Recently, DrBob added nice features to retroshare-nogui in order to create contacts among newcomers more easily. RetroShare-nogui, when compiled with proper flags, automatically adds gpg keys as friends. Moreover, chat lobbies are automatically set up. These features have been coupled to some PHP scripts in order to provide a simple web interface as an entry point to these chat lobbies.
The workflow is the following:
1. The newcomer installs and starts RetroShare.
2. He (she) connects to the web interface and enter his (her) key (+ Captcha).
3. He receives back the key of the chat server, and add it (also possible to click on the retroshare http link to add it as a friend). It is also suggested to connect to a Chat Lobby.
4. In the meantime, the key provided is automatically added in the list of friends of the chat server.
5. When the connection between the chat server and the newcomer is made, the latter has access to the Chat Lobby where he can easily chat with other newcomers (or more experienced people) to exchange his key.
6. After 2 days, the chat server automatically removes the newcomer from the friend list, since it assumes that he was able to make friends by himself.
This workflow is quite fast: within less than 5 minutes, a newcomer can start chatting with people on the RetroShare network. This has been applied in the french community, and the results are much better than expected: for example, in the last 24 hours, 86 newcomers were registered to the chat server. We have about 40 registration during the weekdays, and much more during the week-end. The french chat lobby has always about 40 participants.
If you are interested, here are the archive where you can find the scripts:
w2c_FR-EN_v1.1.tar.bz2
- Code: Select all
retroshare://file?name=w2c_FR-EN_v1.1.tar.bz2&size=994612&hash=34f61dd061dac92cfa5168a08a2bac039ac0999b
Feel free to add any comment/suggestion.
Regards,
T