Wallabag hosted on pCloud: is it possible?

[FacetiousKnave]

Hi there,

I have recently discovered Wallabag, an app similar to Pocket and Instapaper which, unlike its counterparts, allows you to self-host your articles. As I do not possess a server, I am curious if a paid pCloud service could be utilised as a server. My current idea involves using pCloud storage as a hosting service to create static HTML websites. Given that I am not a developer or web designer, my knowledge in this field is rather limited. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate anyone with experience providing me with some basic instructions and insight into the feasibility of this idea. Thank you.

Just to clarify, pCloud does provide an option to create a public folder, which works as a server. My question is, is it possible to make Wallabag work in this context?

[Grimaud]

Hello,

In order to self host Wallabag, you'll need to be able to execute PHP code:

https://doc.wallabag.org/en/admin/in...uirements.html

As far as I can tell, PCloud doesn't seem to allow that (the best way to be 100% sure would be to ask PCloud directly) , so I don't think you'll be able to use your PCloud account for Wallabag.

[FacetiousKnave]

Thanks for your answer. However, let me be honest here. I do not want to pay for a host service because I just need it to host Wallabag. Is there any way to host that app without having to pay? I mean, I have a Mac and heard it is possible to create a local server with it, using some built in feature called Apache or something like that. Would that be enough to install Walllabag?

[Grimaud]

Short version:

It should be possible, but depending on how you're planning to read the stored article, may not be that easy to do or even a good idea to begin with.

Long version:

If you were to pay someone to host Wallabag, at 9 € per year, the official Wallabag instance is probably cheaper than what you'll pay a webhost service yearly, and it's operated by the creator of Wallabag itself. It's probably also the cheapest way to have Wallabag, taking into account the time needed to learn to set it up on your own computer.

Regarding hosting Wallabag on your computer, if you don't need to access the stored articles outside your computer, it's possible and shouldn't be to hard to do so: the installed Wallabag instance will have no problem getting and saving articles (at least if a Wallabag connector is available for that website and if the website is built in way making it possible to create such connector).

Apache on its own is not enough: you'll need to install at least PHP and the modules named in the link in my previous message. Wallabag need a database. The simplest way to have one is to use SQLite (it's an SQL database store in a single file), which mean you'll have to install pdo_sqlite module.

I don't have an how-to to share, sorry, because I never tried hosting something directly on my own Mac: at best, I used Virtual Machines to test services before hosting them on a real server.

If you need to access your article outside of your computer or your home network, it's also possible but you'll have to do more and if you don't know what you're doing, you could end with your computer or your home network too open to the outside world (they are plenty of bad actors out there).

Even if you do know what you're doing, you could end with opening your computer to the outside world more that you thought…

Last year, a company (I think it was LastPass) suffered a security breach and if I remember correctly, the entry point was the laptop of one of their engineers: the person in question had a vulnerable software running on it, accessible from outside of his home network.

[gmw]

While having your own Apache host or similar is technically feasible, it is not without difficulties (as Grimaud as already commented), especially for someone of limited expertise in this area.

How attached are you to using Wallabag? If you'll excuse this left-field suggestion...

Have you looked at note-taking apps? A lot of these have "web clipper" features or plug-ins that let you capture web pages or portions of pages.

Check out OneNote, it has lots of possibilities and free account has 5GB of space. I don't like it, but that doesn't mean you won't.

Check out Google Keep, and Evernote. Obidian gets good reviews and definitely has a clipper available, and it has a free option - but I'm not sure of its limitations.

I was recently looking at these and they frustrated me because they were all based on the same premise as Wallabag: offer what looks like free software, but make practical use of it contingent on subscribing to a cloud-based storage service.

I already have 15GB of mostly unused space on each of a couple of Google accounts, and these days I have 1TB of space available on OneDrive (as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription)! So why can't I make effective use of all this space to which I already manage passwords and so on?

Which leads me to: I have ended up trying out Joplin. It lets me configure where the notebooks are stored (or I can have multiple profiles, each using a different storage), and these include DropBox and OneDrive, amongst others. Plus the more security conscious amongst us can configure client-side encryption so you don't even have to trust the storage provider.

Joplin has a "Web Clipper" plug-in available for common browsers. I can't tell you that much about it other than that it works. I tried it out but it's not what I use Joplin for so it doesn't get much use.

I'm not all that impressed by Joplin's Android app, but it works well enough for my purposes. Their Windows app is good, if not great. And they have versions of macOS, iOS, and Linux, but I haven't used those.


I'd also suggest looking at the Vivaldi browser, it has a built-in note-taking feature with the ability to clip content from web pages ... but while Vivaldi does have a (secure) sync feature, I'm not sure how comprehensively it covers notes; somewhere in the help I saw mention of not synchronising note attachments, so this may limit its usefulness for your purposes.

[Quoth]

Or just copy & paste to a word-processor, like LO Writer.

You only need hosting if sharing to random public.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Or just copy & paste to a word-processor, like LO Writer.

You only need hosting if sharing to random public.

Hmm... that's a point. I did not think the OP was looking for public sharing. I'm not sure, but Wallabag did not look like it was intended for that. It looked like it was intended for sharing the collection with yourself across possible multiple devices - hence my suggestion of a notes app. But now I come to re-read the post again, while sharing at some level seems implied, it is not explicit. If it is an entirely local requirement then that may open up to many other choices. Copy-and-paste as you suggest, Vivaldi browser with its built-in notes, Joplin using local storage, and there are likely many other programs out there.

[FacetiousKnave]

I appreciate the time you all took to explain this topic to me. However, I have decided to give up on installing Wallabag as I lack the necessary skills to follow the steps you have described. The primary reason why I wanted to self-host my articles, which sum up to two thousand, was that many of them are quite old, and the magazines and newspapers where they were originally published often end up making them unavailable. It is not my intention to share these articles but simply to keep a copy of them that I can access from multiple devices.

As some of you suggested, copying the articles and pasting them on a word processor or another program such as OneNote would not be practical, considering the large number of links. However, and I guess you all know about this already, I just realised that there is a way to convert multiple HTML files into ePubs with Calibre. I think I may give it a try.

[gmw]

Indeed, if it's an existing/fixed collection then you do have other possibilities. If the collection comes to no more than 5GB they would fit on a free OneDrive account, or 15GB for Google Drive on a free Google account - both sharable across devices. In either case you may find you can share your HTML files directly.