Fortressa

What Is Mastodon?

2022-12-21T18:00:00+01:00

A lot of people are moving to a federated social media platform called Mastodon. While it has been around for over six years, it is seeing a resurgence in popularity, and we hope Mastodon will usher in a new wave of social connection between people all over the world.

The Story

October 26, 2022. Elon Musk enters Twitter’s headquarters carrying a sink.

Surely this is not the most important part of this new Twitter chapter, but it is among the most iconic moments until now, one that many will remember as the beginning of the end of Twitter. Or at least, the Twitter we have known for the last 15 years.

But this moment is also the beginning of something else. Very shortly after this episode, people began looking around for alternatives.

At this point, you know that we at Fortressa like alternatives. So we are really happy that more and more people are looking for new ways of doing things.

Let’s see why people are looking for Twitter alternatives. (Spoiler: It’s not just because of the $8 monthly subscription.)

Why Are People Fleeing Twitter?

How we live our social life on the Internet seems to change on a daily basis. People have started to realize that what they do on the Internet has a lot of impact on what we call “real life”.

They have discovered that how social networks are managed can play a big role in important events. Exhibit A: USA elections in 2016.

With that that in mind, many folks have understandably begun to pay more attention to how moderation decisions are made. For example, relying on a small group of people to decide what content is allowed and disallowed can be oppressive.

It’s not great to put the fate of your personal and business connections in the hands of this small group of people. Frankly, the situation wasn’t optimal even before these latest developments.

We, the users, deserve better than this.

Meanwhile, as more and more advertisers drop their Twitter advertising campaigns, Twitter’s attempt to increase the proportion of revenue derived from monthly subscriptions (i.e., “Twitter Blue”) could have had positive effects, but it was bungled terribly, resulting in severely decreased user confidence in Twitter and its management, further spurring mass defections from the platform.

As more and more people leave Twitter for greener pastures, Twitter’s new management has become ever more desperate and unstable: banning people who rightly take management to task for its poor decisions, blocking links to competing social networks, and other shenanigans too numerous to name. That causes even more people (and advertisers) to leave Twitter, creating a vicious cycle from which Twitter may never fully escape.

A social network without people is not worth anything.

Something similar happened to Medium, which implemented bad pricing decisions and made regressive changes to article discoverability, causing a similarly severe migration of people other platforms. Whereas it had been one of the main writing and publishing platforms, it quickly devolved into a desolated field of paywalls and a meager group of remaining writers.

Okay, that’s probably an adequate summary of the current Twitter snafu. Let’s talk about where people are going once they leave Twitter.

That is, the elephant in the room (yes, this must have been used by a thousand other articles covering this story): Mastodon

Mastodon Is Here!

Well, Mastodon was already here, actually. Mastodon is a project started in 2016, with a goal of allowing users to make social connections between federated servers, without conversations having to first funnel through centralized servers controlled by a giant corporation.

Mastodon is open source, so everyone can use and see the code, as well as monitor the status of the software’s development. This is a huge advantage over the corporate social networks that we are accustomed to using.

For example, one of the biggest problems with Twitter is that the underlying logic used for the default algorithmic feed is not public. Twitter can change that algorithm however they want, behind closed doors, without consulting platform users or providing transparency regarding the impact and rationale for those changes. They decide what you will see and consume. This can be particularly concerning to people who make their living via social media. Even after building a solid audience, one change to that algorithm can cause your content to stop showing up in feeds, resulting in a massive loss of engagement with a carefully curated audience.

This does not, and likely can not, happen with Mastodon.

How Does Mastodon Work?

Understanding how Mastodon works can be a little tricky. At its core, Mastodon is a different way to create connections between people.

First, Mastodon does not exist as a single entity. There are many Mastodon “servers”, which are servers that you can join as your home on the broader Mastodon federated network sometimes called “the fediverse”.

You get to choose which server you want to use. There are many, and every server has its own theme, community, and rules. But you can follow people all over the fediverse, regardless of which other servers they have joined.

So remember:

Mastodon is not a single website. To use it, you need to make an account with a provider—we call them servers—that lets you connect with other people across Mastodon.

— joinmastodon.org

What is a server? It is a computer where some software is running and is available for people to sign up and use.

You can think of these servers as islands. Every island is managed in different ways, with different norms, rules, and cultures.

So you may wonder: “But I want to connect with a friend that is on another server. How can I do that if she is on another server?”

Imagine that those islands (the servers) have bridges that automatically build themselves between the various other islands. As soon as you follow your friend, your server will begin communicating with their server, and you will see your friend’s posts in your federated timeline. Just like you are accustomed to seeing with Twitter and other social networks.

Pros

No creepy ad-tracking that follows everything you do on the Internet.
No corporate surveillance middlemen.
Every server can govern itself. You can find the best one for you or even create your own.
More personalization, such as the ability to choose which Mastodon client apps suit you best.
Servers can decide which servers they will connect to. An server with too many bad actors? Just disconnect from that server.
It’s open-source.
Supports audio, video, and photo post types, accessibility descriptions, polls, content warnings, animated avatars, custom emojis, thumbnail crop control, and more features than you’ve probably ever seen on a social network.

Cons

Discoverability can be more difficult, but it depends on the server.
Mastodon is just beginning to gain traction. There are many less people there than on Twitter, at least for now.
Creating an account at this moment can be challenging, since the flood of new would-be users have overwhelmed existing Mastodon servers, some of which have temporarily suspended new sign-ups until they can accommodate the increased flow of new migrants. And here to alleviate that problem, of course, is Fortressa.

What Can We Do For You?

With a Fortressa account, in addition to the many other open-source services we provide, you can now create your very own Mastodon server. This could be on your own custom domain or one of ours. It could be just for you, or for a group of friends and family members. You could create a Mastodon server for your company, your open source project, your community… the possibilities are endless.

Don’t get left behind in this transformational sea change. Create your very own Mastodon server right now.

Reasons to Self-Host Git

2022-11-16T23:00:00+01:00

An Important Choice

One important choice we must all make is between relying on external entities or doing things on our own. For many, this might seem like an easy choice, but we encourage you to think about it for a few minutes.

How your data is used and managed is extremely important. This general concept should be very clear to everyone, but perhaps sometimes it isn’t. The unfortunate reality is that the power of data in the hands of the wrong people is a big problem, especially if that data is about you.

If your business is focused on developing software, your code deserves special care and attention. It is the thing on which your whole company and business are founded.

Self-hosting your code gives you agency — full control over how that code is shared and used. In this article, we will explore this topic in order to help you decide if self-hosted Git is right for you.

The Problem With Relying on Others

The main problem with relying on external code hosting providers is that at any moment they can decide to change how their service is provided to you. For example, what happens if they decide to shut down the service? Maybe their service offering does not make enough money and thus isn’t economically sustainable. If they shut it down, that isn’t something you can stop. What would you do in this case?

Another factor is cost. Sure, the cost is reasonable for a solo founder, but once you start adding new people, the cost for adding new team members can become prohibitive really fast given the traditional “$XX per user per month” pricing model.

Sure, they often offer free basic plans. But one problem with these plans is that they have severe limitations compared to their paid plans, and the things you can’t do are often key to achieving an efficient development flow. The most common case is continuous integration (CI) pipelines. You only get a certain number of minutes, and then you must start paying for all the extra CI time you used. And it’s not just a small sum, either.

These limitations are not good for the productivity of your development team. Being told that there is not enough budget can be frustrating for a team that has to develop software to the best of their ability.

In addition to possibly shutting down, providers can also raise prices to such an extent that it is no longer sustainable for you. For crucial aspects of your business, always consider how your business will be impacted by these changes.

The Cons

Like any choice, there is always a trade-off to consider.

The first thing is that self-hosting is more work for you. You have to manage the server on which you are going to install and configure the software that will manage your code repositories. If you want backups (trust us — you want backups!), that will be another thing to think about and plan. Not to mention the updates to the server operating system and the repository management software itself.

In addition to the management costs, there is also the cost of renting the server. But the monthly cost of a rented server is usually lower than any SaaS product, and considering that you can put multiple applications on a server, the cost advantage is considerable.

The quality of today’s open-source projects has increased so much that many problems you once might have had… no longer exist. They have more features and enhanced reliability, and the user experience is often better than the products provided by expensive SaaS providers.

The Options

At the moment our preferred code repository management tool is Gitea. It is lightweight in terms of server resources, and new features are being added on a regular basis. The development team recently added support for private registries, to which you can publish Docker images, NPM packages, PyPI packages, and other package manager types.

This kind of agile software development is a significant advantage over software that is already very complex and designed to be used by millions of people. Those products don’t have a rapid development cadence, and those teams make less bold decisions in order not to upset anyone.

Another code repository management tools used by several organizations is GitLab. Not many people know that it is possible to install it on their own server. We are less enthusiastic about GitLab due to its dual-license model, which makes it hard to understand which features can and cannot be used on self-hosted GitLab instances. Plus, GitLab’s software has become quite complex, which means its user interface can be confusing, and the server resource requirements are rather steep.

Conclusions

We hope this will help you make a decision and understand the importance of choosing the right tool.

As always, we recommend that you read the terms of use and licenses. They can hold unwanted surprises.

What We Can Do for You

Regarding the “cons” above, we are trying to remove barriers for open source product adoption, and we believe open source is the right way to solve many problems.

You shouldn’t have to decide between having great tools and retaining control over your data privacy and portability.

We want to give you another choice, one in which your have great tools and control over your own data. And not just for Git repository hosting, but also for all the other tools Fortressa can offer you.

Should You Choose Ghost or WordPress?

2022-09-08T18:00:00+02:00

Both Ghost and WordPress are widely used to create web sites.

Both tools are good for this purpose, but this does not mean that they are identical. There are huge differences in user experience and the features these tools offer.

We want to help you find the right solution for you. Let’s examine these differences in more detail, starting from what these two tools have in common.

Common Characteristics

Both Ghost and WordPress have common aspects that make them great for creating content on the web:

Widely used (WordPress is perhaps most widely used)
Can be installed and self-hosted on your own server
Permissive licenses (Ghost is ahead because its license is simpler)
Strong communities that are ready to help
Been on the market for many years

Ghost Publishes Web Sites and Newsletters

Ghost is a platform designed to create web sites, blogs, and newsletters. You can think of it as a fusion of Substack and Medium, except that in this case you have full control over everything because of the open-source nature of these tools.

What Can Ghost Do?

Publish content in the form of blog posts or newsletters
Create membership communities
Enable community members to subscribe to your content

Writing content with Ghost is enjoyable thanks to its built-in web-based editor, which has a clean user interface and is simple to use. It also allows automatic integration of many types of content, such as videos and images.

Ghost has a number of additional handy features:

Curated themes that are well-designed
Scheduled publication of posts and newsletters
Detailed engagement analytics for newsletters

You can create paid subscriptions for members to get access to your content. The only things to configure are Stripe for payments and Mailgun to be able to send email. This allows you to build your audience and also a real income stream.

We recommend Ghost for those who are looking for a way to communicate with their community, for those who want to create a newsletter that is easy to maintain, with that newsletter content also immediately available on the web site. If you or your company that needs a simple and effective solution for web and newsletter content, Ghost can do it for you.

WordPress: The Tool That Can Be Everything

A very flexible platform gives you the power to adapt to every need.

What Can WordPress Do?

Create complex web sites
Plugin system makes it infinitely extensible

With WordPress, you can build projects that vary from simple to very complex. For example, you can start creating a “simple” web site and then later add e-commerce capabilities, all by using the same platform.

The problem is that “with great power comes great responsibility”, and it is easy to make a mess. You will soon find that installing 30 plugins is very easy but maintaining them is complicated. From experience, we can say that trying to keep the platform and its plugins up-to-date can lead to several problems. The theme and plugins you choose to use can have complicated version dependency requirements with regards to the WordPress version you are using, thus maintenance and upgrades do not go smoothly every time.

The advantage of WordPress is that it has such a large ecosystem that — for the right amount of money — you can always find someone who can help you solve your problems. In addition, there are many platforms that sell themes, plugins, and solutions that can help you create a solution that closely matches your requirements.

We recommend WordPress to experienced professionals who know how to program in PHP, because at some point it will almost certainly be needed.

WordPress is often adopted by inexperienced people because it is well-known and has a large installed base. That said, after a while, they often discover that it is not easy to maintain and later regret having chosen it.

So if you are not well-versed in PHP, perhaps it would better to not get on the WordPress train and instead choose another solution.

On Fortressa, at the moment we deploy and host Ghost. We think that it's easier to get started with and provides a better user experience. Try it on Fortressa with a single tap!

Handy Terminal Commands For Newcomers (a story)

2022-08-22T18:00:00+02:00

The story

So you want to write some notes about your cat’s health. The first question might be: “Where am I on my computer?”

Type: pwd

Okay, you are in the /Users/mario folder. Where mario is the name of your account.

You start thinking about the right place put these notes. You want to see what is inside the current folder.

Type: ls

You can see a list of folders.

videos
photos
notes

You know you want to write a note, so you want to switch to the notes folder.

Type: cd notes

Now you are inside the notes folder.

To get proof of that, type pwd again and you should get: /Users/mario/notes

What does this folder contain? You already know the command: ls

In this case the output will be:

car
dog
doctor
pasta.txt

None of those are appropriate locations for the task at hand, right? The goal is to take some notes about your cat. So, let’s create a folder for this purpose.

Type: mkdir cat

If we try ls again, the output should be:

car
cat
dog
doctor
pasta.txt

Switch to the cat folder.

Type: cd cat

Now that you are in the right place, it’s time to create a file to store your notes. This file will be in plain-text format, so use the extension .txt.

Type: touch note1.txt

The touch command allows you to create an empty file.

If you run ls, you will see a new note1.txt file in the list. You have created a file! 🎉

It’s time to write down how Prezzemolo (your cat) is doing.

Type: open note1.txt

This will open your file with the default application associated with .txt files. If you are using MacOS, that will probably be TextEdit, or if on Windows, perhaps Notepad.

Once the file is open, write the following in the document:

2022-08-12
Today Prezzemolo is fine, but I think he ate too much lasagna this morning.

Save the file and close your editor software.

Done! Now your note will live with you forever. Or at least until your computer goes up in flames. But that problem can be avoided just by keeping a backup somewhere. On Fortressa there is an app called Syncthing that does backups without slowing down your computer.

Two days later…

You decide you want to check the content of your note. You want to know how your cat was two days ago, because now he doesn’t seem to be feeling well.

You can open the file using open again, or you can try something faster.

Type: cat note1.txt

The output should be:

2022-07-12
Today Prezzemolo is fine, but I think he ate too much lasagna this morning.

Now you know why he isn’t feeling well. The other day Prezzemolo ate too much lasagna.

Okay, got it. Less lasagna for Prezzemolo next time.

And also, now you know how to perform these actions in a terminal console:

switch folders
create new files
edit files
see file contents

It can be complicated right?

Fortunately, you don't need to know the terminal to use Fortressa. Just log into the platform and install the services you need 😉

The Best Open-Source Headless CMS’s

2022-08-02T18:00:00+02:00

What Is a Headless CMS?

A “headless“ CMS is a content management system that only handles the content data and exposes an application programming interface (API) to that content. It does not provide an interface for organizing site presentation and layout, leaving that to other tools more suited to that task. A headless CMS allows you to manage content in one place, integrating content into any system, software, mobile app, or website just by calling the APIs provided by the headless CMS.

Ready-made Solutions

There are many ready-made headless CMS tools available. They allow you to structure your data and host all your media such as photos and videos. Media management in particular can be painful if not done in an organized fashion.

Unfortunately, many of these tools are proprietary SaaS products that don’t offer much data portability, and perhaps more importantly, they can get really expensive… fast.

Tools like Contentful, Sanity, and DatoCMS appear to offer generous free plans, sure. But as soon as you have to scale or use your content for commercial purposes, the problems will start, as prices rise steeply from $0 to $90—$490/month.

We think this is a bit too much.

At this point you may ask, “Okay, Fortressa, but what else can I do?”

Open-Source Self-Hosted Solutions to the Rescue

Strapi

Open-source Node.js headless CMS to easily build customisable APIs.

Strapi is fully customizable and developer-first.

The interface offers endless possibilities for managing your data with a degree of flexibility usually only achievable by writing a ton of code. The development team appears to be very active and always offers lots of examples and troubleshooting. Over the years it has made great strides from its humble beginnings and has become a polished finished product.

One the other hand, with great power comes great responsibility: this tool could be complicated to manage in some respects.

Ghost

Turn your audience into a business. Publishing, memberships, subscriptions, and newsletters.

With Ghost, you can build a site in minutes and even manage a paid newsletter.

For the purposes of this article, we are only interested in Ghost’s ability to expose all its content via an API so it also becomes usable as a headless CMS.

The user experience is great, and performance is quick and responsive as well. Many people use Ghost to replace WordPress, and slowly Ghost is becoming a great solution for those who want to build a community.

Unfortunately, since its primary focus is elsewhere, Ghost does not offer advanced headless CMS features, but perhaps its content API functionality could be enough for some folks’ needs.

Directus

Instant REST + GraphQL API and intuitive no-code data collaboration app for any SQL database.

Directus is like Strapi but also has other interesting features such as detailed analytics (“Insight”) and workflow automation (“Flows”). In short, from a non-technical user’s point of view, it offers a lot of functionality without having to code these functions yourself.

So if you don’t have a team of developers on deck but want a powerful general-purpose tool, Directus might be for you.

Keystone

The most powerful headless CMS for Node.js — built with GraphQL and React.

Designed to be used by developers, it offers many tools to create sites, applications, and even e-commerce projects. This is also very powerful, but if you do not have a developer available, you might want to focus on some of the other entries in this list.

On the other hand, if you have development resources available, you could build very interesting and complex projects in no time.

WordPress

We have all stumbled upon WordPress at least once in our life. We may love or hate it, but it is undoubtedly one of the most common applications on the Internet and is used by millions of people every day.

Having tons of WordPress plugins can make your life easier — or more complicated if something goes wrong — and therefore WordPress offers a lot of flexibility.

WordPress is in this list because of the very large community, but to use it as a headless CMS, there is additional work to be done, such as installing third-party plugins that provide that specialized functionality.

In Conclusion

While some of these tools are available as managed hosted services, if you would like to see a particular open-source headless CMS available on Fortressa, please reach out and let us know!

The Best Notion Alternatives

2022-07-25T18:00:00+02:00

Since Notion came on the scene, it has changed the way many people work.

More of a toolbox than a single tool, Notion not only allows you to write but also to store large amounts of data and then use that data in a sophisticated way.

The Problem

As is the case with most SaaS tools, one of the problems with Notion is privacy.

The privacy and security of the data you put into Notion is dependent on the reliability of the people that work at Notion. They are probably all good people, and they say they won’t sell your data, but what happens when Notion is acquired by a big corporation? You never know what can happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhWUjp5pD0g

And their new API may contribute to this problem. It’s a nice feature but comes with risks when used by less-experienced users.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9rOu6fqTuw

Fortunately you can export all the data in your workspace.

It remains to be seen how useful that data export will be, since Notion does not use a standard system to store data. So the more complex your database is, the more of a problem it could be to use any data you export.

So as generic advice: back up often, and don’t store sensitive information in Notion.

If you need team functionality, another problem with Notion could be cost: $10 per user per month can add up to a big number… fast.

With that in mind, what could be some good Notion alternatives?

The Alternatives

Logseq

GitHub

A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration.

Right off the bat, this description has some words that we really like.

privacy-first ✨
open-source ✨

Moreover, they mention “management and collaboration”, which is what we want to achieve by replacing Notion.

The license is AGPL-3.0, which is perfect. You can use it both for personal and commercial needs.

Like the perhaps more-famous Obsidian, Logseq has plugins and a lot of features. Among them, there are:

powerful out-of-the-box queries on your content
create flashcards to help you memorize or study
PDF features that, for example, allow you to highlight and link to a specific point in the PDF

AppFlowy

GitHub

AppFlowy is an open-source alternative to Notion. You are in charge of your data and customizations. Built with Flutter and Rust.

If you want to get as close to the Notion experience as possible, this tool may work for you. In fact, they define themselves as an “Open Source Notion Alternative”.

That said, AppFlowy is still very new and immature. It is currently a single-user GUI application (not a web application) that has no collaboration or data synchronization capability. Teams will almost certainly need more control and flexibility than AppFlowy currently offers.

With 24K GitHub stars, AppFlowy is attracting a lot of interest in its future potential, clearly showing how much demand there is for an open-source Notion clone. There is not much video material available about this tool, so we recommend you try it out locally and see how it works for you.

Missing a feature? Maybe it is on the horizon. Try checking out their roadmap.

https://trello.com/b/NCyXCXXh/appflowy-roadmap

Standard Notes

GitHub

An end-to-end encrypted notes app.

We like Standard Notes because for them privacy comes first. For some time now, the files you create are end-to-end encrypted.

Given that encryption, in theory you could even use it to manage your passwords with 2FA tokens. We haven’t tried it, but it’s a possibility.

The license of this service is not easy to understand or manage. It is a mix between MIT, Apache license 2.0, GPLv3, and AGPLv3 because Standard Notes is composed of packages with different licenses. We have checked out those packages, and thankfully it looks like there are no problems with weird or non-OSI-approved licenses.

They provide clients for any device you can think of, so if you want to try it, you don’t need to install the server-side application.

They've been around for years, and their choice to remain 100% independent is also very interesting:

We’re an independent company founded on an ethos of software sustainability and ethical data practices. Our code is completely open-source and independently audited.

Focalboard

GitHub

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.

Well, it’s more of a replacement for Trello than Notion, as most of the actions are done inside a kanban-board context. Built by the Mattermost team, Focalboard integrates very well with their core chat product, which is also open source.

We mention Focalboard because once you open a task, it is actually a document very similar to a Notion page. It is designed for both a single person and teams.

Furthermore, their goal is to be able to replace Trello, Notion, and Asana, so if development progress continues its rapid pace, many missing features will be added soon.

It’s unclear whether Focalboard will continue to be available as a standalone product or whether it will be subsumed into Mattermost’s goal to become a platform, which gives us some pause.

Honorable mentions

Obsidian

Unfortunately, Obsidian is not open source.

We use it at Fortressa for a few reasons:

All data is stored in the very-portable Markdown format.
As a client-side application, there is no need for the data to touch someone else’s server if you don’t want it to.
The graph feature is really powerful.

We use Obsidian in combination with Syncthing. For a small team, that allows us to collaborate and keep all our knowledge data in sync.

At a certain point, we may consider moving to Logseq because of its open-source nature.

Outline

We did not include Outline in this list because despite its high number of GitHub stars, it has a license that does not qualify as open source.

Exposing the code publicly is not enough to join the large family of libre/free code — it does not make you “open source”, a term that is carefully managed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Open source encapsulates a set of concepts, and if additional restrictions are applied, the freedom of that code is compromised.

In this case, the code is exposed but will only become freely usable four years after its release. Adding a four-year delay means the code is obsolete and can have serious security vulnerabilities, defeating the spirit and purpose of what open source is about.

Top Five Open-Source Trello Alternatives

2022-07-11T18:00:00+02:00

Why use a kanban system? Err, yes, I mean a Trello-board clone

“A kanban? But I’m looking for a Trello clone!”

Yes, and you are in the right place. Don’t worry, here you willl find precisely what you are looking for.

If you are looking for a task management system with columns indicating the phase that tasks are in, the name of this system is the Japanese word “kanban”, a method born in 1940s Japan.

Kanban (Japanese: 看板, meaning signboard or billboard) is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems.

— Wikipedia (Kanban (development)

The Options

While there are a lot of open-source kanban systems, let’s start by saying that there aren’t very many good options. That’s one of the reasons why Trello has been (and is) so successful: there is little competition.

It can actually be quite hard to find a general-purpose tool with a pleasant user interface that is simple to use, and that is even more true when it comes to open source.

Any of the following options might work for you, but when it comes to general-purpose kanban systems, only the first two below seemed like viable options to us. In our evaluation, the others fell short in some way or another.

Planka

The real-time kanban board for workgroups, built with React and Redux.

Let’s start with what seems to us to be the most promising. If you want a Trello clone, this is probably what you are looking for. It may not have many stars on GitHub, but it seems to be solid and simple to use. Usability is made easier by the fact that it doesn’t try to re-invent anything; it really is a clone of one of the most popular SaaS tools in the world.

Focalboard

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.

The Mattermost team has done a decent job at providing an alternative to the many kanban tools that look a bit like Trello. The style is spartan, simple, and clean. They seem to have borrowed ideas from a variety of different products. We didn’t like the user interface as much as Planka, and Mattermost seems to be transitioning Focalboard’s server from a standalone component into a plugin for Mattermost’s chat system, which if true would be an unfortunate and misguided change. Putting ads for the “cloud” version inside the self-hosted Personal Server is a regretful annoyance.

Taiga

Your Agile, Free, and Open Source Project Management Tool

While Taiga can be a little more complicated, it’s a great choice if you value its “scrum” and software development features such as epics and user stories. It’s not quite as suitable as a general kanban system but can indeed be used as such by ignoring some of its more advanced features. The team working on the project is about to release a new re-imagined version that should be a clear step forward for this long-running project.

Wekan

Open-Source kanban.

Judged purely by its user interface, it may not seem as if Wekan has kept up with the times, but this project still has some merit. The MIT license is very permissive, and the project is quite active with a high number of GitHub stars. Unfortunately, interface problems are not just an aesthetic issue, and if the tool is not easy to understand, it could hamper productivity. Finally, the persistence layer has a highly restrictive license, making this project unsuitable for many use cases.

The strange one: Jira Clone

A simplified Jira clone built with React/Babel (Client) and Node/TypeScript (API).

This is not a real option but is instead a showcase project that a professional did to demonstrate their React skills. Since the project does not accept external modifications to the code, the only way to see it developed further would be to copy the code and start developing it yourself. It seems like a good example of how to create a high-quality, open-source alternative to Trello. The high number of stars on GitHub indicates that there is a lot of interest, so perhaps it could be a good opportunity for someone to pick this up and run with it.

Well, that is our list of the best open-source Trello alternatives. If you know of other projects that be serious contenders, please let us know. It is odd that this kind of product, which is simple but highly useful, is also among the hardest to find good alternatives for!

Top Five Google Analytics Alternatives

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Finding an alternative to Google Analytics is more important than ever. Not only will your site load faster, but it will also comply with GDPR and a growing number of privacy-related regulations.

In fact, just last month, Italy joined France, Netherlands, and Austria in banning Google Analytics, declaring its use to be illegal.

So web analytics alternatives can give you a faster site, better privacy, and improved regulatory compliance. What more could you want?

Actually, we can think of a few characteristics you should look for:

Tools that are totally under your control
Data privacy and portability
Free, both in terms of price and of liberty

Even when free, however, the cost of open-source tools is in the need to install and maintain them yourself. But that’s why Fortressa is here for you, of course. 😉

The List

Let’s review which web analytics tools we found to be the best available.

1. Shynet

GitHub

Modern, privacy-friendly, and detailed web analytics that works without cookies or JS.

Shynet is our favorite, mainly because it is built with Django. But also because it works on both a single VPS as well as Kubernetes to handle large amounts of traffic. It can manage multiple sites and users at the same time. It can also work without JavaScript, as it provides a 1x1 transparent pixel.

We are using it for Fortressa, and it is serving us well.

2. Umami

GitHub

Umami is a simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics.

Its strong point is its performance. It has a minimal style and the UI is clear. It works also on mobile. The tracking script is only 2KB and supports legacy browsers like IE. If you want to share your stats publicly, you can do so with a uniquely-generated URL.

3. Plausible

GitHub

Simple, open-source, lightweight (<1 KB), and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics.

Among all the solutions, this one has a lot of features. The list is huge but here are what has surprised us the most. The tracking script weighs less than 1 KB. It can send you a weekly-recurring email or Slack reports. You can also get traffic spike notifications. It supports frameworks that use URL hashes for routing, so if you have to monitor a Single Page Application (SPA), you are covered.

4. Matomo

GitHub

Liberating web analytics, Matomo lets you easily collect data from websites & apps and visualize this data and extract insights.

Matomo is a full-featured application built on PHP & MySQL. The UI looks less modern and appealing but it might be more familiar to people who have used Google Analytics in the past. They claim that they are not doing data sampling and that their statistical reports are based on real traffic. So if those claims are true and you want extremely accurate site traffic statistics, try Matomo.

5. Offen

GitHub

The fair and lightweight alternative to common web analytics tools.

This tool was started in 2020, so it is still pretty new. Also, consider that the first version was just released in April 2022. The development team really seems to care about privacy and legal compliance. By offering advanced tools like the “Offen Consent Tool”, it’s clear that they want to be sure that your site will be 100% covered. We appreciate this level of commitment to privacy and regulatory compliance, which sets them apart from the rest.

Bonus - GoAccess

GitHub

GoAccess is a real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal or in your browser.

GoAccess is different from all the others in that it analyzes server logs instead of recording web visits via Javascript. But for the nerds out there who appreciate real-time statistics, this tool can be quite handy. It is very useful for tracking the performance of your site as well as monitoring any errors as they occur.

That’s a Wrap

Web analytics tools are important in understanding how many people are visiting your site and which pages are the most popular, and self-hosted analytics offer a powerful combination of great privacy, faster loading speed, and higher regulatory compliance. So drop Google Analytics and replace it with one of these great tools today.

Why Fortressa?

2022-06-21T18:00:00+02:00

Why did we create Fortressa? Because Fortressa is the solution to a number of problems with how software is built and sold.

Software Is Expensive

If you are a three-person startup, buying a dozen software-as-a-service (SaaS) product subscriptions for $10–15 per seat could cost you as much as $6,500 per year. That’s a substantial amount of money to spend on software, but the real kicker is how much that number increases as you add new members to your team. What happens when you are a team of 20? Sure, hopefully by then you have some revenue to cover your expenses, but how will you feel when your annual SaaS budget explodes from $6,500 to over $43,000 and beyond?

Fortressa allows you to replace expensive SaaS products with open-source alternatives at a fraction of the cost, reducing your software expense so you can invest those funds in building your business.

Data Privacy

There are usually two ways for a software company to make money:

Charge a fee to use the product
Sell your data (you are the product)

In the worst cases, companies do both. After all, who actually reads privacy policies? Hardly anybody. Which is why some companies feel empowered to double-dip, selling your data to the highest bidder and charging you for the pleasure.

We don’t think that’s right.

Data Portability

Think about all the data you put into the web-based tools you use. How many of those tools allow you to export your data? Assuming that number is not zero (spoiler: it’s probably zero), how many of those data dumps would be useful to you? Could you actually import that data somewhere else and use it?

The answer is no. They have you. Vendor lock-in, at its finest.

We don’s believe in data silos. On the contrary, we strongly believe your data is your data. It should be available to you, at all times, without you having to ask, in a form that is actually useful to you. And it is, when you put into Fortressa-powered applications, because that’s one of our core values.

Software Is Hard

We love open source. We personally maintain a number of popular open-source projects because we believe in the collective power of our communities to make software free of the above exploitative practices: no data silos, no vendor lock-in, no selling your data to the highest bidder.

One of the problems with open source, however, is that you have to install and configure it yourself. Learning a new software stack, configuring some obscure database/persistence layer, deploying via a poorly-documented and convoluted process… Who wants to spend a weekend struggling with this? And that’s for one tool! Now imagine doing that for a dozen applications. Not a chance.

Software is hard. We built Fortressa to make it easy. Tap, wait for a bit, and you’re off to the races with a suite of productive applications at your fingertips.

Customization

Is there a feature you really want or a bug that badly needs fixing? With proprietary SaaS products, you are at the whim of your vendor. They could make that change in a few months, a few years, or never. With open source, you have agency: the source code is available to anyone who wants to modify it.

Security

When anyone can inspect and test the source code, security vulnerabilities and bugs are discovered and fixed at a more rapid pace — much more quickly than with proprietary, closed-source software.

Community

Most open-source projects are comprised of a vibrant community of maintainers and contributors. In addition to improving the software and helping newcomers, they also develop and maintain a set of core values to which the project should adhere. The interplay of ideas within open-source communities serves to foster innovation and ensure the software continues to meet the needs of its constituent members.

That’s Why

These are the reasons why we built Fortressa: to bring you all the benefits of open source without any of the hassle.

What is Fortressa?

2022-06-14T18:00:00+02:00

Fortressa is the app store for open source.

Put another way, Fortressa is the answer to two important questions:

Can we thwart vendor lock-in and corporate surveillance, reclaiming our privacy by regaining control of our own data?
Instead of buying expensive per-seat SaaS subscriptions from dozens of different vendors, what if we could get open-source equivalents from a single place at a fraction of the cost?

Fortressa is a platform that installs and configures open-source applications on your behalf. Use those applications for your business, your club/organization, your family… any place where the increased privacy and lower cost is valuable to you.

That’s why we think of Fortressa as the app store for open source.

Imagine browsing a list of open-source applications, choosing the ones that you need, and having them installed and configured just for you, in an environment that is entirely your own. Any data you enter into these applications is under your full control and only accessible to those who you want to share it with.

Applications

What kinds of applications are available? Chances are good that if you can imagine it, there is an open-source project that does it. In the beginning, we will offer a handful of apps but then continue to add the most-requested ones at a rapid pace. Examples of applications on our wish-list include:

office productivity suite (collaborative word processing, spreadsheet, etc.)
newsletter / mailing list campaign manager
feedback & feature-request tracking tools
web site analytics
password manager for teams, including shared vaults
uptime monitoring, with status page builder

These are just a few of the applications that will be available in the months to come. Reach out and let us know what others you are excited about!

Your Data, Your System

Fortressa provisions servers specifically for you and your team. The operating system, applications, and your data are all sandboxed and completely separated from everyone else, ensuring that your data and systems remain yours, and yours alone. Privacy and security aren’t just talking points for us — they were built into the system design from the very beginning. That’s how important your privacy and security are to us.

Building Fortressa with Fortressa

We build Fortressa using the same open-source projects that you will find in the list of available applications. Whenever we need a new tool, we find the appropriate open-source project, add support for it to our product, and then use that project to continue building Fortressa. We even contribute back to these projects when we find aspects we can improve, whether that be new features, bug fixes, or documentation enhancements.

In the end, we could never recommend tools that we don’t use ourselves. That’s why every day we use Fortressa to build Fortressa.

Get Early Access

Fortressa is currently in private beta, and we regularly invite new users to join and provide feedback. Sound interesting to you? The sooner you let us know, the sooner you’ll get in. So don’t wait!