Hole punch your POD to the world

Build a Solid App Ideas for Solid Apps
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This is an idea that just popped up with me (while scanning for potentially confusing public communication) and just want to leave out here:

On Use Solid / Use Solid Apps there are 2 ways to get started: either pick a provider (2 listed) or - told to be the best option - self-host. I always indeed prefer the latter, but it is a techie-only thing, and it is a lot of hassle. The doc rightfully says “We would like to make self-hosting a more user-friendly option in the future”.

I know about Dat Foundation and how they use NAT translation to gossip data between peers. And also I knew about ngrok and thought:

Wouldn’t it be a great hosting option for Solid if you were happily working offline in your application with data nicely podded, and then - whenever you decide - click a button, and the application punching a hole through your local network and firewall and creates a secure tunnel to the public internet that exposes your POD?

You are the experts whether that is feasible, but if it is (and I think that could well be so), it would be a great option for any non-technical user to use Solid without any friction.

ngrok.com

ngrok exposes local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels.
ngrok

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I could not agree more with you… Self-host a POD is something actually reserved for developers with experience.

I hope to see more people jumping into the Solidverse in the coming months, trying to contribute and helping towards achieve a more user-friendly option in the future.

From now, seems like a dream so far… But little by little we need to build up this Solid world we want :slight_smile:

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