Tiddlywiki and Nextcloud: It's a match!

[Donald Coates]

This is probably way outside general concern but I've been playing with nextcloud lately to host files and found that

1.  nodejs tiddlywiki shows up nicely in the 'external sites' app (an iframe nextcloud uses to show websites internal to the nextcloud interface) with no problems saving

2. And even cooler I was able to put a stand alone html with the tw-receiver plugin in a nextcloud folder and serve it via nginx.  This allows me to upload files via nextcloud and refer to them as external files in tiddlywiki.

here is the example I set up.

My setup is a bit complicated since I am using docker, but if you're into this sort of thing a setup using nginx and nextcloud is pretty easy and very well documented.  It took some additional tweaking of permissions but again nothing overly complicated.

[TW Tones]

This sounds like a good choice for internet side hosting.

I am not familiar with next cloud, could you give a practical technical summary of its use with tiddlywiki, so we can decide if it is worth investigating further please.

Regards

Tones

[Sylvain Naudin]

We can also add that it is easy to set up Nextcloud share via WebDAV and thus directly back up your TW files without other configuration.

Regards,

Sylvain

[Donald Coates]

Yes and with their sync software one could make changes to a standalone html tiddlywiki and just download to save the 'regular' way into the synced folder so that the changes are synced immediately.

[Donald Coates]

Nextcloud is basically a self-hosted file server with a ton of add ons to increase functionality including anything from a map plugin to video chat, bookmarks, rss reader, and integration with software such as collabora and only office.  It is a fork of owncloud and is very mature with an enterprise level of products, however the self hosted version is more than enough for a small group of individuals.  It has file syncing software including mobile apps for all major OSes.  It allows the creation and administration of multiple users and groups with fine tuned access control.  You can connect to third party storage solutions like Dropbox.

What I am referencing with this post is using nextcloud to host and manage the files of a standalone tiddlywiki that are served with nginx or any other webserver like apache.  So one could either use tiddlywiki's download saver and sync the tiddlywiki and associated files between your desktop and nextcloud instance or do what I do and use the tw-receiver plugin so one can save the standalone from the web and not worry about any kind of syncing so that you are completely independent of any one desktop.

This setup would have the greatest utility for someone using tiddlywiki in conjunction with a lot of external files, such as images or more likely articles and books you have taken notes on and referenced in your wiki.  I use nextcloud to manage all the files and directories and nginx to serve them.

Nextcloud has a plugin called external sites which basically sets up in iframe within the nextcloud website so you can basically integrate the tiddlywiki into the nextcloud experience, something that would be useful if you used it with multiple users especially.  This works well with the nodejs tiddlywiki as well right out of the box.  In this way tiddlywiki basically becomes an add on for your nextcloud instance.

So at the most basic level Nextcloud is an excellent self hosted file management solution that would allow one to replace services like Google Drive and what I discovered is that the hosted files can also be served by a webserver like nginx.

[Donald Coates]

basically I used the word basically basically way too many times and not being able to do even basic editing on my post is basically driving me crazy.

[Mark S.]

Are you talking about serving up inside your own network, or across the internet? If across the

internet, then do you do this through some ISP ?

[Donald Coates]

you can see the login screen for my nextcloud instance at https://nextcloud.olliespeople.place and the tiddlywiki at https://olliespeople.place.  The tiddlywiki html and image files are accessible inside the nextcloud instance so I can upload more files through nextcloud.  All files are being served to the internet by an nginx webserver.

Everything is being hosted on a vps from buyvm.net.  Nextcloud needs about 200mb of RAM so you could easily host and serve everything with a 5$ plan.  There is a learning curve to self hosting since you are installing and configuring the network and software especially if your not used to some work on the command line but there are a ton of resources and the result is more than worth it.

I have done this through my home network as well using a free address through dynds as well.  The port forwarding can be tricky but it is very doable.

[Donald Coates]

On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 8:08:37 PM UTC-5 Mark S. wrote: