From hearing about diaspora* to becoming a recurrent user

I mentioned above we could improve this part:

Inspired by joinmastodon.org I created kinda “wizard” to choose a pod. You can find it here

It can be included into any website with ease.

If you wish I could explain how it works and how to use it etc. but I think it’s better to just try it.
Of course this isn’t final, but I hope it is more but a “prove of concept”.

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That is rather interesting.

I have some thoughts on it, however.

I am guessing that this is just in the mock-up stage, because I really hope that what is finished isn’t left in this basic state. Buttons look rather rough and the colour collation seems simple, it could really use some rounding of the corners to at least make it more appealing
So it is a “proof of concept”. My bad.

I was also noticing that you had the location flags in the services row, wouldn’t that be better in a row of its own?

On top of that, I was looking at the locations. I am hope that I am seeking right, but after setting my location to Canada, there wasn’t any server around that poped up. Which is kind of a shame that there seems to be no major pod in Canada.
I hope that I am wrong about that.

I was also noticing a few things, like Diaspora* Brazil being located in the US? Is that correct?

That is all for now, hope that helped.

The ‘location’ in that mock-up refers to the actual physical location of the server(s) on which the pod is hosted, which is not always obvious from the name of the pod or its documentation and is not necessarily where the person or people who run the pod reside. It does indeed appear that Diaspora Brazil is hosted on a server located in the USA.

Actually I was close to do a pull request if no critic pops up, because the only feedback I got so far was from my roommate who said “super cool” and SuperTux88 liking my post.

Yes maybe or I change the collumns title to “features” or “properties” (because “chat” is also no service). Having all information in a single row saves space I thought.

No, I am using a scoring-algorithm (as you can see) so the other criteria are just too heavy. I could write a “double weight”-option for every step so users can decide what’s important to them.
There are three servers in canada it seems, two of them have open registration both are a little outdated (still 0.7.x but not cutting edge) and using an old version also reduces your score.

When I pretend to be a company and prefer to have a chat-feature and click on Canada, I get two pods.

Let’s check:

yes it is. (just not sure if Latham, New York or San Jose in California)

Well, I liked the concept and the functionality, but I also saw it as proof of concept. The finished solution should have a more polished and more modern UI (matching the style of diaspora and the project-site). I think as a potential user I would be pretty scared by the basic UI, But the UI can be changed, and the functionality is already there and works (and is indeed “super cool”) :+1:

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Perhaps a little banner (?) with some options like:

Do you want to join diaspora? First, answer these questions

  1. where do you prefer to store your data?
    [ ] located on EU
    [ ] located on USA
    [ ] another place
  2. which services do you want to have access to connect your account
    [ ] fb
    [ ] twitter
    [ ] wordpress
    [ ] tumblr
    [ ] xmpp support

Done! the closest match with your preferences is [diaspora server] If you prefer to search manually another pod you could search manually on podupti.me

I have made several posts (mainly in spanish) on explaining how to sign up on diaspora, and the first thing I need to do is explain how podupti.me works.

I quite like this approach; I think there’s some promise there.

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Thank you, hope it will be useful in next developments :slight_smile:

@astheroth, your ideas are in fact already being used by the ‘pod wizard’ on the Pod Uptime tool. I hadn’t noticed this new wizard until very recently. I’ve suggested improvements to location selection and services available (the ideas you suggest), which will hopefully be implemented soon. I’d like a version of this wizard to be implemented in the main project website as well.

I think it is great that this is possible through podupti.me. I only think the signup procedure through the website is taking way too many steps and isn’t intuitive enough for an average user.
IMO signing up should not take more than a few clicks and creating an account on a pod. I do think that when using a simple account creation process, the new user is informed that if he or she wants to manually choose a pod, that is possible too and could be important if the new user wants to know who is the podadmin and what policy is implemented on the chosen pod.
But for quick account creation, a region (EU, US, Asia, Africa, Australia etc) should be enough to choose from.
FB connection will be extinct soon, as the current implementation is broken (due to changes by FB) and the latest d* software has no support anymore for FB connection.
I am not convinced that choosing extra services should be part of the quick account creation…

Oh!

Thank you Oh Perhaps a link from the sign up or something that helps the newbie n-n