Do you know alot about something, even if a very specific thing? want to contribute and earn $$ ?

InceptionHosting

Hi Folks,

I am looking for people who know what they know and know it well, primarily in the following broad categories:

• Coding
• Scripting
• VPN
• Proxy
• Service config e.g. DNS, mail, snmp, httpd.
• Database
• Public or private services e.g. casting (audio/video), game servers etc.

Just a limited list but you get the overall idea hopefully.

I am looking to start a series of guest posts hopefully by the end of this year depending on costs called 'Getting Started' or 'First Steps'

The idea behind it is that many of us are great at something even if that is a very specific part of a broader scope, many of us, myself included would love to get started with something new but sometimes the hundreds of conflicting semi-anonymous, aged guides take little in to consideration and have very little interaction or maintenance.

It would be great to do a tutorial or series of tutorials on your first steps to learning XYZ whereby someone can come to it from a standpoint of only knowing how to log in and install some packages to really getting on the first rung of the ladder with something.

If you feel you have something to share please get in touch with your idea and what you would like to charge for writing it, I expect that you will also be available to check the post periodically on the main site to answer any queries or questions (within reason) and provide at least some minimal level of support/aftercare for a short period after being published.

Additionally based on popularity you should ideally be prepared to do a follow up/ next level post to slightly advance things, obviously, this requirement will be based on the level of engagement the initial article generates.

Don't feel that it needs to be a book either, even just practical tips would be great, for example, some people are grep/awk/sed ninjas, some practical examples of output/file/dataset manipulation would be perfectly valid and usually short and sweet.

This offer, for now, is open-ended without expiry, I am not setting a rate as everyone is in a different socioeconomic bracket all around the world so I would like you to contact me with your own rates.

Free is also fine if you just want something posted but don't want any money however I would still ask you to stick to the terms of being available for follow up and possible continuance.

Resources will be provided to assist with formatting your articles, essentially either private access to the blog platform or a hidden subsection of the forum so you can work on it without it being public and see what it will look like in real-time.

Depending on the popularity of this I won't be able to guarantee dates of posting, the order of things will also be decided based on predicted popularity over cost.

If you are reading this and have nothing to contribs but would love to learn something specific or learn something to a higher standard or just get started with something then please say what that is below it may help inform decisions and encourage others that do know that thing to come forward.

Cheers.

Ant.

AaronSS

How about building a PiHole network that uses dynamic DNS updates to only allow friends/family to connect? =P

I could write that if anyone is interested. Right now it works on batch script that updates the firewall rules, but I am moving it to python. It only works with Ubuntu right now, but I could add additional distros if needed.

Not_Oles

@AnthonySmith said: first steps to learning XYZ whereby someone can come to it from a standpoint of only knowing how to log in and install some packages to really getting on the first rung of the ladder with something

There is so much wonderful howto stuff on the internet. But, never enough! I am so grateful to the many people whose howto posts have been so helpful to me. The tiny bit that I am doing here is but a way of paying back and paying forward. Thanks to @AnthonySmith for providing the platform which I can use to make small payments! Best wishes to everyone who reads and learns here!

AaronSS

I want @SmallWeb to do a getting started with DirectAdmin, showing us how to get a server setup

MichaelCee

@aaronstuder said:
I want @SmallWeb to do a getting started with DirectAdmin, showing us how to get a server setup

Any key points, or just in general?

I'm happy to write that for my own amusement either way and if Anthony likes it I'm cool with that.

comi

I messed up my online footprint in the past, meaning anyone who knows my real name can google things that I don't want to share.

I would very much read a modern guide on how to manage your online identity and I believe it would be interesting/useful to a lot of people.

InceptionHosting

All ideas are valid, I won't publicly pick any but its great if people discuss them here so I can get a feel for what others think, that is really helpful.

If you do want to do something please PM me an overview and a rate.

Just to further clarify because I think I did a bad job in the initial post, the idea is to give someone that first step, that is all it often takes to get someone moving down a really productive path.

When people don't even know what they don't know the first step to getting to a meaningful level or self-propelling level of knowledge can seem like climbing a mountain and can put people off even trying or getting started.

Additional to that are the chunks of info that can bewilder people who already have a fair level of knowledge, for example when cPanel decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater with their pricing hike one of the REALLY common barriers for people to move to DA was the fact that DA has no highly automated and integrated external nameserver/cluster solution.

Some further examples off the top of my head:

• How to run a script to grab info from a set of log files based on conditions and trigger an email alert of XYZ is found.
• People may want to know how to use rrdtool to graph data from a server.
• How to get a basic PHP based page up that does nothing but registration and login or a form that writes to a database.
• Stream or restream an audio or video source.
• Run your own rust server.
• Setup a basic MySQL cluster.
• Synchronise 2 directories on 2 servers
• Get started with perl from hello world to a simple light weight monitoring script.
• Install ruby on rails and deploy the admin panel gem
• Get started with running a plex server.
• Functional getting started with html+css examples.
• Basic WHMCS/Blesta hooks.
• How to create OpenVZ 7 and or KVM templates.
• How to backup and restore a mysql database.
• How to read and display information from a database on a web page.
• An introduction to RESTful API from what is an API to a single function.
• Simple load balancing.
• High availability does not need to be expensive.
• Running your own mail server - a checklist and working examples.
• What is all this fpm nonsense?
• Functional .htaccess examples
• Content caching options and getting started.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas, that is just a list out of my head either things I would benefit from myself or have had to learn in the past, feel free to add your own lists.

hostsailor

It is great idea!
Where should we publish our ideas and contents? @AnthonySmith

comi

@AnthonySmith said: the idea is to give someone that first step

Well if you would be looking for some "second step" material, I have an idea of a post about "complexity" in relation to computers and deployments, what's that minimalism movement, when it's useful, when it's "too much" and becomes overcomplicated instead and such...

This isn't a "first step" - not how to do it, but "okey, I know how to basic, what do I do now?"

I realise this is more philosophy than practical KB, so understand if that's not quite desirable.

Ympker

Once exams are over (think August-ish) I might write a (LTD) VPN provider roundup

There's some things I'd like to update or say about changes that have been taking place in regard to my last review/post regarding this.

InceptionHosting

@hostsailor said:
It is great idea!
Where should we publish our ideas and contents? @AnthonySmith

See:

@AnthonySmith said: All ideas are valid, I won't publicly pick any but its great if people discuss them here so I can get a feel for what others think, that is really helpful.

If you do want to do something please PM me an overview and a rate.

hostsailor

@AnthonySmith said:

@hostsailor said:
It is great idea!
Where should we publish our ideas and contents? @AnthonySmith

See:

@AnthonySmith said: All ideas are valid, I won't publicly pick any but its great if people discuss them here so I can get a feel for what others think, that is really helpful.

If you do want to do something please PM me an overview and a rate.

My pleasure,
Thank you very much @AnthonySmith

PHP_Backend

Only if I knew what I am good in.

InceptionHosting

@PHP_Backend said:
Only if I knew what I am good in.

Node backends?

PHP_Backend

@AnthonySmith said:
Node backends?

A boy can only dream. All those shiny (promised) async paychecks.

wdmg

If you’d like anything written about high-scale packet processing, ddos mitigation and filtering >500Gbps and 50M+ requests per second, our team’s happy to contribute. Feel free to send me a message about it.

seriesn

As of today, I am still searching for the answer to the question: What is kvm?

mikho

@seriesn said:
As of today, I am still searching for the answer to the question: What is kvm?

I’m biased but I think I did a better job in 2013 with this one. https://lowendguide.com/1/using-linux/quickinfo-difference-between-openvz-and-kvm/

InceptionHosting

@seriesn said: What is kvm?

Xen for OpenVZ lovers.

flips

I'd love an article on Docker

• some pros/cons
• when to use/not to use
• how to secure it (should I add something to it's firewall rules?)
• etc ...

InceptionHosting

@flips said:
I'd love an article on Docker

• some pros/cons
• when to use/not to use
• how to secure it (should I add something to it's firewall rules?)
• etc ...

great idea.

Iroshan464

I would love to see an article comparing VPN protocols like openvpn, wireguard, and ikev2.
In terms of privacy, performance, and usability, what is optimal in specific situations, etc.
I know there are quite a few, but none of them are comprehensive.

Unixfy

I could help out with more enterprisey stuff like Atlassian's software, AWS, and self-hosted Active Directory. Though, I'm not sure how big the audience for that would be, especially at a low-end forum

InceptionHosting

@Unixfy said:
I could help out with more enterprisey stuff like Atlassian's software, AWS, and self-hosted Active Directory. Though, I'm not sure how big the audience for that would be, especially at a low-end forum

Getting started can often be a barrier, having someone write a hand holding guide that gets from nothing to something is often all it takes to remove the barrier to entry so it sounds like a good idea to me.

You are here after all low end forum does not mean low end people

Mr_Tom

Been considering doing some writing, so might be able to put something together. The mail server idea sounds interesting. I have ran my own for a number of years.

PHP_Backend

@Mr_Tom said:
The mail server idea sounds interesting. I have ran my own for a number of years.

I will very much appreciate if you write something on it.

serv_ee

@comi said:
I messed up my online footprint in the past, meaning anyone who knows my real name can google things that I don't want to share.

I would very much read a modern guide on how to manage your online identity and I believe it would be interesting/useful to a lot of people.

I'd love to see one as well.

While there's only very little about me online (and Google deleted the rest as of late on my right to be forgotten request) it would be still good to know for future.

InceptionHosting

Well lots of wants, sadly only 1 real offer to write so far, I guess I will have to start looking further afield for the writing, seems you can't even give money away in the lowendworld

Mr_Tom

@AnthonySmith said: Well lots of wants, sadly only 1 real offer to write so far

Sorry Ant, meant to add, I'm happy to do something on setting up a personal mail server or similar type thing. I'll drop you a PM later on

vyas

I have a list of 7 or 8 topics I can propose - but would love to learn from others (not everytime- @Not_Oles article on Proxmox was good but for me was a bouncer !)
Having said that, around end of each month I can spin out a draft, if it does the trick.

bikegremlin

Suggestion:
Make categories in the Blog section.
Articles will add up over the years, so diving them into categories (and adding a search option) would be helpful.

InceptionHosting

@bikegremlin said: Make categories in the Blog section.

??

bikegremlin

@AnthonySmith said:

@bikegremlin said: Make categories in the Blog section.

??

Pagebuilders posts are in the same category as KVM partition resizing post.

It requires some "strategical" thinking, but I'd recommend figuring out the main categories and the sub-categories for the blog section's main menu, then sorting all the content within those. Sort of a logical division of topics.

With the idea: when there are 856 posts, one can more easily find those of interest, depending on the topic.

InceptionHosting

yep fair point, I will have a think about some top levels.

bikegremlin

@AnthonySmith said:
yep fair point, I will have a think about some top levels.

You will most likely have hit and miss. Some rearrangement will probably come over time (so make each article's link be irrelevant of its category). But it helps - at least in my opinion.
My attempts (two completely separate topics, but principle is the same):

https://io.bikegremlin.com/
https://bike.bikegremlin.com/

Not perfect, but for me at least, it helps when I wish to find "that article on this topic I remember having written" without using the search.

As for the search - I like the way Google Custom Search works. Gives back articles that answer the query best (if such articles exist). Better than any other search I've tried (with WordPress in this case).

willie

Where is budget for this coming from? What amount of publishing exclusivity would you want? I'm a strong Python coder with good knowledge of a few specialized topics, and interest in learning a few other topics. It has occurred to me that deciding to write a tutorial would be a good way to collect the relevant knowledge about a topic I want to learn, and turn it into tested recipes.

Any requests for Python-related topics? Some other languages too, though not PHP.

InceptionHosting

@willie initially my own pocket until I start charging for ads, they are free right now, everything is negotiable, ultimately if I can pay what you ask and see value I will go ahead.

willie

Thanks. I'd feel more comfortable if you posted what you expected to pay. I also wouldn't feel right about taking your money before the site is generating revenue. And if you want exclusive use of the materials, then I'd have to charge way more than I think of as LES budgeting, though I might be wrong about that.

I've written a lot of web scrapers in Python using Beautiful Soup (html parsing package). Does that sound like a good topic for a tutorial?

InceptionHosting

@willie everyone has a rate, I don’t want to take anyones work for granted so what it is worth to you is what it is worth, I would need to judge that and justify the cost/benefit.

The idea is is not to teach someone that knows Perl how to do something in Perl though, it is to take a starting point of I can login to a VPS and install Perl to I did something in Perl, to demystify things for people and to break down barriers to entry.

While I understand what you mean by exclusive rights, I don’t really understand the context why would anyone want duplicate content it’s bad for ranking, it’s bad for the internet, if you are saying you would like to be able to resell it elsewhere or post it on your own blog then that is fine but the terms of that would seriously impact its worth and value.

I am not made of money, I am also not rejecting anyone’s ideas if they come with a price/quote, it may just mean that it is a yes let’s do it but it will have to wait for some revenue to come in which is what I have said to a few people.

Again just for extra clarity in the first instance I am really looking for the from nothing to something type articles, if they are popular amounts the community then I will ask for a part 2, 3, 4 etc.

willie

@AnthonySmith said: The idea is is not to teach someone that knows Perl how to do something in Perl though, it is to take a starting point of I can login to a VPS and install Perl to I did something in Perl, to demystify things for people and to break down barriers to entry.

I see, so this wouldn't really be a coding guide then: I figure anyone using (e.g.) a scraping tutorial already has to know some basic coding, and to do that they must already be ok on installing Python. It's still ok, it just means scraping isn't a great topic but I can probably think of something else.

How about a Nextcloud and Nextcloud Talk installation guide? I'm currently using Nextcloud on a Vultr instance because of their 1-click installer, but I'd like to figure out how to install it myself (I tried it at first and enough stuff went wrong that I shrugged and used Vultr), and then I could write it up. I was interested in Jitsi Meet as an alternative to Nextcloud Talk, but it appears to be more resource intensive at the server side.

I'm finally a little bit squeamish about the non-transparency of payment amounts. Like if you and I work out a mutually acceptable amount for a project, and somebody else agrees on a project of comparable difficulty, and then it turns out I'm getting paid 5x as much as the other person for comparable work, it doesn't really seem fair.

Regarding exclusivity: hmm, I'd like to be able to host a copy on my own site, but my site is non-commercial and not search indexed (I have disallow: * in robots.txt) so it wouldn't interfere with your SEO. Does that work for you?

InceptionHosting

@willie I think Perl from nothing to something sounds better it is a lot more interactive with the opportunity for the community to ask questions and dictate where the next parts go.

The issue with nextcloud is that there already exists 100 guides on installing and configuring it and it’s a very copy paste process and does not really teach anything, unless you have an idea for an angle on it I am not seeing.

Regarding payment amount, I know where you live so I expect your rate to be among the highest because that is just how it is in your part of the world, I am not going to be insulted by a high amount, I don’t want to set a rate because the truth is what is worth your time is not the same number for someone in England, Bulgaria, India, Ukraine etc, if I sat a rate then it automatically excludes a huge grouping of people up or down the scale.

If you are really struggling to find a rate I suggest you consider how long it will take in hours, take your current or last annual salary amount, divide that by 1950 (avg working hours per year) times that number by the amount of hours it will take then double it.

So example if you think it will take 5 hours, you earn 60,000 usd, then divide by 1950 you earn 30.76 usd per hour, times that by 5 gives you 153.8, times that by 2 because this is essentially overtime and things always take longer than anyone actually thinks and we arrive at 307.60

At the same time I appreciate that may mean a lot less in some other parts of the world but it is still double what they might get paid and this is a side gig and frankly not a hard one, it is just sharing some of what they might know already.

A lot of people have offered to do articles for free and while I appreciate it I am less likely to use those ones and the truth is I expect it to drive traffic to the site in the long run so it has a value, a lot of people have PM’ed me asking for $500 for something I could personally bang out in less than an hour guaranteed, professors in top flight universities could only dream of earning 500 an hour even freelance, so again that is unlikely to happen.

I just ask people be realistic and relative, I am not going to be insulted, either I can pay and it is worth it or I can’t nothing spoiling, if I can’t afford it but it is worth it, I may ask for community buy in, if it is worth it I am sure it can be raised.

I hope that explains why I am not setting a standard rate, additionally Perl vs css vs html5 vs MySQL vs kernel config 101 vs mail server setup done right vs round robin dns vs bind vs loops in shell scripts vs rest api are all different skill sets that in turn will add a rate of their own.

So really, just what ever you would be happy with

willie

Ok fair enough, I didn't realize there were so many nextcloud guides, particularly for nextcloud talk (voice/video chat). I guess I should find one. I had crappy luck a year or so ago but maybe it is better now. Here are a few other ideas:

• Setting up an html5 video livestream using ffmpeg and icecast. I had to do this a couple years ago and it was poorly documented at that time, so it took some trial and error. It has come up in some LET threads so I think there would be some interest in a writeup. I have no idea if the existing docs are better now though, and it's possible that some browser flakiness that I had to work around isn't so bad any more. Otherwise those workarounds would be part of the tutorial.
• Twilio voice call management (spam filter, whitelists, maybe setting up the management script on some high availability service like Cloudflare Workers or on VPS through an anycast system). I'm trying to figure out how to do this for my own use right now: the Twilio docs are quite good for their side, but they have nothing about setting up the user scripts. They tend to assume simple web hosting but I'm uncomfortable with that because outages would mess up my phone service, so I'd want some kind of HA scheme. I haven't checked what tutorials are available for this. Alternatively maybe I could offer this as a service. My driving application: rent Twilio phone number and give that out as my contact number. Management script subscribes to a robocall blacklist service. It rejects any incoming calls from blacklisted numbers, passes through any from whitelisted numbers, and answers all other calls with "press 6 to speak to Willie", putting the call through if they press 6 (that should stop most robocalls while not hassling human callers too much). I desperately need this for my own use because of the robocalls I get. I can't go by pure whitelisting because I do have to receive calls from new numbers sometimes. Ideally this could include contact syncing with mobile devices. (Note: I'm writing some of this down here as a self-reminder).
• High availability for general purpose web sites (per above), but only if I don't have to muck with Wordpress for the purpose.
• I'm open to other suggestions including for coding

vyas

@AnthonySmith

At the risk of over complicating things.
In addition to monetary compensation, suggested other options could be : (not all might be practical )
a. Credits from provider (s)
b. Donation to charity of choice
c. Barter

I am totally in favour of charging for original content. But with the world economies becoming more insular, and compliance and fees becoming a pain in the rear end, alternative ways find flavour...

InceptionHosting

@willie yes all good ideas, what I need when you settle on one is for you to PM me with a plan/idea which covers what the entry point is to follow what you plan to write i.e. what level of experience is required and what level you expect people to be at once they have finished, this is all about removing barriers to entry for people.

@vyas I am completely open to all ideas, many people have offered to do stuff for free, that makes me less comfortable, I would rather at least be giving someone $50 because I do expect people to be accountable after it is published to answer questions or make corrections/clarifications.

There is nothing worse than trying to follow an online guide, hitting a snag, seeing 20 other people in the comments hit the same snag and no comment from the author.

MikePT

If you have any specific ideas, I'd be more than willing to write a few tutorials for LES.

InceptionHosting

@MikePT said:
If you have any specific ideas, I'd be more than willing to write a few tutorials for LES.

plenty of ideas from this post: https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/31893/#Comment_31893 forward

ehab

thought i add it here: I can offer $15 for a script or detailed instruction how to build alpine virtual kernel + iSCSI packages and produce an installable iso. and if Ant, see this good he might offer the same here.

InceptionHosting

@ehab said:
thought i add it here: I can offer $15 for a script or detailed instruction how to build alpine virtual kernel + iSCSI packages and produce an installable iso. and if Ant, see this good he might offer the same here.

I apologise, I have read that 3 times and only understand half of it, could you try again?

ehab

sorry for crashing it like that. It started here https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/1418/securing-your-vps

what i meant to say is i can offer $15 for a write up either a readme or a script to build a custom alpine image based on the "Virtual" distribution found in https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ but must include iSCSI module + packages. The result should be an iso file.

This could be a good addition to this section and i am pushing you to add the pay same $15 thus author gets $30 in total.

if still not clear give me your phone number would love to chat one day

InceptionHosting

@ehab said:
sorry for crashing it like that. It started here https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/1418/securing-your-vps

what i meant to say is i can offer $15 for a write up either a readme or a script to build a custom alpine image based on the "Virtual" distribution found in https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ but must include iSCSI module + packages. The result should be an iso file.

This could be a good addition to this section and i am pushing you to add the pay same $15 thus author gets $30 in total.

if still not clear give me your phone number would love to chat one day

Ok a bounty may be the way to go, I will add $35 to bump it up to $50

ehab

Thanks Ant, if no one does then i will have to do it one day just have them as credits from you "the $35 that is"