We’re proud to be selected among 20 of the most promising projects in Europe to participate next week to Seedcamp Berlin.

There, we’ll meet with mentors from all over the continent to get feedback on our product and overall strategy. And the day after, some of the teams will be interviewed for an immediate investment.

I’m curious and excited to see what will come out of this experience!

The core product commercialized by The Company will be AppSlots, a state of the art web application platform. AppSlots will offer a strong alternative to traditional web hosting providers, by focusing on web applications and only web applications, while bringing the best of the SAAS model.

The secondary mission of The Company will be to expand La Distribution application catalog. We will look for great applications where they are and do everything we can to make them available to our users. This means for example supporting new technology stacks when needed, or dealing with commercial providers as appropriate. We’ll also support the indie developer scene, and do our best to help amateurs and hobbyists code fun or useful applications integrated with La Distribution.

To achieve these goals, The Company will of course commit to further developments of La Distribution open source technologies. Outside contributions will be more than ever welcomed, and it will always be a pleasure for us to see more people and partners involved in La Distribution.

In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss with investors and strategic partners to setup a seed investment round. We’re not looking for billions, just enough money to build a solid corporate structure, hire key people and consolidate our investments in strategic areas.

Wish us good luck in this endeavor!

Want to invest? Want to join us? Anything else? Shoot us an email: hello@ladistribution.net

Given that you are a seasoned web developer, it should not be difficult. And if you’re not, hey, are you sure you want to do this? :)

Setup La Distribution development environment

If you want to start hacking around La Distribution, we first recommend to setup a local copy from SVN and configure our command line utility. This what we’ll call from now “La Distribution development environment”.

First checkout La Distribution SVN repository:

Alternatively, you can also use our brand new Git repository:

Then update permissions:

As a web developer, I believe you know that working around user permissions and web server permissions can be a bit messy. In this tutorial, for the sake of simplicity and because we’re not working on real web server, we’ll fire chmod 777. If you know better, well, do it :)

Now, execute the web installer, say you’re on localhost:

Follow on screen instructions, create the first user, eventually register a MySQL database connection, and you’re done.

Now, we’ll make the ladis command line utility available from the terminal.

To do that, you can add La Distribution /bin/ directory to your PATH. Be careful, the following code is just an example, modify it to match your system. And, it’s an absolute path.

Type ladis in the terminal to check that it works. It should output something like that:

Create a web application using Limonade

Internally, we decided to write our first Micro Web Applications using the Limonade framework. If you want to find documentation on this framework, check their website.

You can start from our Hello World application, it will be a good basis. You can download it from our Github repository.

In this tutorial, we’ll grab it directly from the command line.

We’ll delete the .git folder because we just wanted to export this project, not actually track it. We’ll later version control again if needed.

Now, to make it your own, edit the dist/manifest.xml file and change the “id” and “name” of the application.

If you try http://localhost/ld-dev/my-application/ immediately it will not work. You have to register the application:

As seen before, in case you encounter permission issues. Fire:

Build the package, share it with the world!

We’ll now build the package to distribute our web application:

my-application.zip is now created.

To make it available to other users, you should push it to a public La Distribution repository. This repository should be hosted on a public server, accessible to others.

It’s easy, go on any public La Distribution installation under your control (ie: not localhost). Sign in, go in Settings, then Repositories. There, create a new local repository, name it “apps” for instance.

Click on Manage, and upload the .zip.

It’s online! Now you can pass your repository Public URL to your friends so that they can install your application.

Of course, you can also automatize the publication from the command line. In the web panel, copy the repository “Push URL”. Then register it locally:

Paste the Push URL, enter your credentials. And from now, pushing the package to the remote repository is that easy:

Conclusion

It was a bit technical but not that difficult, uh?

We’re now waiting for your apps!

Don’t hesitate to start simple apps, make it available to others and share them with a Git repository. People may be interested and help you bring your application to the next level. Speaking for me, I’m pretty sure I’ll do :)

Very early, it has been evident that this pretty nice infrastructure was in fact an opportunity to create very simple applications targeting La Distribution. By running within La Distribution, these applications would be able to focus on their core job, instead of boring things like user management, user registration, user authentication, installation, updates, extensions/themes management. Isn’t this actually a developer dream?

It sounds like a framework, but it’s not a framework, developers can use the framework they want. It’s an environment.

As a proof of concept, because we wanted some applications to inject content into the news feed, and also because it’s the “Hello World” of its generation, we decided to create a simple Twitter client.

First, we asked Twitter Inc if it was a good idea to build yet another Twitter client. Their answer was no ;) But anyway, we created it!

Its name his Le Tweeting, it’s open source, it’s definitely perfectible, and developers are encouraged to fork it on Github .

This application, a few upcoming others and a selection of community-made web applications will now be made available from this new repository (add the URL in your La Distribution repositories).

We are pretty proud to have created a platform where you can code a web app and make it available to everyone in minutes.

Now, your turn!

Which application would like to be created for La Distribution? Which one would you like to build?

Think about it, and later this week, I will share with you a tutorial explaining how to code and distribute a simple web application from zero.

That’s not a secret, we’re working hard. Today, 9 months after our last release “Danube“, our next release code named “Europe” is ready to test.

What’s new?

User Interface

As always the UI has been heavily enhanced. The bottom bar is gone, and the top bar has been updated with a very handy global menu.

A new login box let you sign in more easily by remembering recently used identities:

You can now easily customize the global colors of your La Distribution installation, and define colors application by application. We also added an online CSS editor for advanced customizations.

The News Feed

La Distribution can now merge the content generated by all the installed applications to produce:

• a Public Feed: that help you consolidate your online activity and let everyone subscribe to it.
• a Personal Feed: that let you read everything you want to be notified about.

Using RSS/Atom and Activity Streams, every developer can write simple web applications that will fuel content into this news feed: RSS, Statuses (Twitter, Identi.ca, Status.net), Bookmarks, Photos and everything that can be imagined.

Data Freedom

La Distribution had always let users generate and download a backup of their applications in one click. This backup could be restored or used to create a clone in just one other click.

Now, we’re going one step further, you can backup / and restore your entire site in one click. Migrating to another web server is just a matter of uploading an archive.

Miscellaneous

It’s difficult to integrally cover 9 months of hard work in a single blog post. But we’ll try to at least to mention the other important changes:

• we updated all supported applications to their latest versions: WordPress 3.1, DokuWiki 2010-11-07a, Firefox Sync 1.5, Status.net 0.9.6
• we added some new useful libraries to the system: Limonade, a micro-framework for rapid web development and prototyping, and CodeMirror for “in the browser” code editing.
• package downloads are more reliable, as we now check their integrity before installing it.
• as experimental feature, you can activate Multi Domains support. It’s not ready for prime time but it’s definitely usable and we need feedback on it.
• another experimental feature, Multi Sites, let you create “children” La Distribution installations into your main La Distribution install. For example, this is useful if you want to use La Distribution for a group and want to easily create one La Distribution web site for every user.

How to get it?

We hope you’re now convinced that Europe is our best release ever. Maybe you’re now wondering how to get it? There is two options:

On your own server

As always, if you have your own web server, you can install it very easily with our installer. Check out the install page on our wiki.

And if you’re already using La Distribution, no worry, you should already be using the latest version!

AppSlots

If you don’t understand how to install it, or are too lazy, or want the most simple experience, we have something for you.

AppSlots, the hosted service powered by La Distribution is about to open. With AppSlots, users get a subdomain in username.appslots.com with La Distribution pre-installed, perfectly configured and optimised.

At launch, AppSlots will feature two offers:

• AppSlots Beta: Available in very limited quantities, AppSlots Beta will be for people who want to help us test La Distribution. It’s totally free (for at least 1 year) but we’ll expect some feedback from you to help us understand your needs and improve the service.
• AppSlots One: Also available in limited quantities, AppSlots One is the premium service we were dreaming about. For 14,99 euros / month, you will get a (virtual) dedicated server, automated backups, your own domain name, and more goodies over time.

To be the first to get an account with one or the other offer, we recommend you to subscribe on the AppSlots home page.

Looking forward

We believe “Europe” will be our most important release to date, and really hope it will bring more people to La Distribution.

Following current trends, there is good chances our next updates will be more frequent and incremental, and so “Europe” may be the last big release of its kind.

We really hope you’ll like it!

After Firefox Sync, Status.net is the second application to join this month La Distribution growing list of supported applications.

For those who don’t know it, Status.net is the leading open source Twitter alternative. It allows users to install their own microblogging service for their company, their community, or simply for a personal use.

How did we integrate it in La Distribution?

As always, we provide one click install, one click updates, Single Sign On with La Distribution accounts, a default theme that integrate nicely with other applications.

For this first version, we also deactivated Status.net default plugins. We prefered to start with a very simple user experience, and see what’s needed based on user feedback and real world scenarios. We’re pretty sure the needs of a La Distribution user are not the same as one of an Identi.ca user.

Open Source collaboration

Good citizens, we maintain our own Git clone, keeping our modifications documented and ready for merge into Status.net mainline when needed.

For instance, we submitted our Table prefix support. At first, it was rejected due to code style issues, and we definitely understand why. We later proposed to contribute an enhanced version, at the condition the Status.net team promise to integrate it when it’s done. Like everyone, we don’t have time to waste ;-)

Supported != bug free

In La Distribution, Status.net is now a supported application, but this doesn’t mean there is no issue, or bugs with it. This actually means we commit to investigate every reported issues, fix bugs when it’s possible, and when needed, collaborate with 3d parties (status.net, the various clients supporting status.net). This also means we’ll make sure the package is systematically updated to the last version in a reasonable timeframe.

We’re big fan of Status.net and are really enthusiast to now have this application in our catalog. Their commitment to web decentralization is totally aligned with our objectives. Guys, keep up the good work and long life to the Open Web!

Thank to our brand new plugin support, and a selection of 3 plugins (all bundled by default) you can now keep 99,9% of spammers out of your web applications.

What are this magical plugins?

Bad Behavior

Coming from the WordPress ecosystem, Bad Behavior act as a first line of defense.

It pioneered an HTTP fingerprinting approach. Instead of looking at the spam, it looks at the spammer. Bad Behavior analyzes the HTTP headers, IP address, and other metadata regarding the request to determine if it is spammy or malicious.

Bad Behavior deny access to your site to tons of bad bots, spammers, harvesters and other suspicious agents. As of today, we advise to always have this plugin activated.

Akismet

Also coming from the WordPress ecosystem, Akismet will help you protect your blog/forum from comment spam. How does it works?

When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.

To activate Akismet, you first have to get an API key. As of today, e recommend to switch this plugin on if you have a public blog with comments open, or a forum open to everyone.

reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a system, originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University that uses CAPTCHA to help digitize the text of books while protecting websites from bots attempting to access restricted areas.

In La Distribution, the plugin add captchas on registration forms to prevent automated account creation. To activate it, you first have to get an api key on the reCAPTCHA website. We recommend to switch this plugin on when you allow user registration, which is not the case by default.

Conclusion

What’s great, is that this plugins are only to be configured once, and will then work for every applications installed on your website.

As technology distributors, we think it’s our mission to give the best tools to our users, in this case helping them to protect efficiently their website from the plague that spam is. And if that was not good enough, we’re also currently developing new innovative solutions, that we’ll bundle in future versions of La Distribution. But that’s another story.

If you don’t know Firefox Sync, it’s a Firefox extension that allow you to save and synchronize all your Firefox related data (bookmarks, passwords, history). It’s an essential extension for people who use Firefox on different computers.

We’re now proposing in La Distribution the server part, where the Firefox extension actually store the data.

This is an important package for several reasons:

• It’s not a traditionnal web application but a web service. It’s interesting to have pure web services available, because this change a little bit how you see La Distribution and what it is useful for.
• Mozilla imagined their Sync offer with this scenario in mind. The service is made available primarily on Mozilla servers, but from day one, it was also released as an open source project, installable by anyone.
• In contrast with application like WordPress, Firefox Sync is, for various reasons, not that easy to install by default. A package for La Distribution is then a real opportunity to make it available to more users, the one with limited time or limited technical knowledge.

We’re following Firefox Sync progresses since its early versions and waited it reach maturity before integrating it in La Distribution. It’s the case since the 1.2 version and even more with the rebranded version 1.3. How did we succeeded this integration? Here are a few technical details:

• We use our own authentication system and we had to provide our own PHP class to do so. Was it difficult? Really no, 5 lines in the middle of a 50 lines file. Well done Mozilla!
• We wrote small patchs to include our libraries, fix an issue when detecting the application path, and provide support for custom MySQL ports.
• We built a simple home page with some explanations and statistics.

How to start using it right now?

1. First install the application on your La Distribution installation, it should not be too hard.

   

2. Then, install the Firefox Sync Extension from Mozilla Add Ons, you will be asked to restart your Firefox.
3. Finally, set up the Firefox Sync extension:

   You first have to choose between “I’ve never used Sync before” and “I’m already using Sync on another computer”. This wording is a bit problematic because you have to choose “I’m already using Sync on another computer“.

   It actually means “Yes, i already have an account“, which is the account you’re using on your La Distribution installation. If Mozilla can fix this wording issue, we’ll be very glad :-)

   

   After that, choose “Use a custom server” then enter your server URL, your username and your password. You will be asked to customize your synchronization parameters. After confirmation, the synchronization will start shortly in the background.

4. If everything goes well, you’ll have some statistics about your current usage:

   

We’re very enthusiast to have this new application in our catalog, and we’ll warmly receive any new Mozilla attempt in the domain of server side applications.

When everyone is discussing about privacy and decentralization, Mozilla understand deeply this issues and back it with an inspiring exemplary behavior. Everyone can take notes.

Today, Danube, our new release is officially ready for prime time.

It’s obviously our best release to date, and it’s amazing, you should definitely try it!

The new features were covered in an earlier blog post, here are the most interesting improvements:

• Status.net package
• Firefox Sync package
• WordPress 3 package
• Global Plugins: Akismet, reCAPTCHA, Gravatar, Memcache, …

We plan to cover most of this features in separate posts, so keep an eye on this blog in the next days.

I wish you a nice summer and long life to La Distribution!

How to get it?

Fresh install

To do a fresh install, retrieve the web installer, upload it on your server as installer.php, then execute it through your web browser. You can find more detailed instructions on our wiki.

Upgrade

“Concorde”, our previous release, is now discontinued and you are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.

To upgrade, retrieve the updated web installer, upload it on your server as installer.php (replace the earlier one if you haven’t erased it before), then execute it through your web browser. It’s still that simple!

Sandbox

Finally, for the lazy guys (yes, you), we set up a sandbox to quickly test La Distribution. It’s available over this URL http://sandbox.appslots.com/ with sandbox/sandbox or demo/demo as login/password. Warning, having multiple users playing with it at the same time can result in strange things, and we’ll reset everything on this install as necessary.

Thanks !

Thank to this people for their nice support during Danube development cycle: RETFU, keusta, François Bureau, Charles Nepote, Pierre-Antoine Champin, dcoeurjo, the Upian team and especially Hans Lemuet, Maxime Q., Krome. Be sure your feedback is always appreciated!

Photo: Mode2 Mural Art by urbanartcore.eu (licence CC BY-NC-SA)

Today, we think it’s time for beta testers to start giving it a try! Help us hunt bugs, use it in improbable environments, give it a hard time :-)

So, what’s new in this release? First, as always, ton of bug fixes, performance enhancements and UI tweaks. But also:

Plugin support

Instead of bloating La Distribution with functionalities not everyone needs, we implemented a very simple plugin support. This simple plugin API is inspired from the one WordPress and allow developers hooks into La Distribution using actions and filters.

7 plugins are already bundled with the default install covering features like antispam (akismet, recaptcha), security (bad behavior, ssl) and performance (memcache).

As a developer, if you wonder how to plug into La Distribution, or you’re missing something, let us now! We’ll keep adding new hooks based on real world scenarios.

New Applications

I will not enter into details there because i think this new applications deserve a proper blog post, but here the info: Mozilla Weave and Status.net will join WordPress, Dokuwiki and bbPress as stable supported applications. That’s a big step forward, as we think Microblogging and Browser syncing are very important features of a personal information system.

How to give it a try?

For new installations, install the edge version of La Distribution, grab the latest version of the installer, upload it as installer.php, adjust directory permissions and run it through your web browser.

For existing installations, if you’re using the edge version, just update everything using the web interface. If you’re using the concorde version, update to edge using the latest version of the installer.

So, if you’re reading this, please, please, give it a try, send us your feedback, and help us make D****E a better release. Thank for your time!