they know to go log into your service.
- They may just stay on their primary preferred service. Every group is different and not every group will see the benefits of your fallback service. They may not appreciate the work you put into setting it up for them.
Curious if you've tried Snikket, and what hurdles you ran into (if you did). I made it with the primary purpose of moving my family communication over to XMPP, and I succeeded with that (improving a bunch of stuff in the process). I'm not claiming it's perfect (a known weak point is the iOS app, but we're actively working on solving that...)
I tried Snikket and ejabberd on the server and found Snikket way easier to use.
I haven't tried any Snikket clients because I'm tinkering with web apps to start and it looks like Snikket doesn't have a web client yet outside of the admin portal.
I really like that Snikket allows me to create invitations without relying on SMTP. I love having it just as a URL I can send however I want.
I wish I kept better notes on my Snikket onboarding because I did run into a few hiccups.
I find the concept of "Circles" unclear because I don't understand how it differs from regular users. Thinking about it more, I'm assuming the idea is that I might have a family group and a college friends group, but I don't want my dumb college friends messaging my mom even though they're all on the same server?
My more superficial note is that I find the admin UX a little rough. It feels a little early 2000s design where everything is a form submit when there could be more JS interactivity (and this is coming from someone who hates JS frameworks but likes minimalist JS like htmx). And there are four top-level admin actions, and one of them is "Invitations" but that seems to duplicate everything available to me under "Users."
My advice is not specific to Matrix but other self hosted private services. Some of this may or may not be feasible with Matrix.
- Whether family or friends, always suggest it as a "fallback" for when "preferred service" is down and to use when discussion ultra-sensitive topics or sharing financial files. With time they may just stay connected to it if the friction to do so is low. It has to be their choice, not yours.
- What helps? Add more incentives such as perks that "preferred service" does not offer. No file size limits. No or few file type limits. No content filters. Add emoji's or gifs that align with their inside jokes and their style of humor. Keeping random people away is very important. Making your friends and family administrators or moderators and let them decide how it operates. Do not moderate or power-trip over your friends or family or they will leave. Database and file backups become even more important but they will feel in control of a thing. Have a keyword or code word they all learn means to go check the private platform that "primary platform" would not recognize. Maybe when they see "Turtle Farts!" they know to go log into your service.
- They may just stay on their primary preferred service. Every group is different and not every group will see the benefits of your fallback service. They may not appreciate the work you put into setting it up for them.
Curious if you've tried Snikket, and what hurdles you ran into (if you did). I made it with the primary purpose of moving my family communication over to XMPP, and I succeeded with that (improving a bunch of stuff in the process). I'm not claiming it's perfect (a known weak point is the iOS app, but we're actively working on solving that...)
Thanks for creating Snikket!
I tried Snikket and ejabberd on the server and found Snikket way easier to use.
I haven't tried any Snikket clients because I'm tinkering with web apps to start and it looks like Snikket doesn't have a web client yet outside of the admin portal.
I really like that Snikket allows me to create invitations without relying on SMTP. I love having it just as a URL I can send however I want.
I wish I kept better notes on my Snikket onboarding because I did run into a few hiccups.
I find the concept of "Circles" unclear because I don't understand how it differs from regular users. Thinking about it more, I'm assuming the idea is that I might have a family group and a college friends group, but I don't want my dumb college friends messaging my mom even though they're all on the same server?
My more superficial note is that I find the admin UX a little rough. It feels a little early 2000s design where everything is a form submit when there could be more JS interactivity (and this is coming from someone who hates JS frameworks but likes minimalist JS like htmx). And there are four top-level admin actions, and one of them is "Invitations" but that seems to duplicate everything available to me under "Users."
Improbable. This technology does not have a stable client and is overrun by garbage.
Try vibe coding your own app that your family and friends would install, and have this as the background communication layer.
Good luck!