Has anyone ever had success with getting non-technical users to install or deploy software on a server?
I've asked this question before and the answer is always (and depressingly) a resounding 'no': there is no easy and simple way for non-technical users to successfully install your web app software on a server.
Time moves on and I'm hoping things have changed. Does someone have a successful tale to share?
And just to pre-empt the suggestions that Docker, Cloudtron, Sandstorm, command-line scripts are possible options: none of these are easy or simple for non-technical users. Even one-click app marketplaces (Linode, Digital Ocean etc) have their complications.
If you're a developer who doesn't want to provide a SaaS service (or wants to provide a self-hosting solution in addition to a SaaS one), a simple installation process for your customers should be a big win. But the complicated process of server install makes this difficult to impossible.
It's a bit depressing that we still don't have a simple, easy way to install web apps on a server. Without easy deployment for non-technical users, self-hosting will never be a viable option for most people, only for a tiny minority of technical users. Agree or disagree?
You basically need something as easy to install (and update) as Google Chrome or you have to do the install and maintenance yourself (trust me on this, it's a huge time suck and customers can have all kinds of weird setups).
My "favorite" memory was a customer who ignored our request for a dedicated VM to install our web software onto. They neglected to tell us that this system already had a service running that used port 80/443 and somehow we were able to get through our install and take over that port without breaking the application but one day the server rebooted and our app got the ports before the other app. What was that app? It was their access control software that let people enter the building... whoops!