Collaboration on new keyholding website?

That's quite a primitive subset of what we want the new site to offer. Just waiting for a configured duration to pass is pretty dumb, and these Chinese hardware timelocks that cost around 15$ can do that as well. In case of emergency, you can open them with a bolt cutter. If the photo is kept by a website or software, you need a keyholder to release you.

Thechaste.com already has the option to make the verification photos public. That's not a big deal. The combination photos, however, must not be made public, as that would make cheating too easy.

I looked into it and found the site operators to be criminals. They attempted to get my private phone number. I don't know why they collect private data and who the sell it to, but that is definitely not what we want.

Apart from that, Discord offers nothing that other sites or software packages hadn't already provided decades before.

I'd like to split the site into a backend (database and API) and one or more frontends (website, Android app, Iphone app...). The API documentation will need to target developers and provide exact technical details. The beginner-level documentation belongs in the frontends. Of course, some general introduction on what online keyholding is all about (what a keysafe is, why and how to take and upload a photo, what a keyholder is, etc.) may be privided at the project main site, but that can't include things like menus or forms, because they are specific to each frontend.

In general, writing end-user documentation is much, much, much easier and faster done than providing the server hardware and writing the software. And the documentation can be done as a final step, as nothing else depends on it. The only problem is that it is often delayed forever for that reason.

I wouldn't care about translations at this early stage. First of all, we need to get the site working.

Most people in the world can read English anyway. They learn it at school, they hear English rock singers, and they watch US sitcoms.

The software and configuration (including install scripts) will be managed in a version control system such as Git. User and session data need to be backed up on a daily basis. Regular backups are often part of the contract with the webspace provider, but this usually doesn't include the preservation of old data. So if we lost a combination picture 2 weeks ago, we probably won't get it back.

If the hardware is operated by one of us, such as amvetsb, chances are that he will agree to care for the backups too, as backups are usually done by the hardware operators. The only problem is that backup media cost money and occupy space. And they should be stored in another building or fire compartment.

Various filter and search criteria can easily be implemented. But I am sceptical about filtering users by country. If you live in a huge country such as Russia or even the US, chances are that the users you find will live too far away anyway. If you live in a small country as I do, chances are that nobody will ever contact you even if they speak the same language or live close to you. If you want to find people who live close to you, you better calculate the geographical distance of the home towns. With today's technology, you can even sort users by the travel time (e.g. by car) to their home towns.

I am also sceptical about filtering users by timezone, because some people get up at 5 a.m. evey day while others go to sleep at that time and get up at noon. And some people aren't available for chat at daytime because they are busy with work.

But it's ok to privide these filters. Users should be mature enough to choose their filters on their own.

 

That is not true. I don't know about Chastity Mansion, but a similar forum (kgforum.org) generates a lot of money through donations (some users donate thousands of € at a time), and the monthly donations that are displayed on Emlalock oscillate arout 800 € – without any nagging.

If you have a static IP, you can set up a server for free on your own computer. Of course, regular backups and increasing load will eventually cause expenses, but at that time the donations will also increase.

What we need now is man hours and skills rather than a bag of money.

Experience has shown that money is rarely the factor that makes a project a success.

 

Why? Microsoft started in a garage. Our software will be freely available on a site like github/gitlab/sourceforge, and everybody will be able to install it on another server if they like, as well as to fork it and make it better.