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Hi,

I don't know if this is possible or how long it takes. We're teaching a free workshop in our local hackerspace at HackBo (http://hackbo.co) on web programming using web2py. For workshops like this I have discovered that pythonanywhere is the best way to go for newbies and in fact I think that a way to get expossed to students and newbies who can go to other accounts and having a even better community relation (which is good already :-) ). The thing is that we want to use the bundled minimalist fossil-scm for version control and to sync with a remote server, in this case with this test repo:

http://mutabit.com/deltas/depot.fossil/appccident/home

Let me know if this makes any sense and can be added to the white list.

Cheers,

Offray

Those seem like good candidates for inclusion. I have added them.

I also downloaded the fossil binary from the site and it works fine on PythonAnywhere.

We'd love to hear how your workshop goes.

Fossil is WAY cool. I love it!! I'm glad someone finally suggested it. Maybe I need to stop my relentless support of getting PG and spread my wings a bit.

hm, i'm not sure you'll be able to get fossil's web ui to work. i think it wants to talk to the world via cgi, and we only speak wsgi... but maybe you could do some kind of emulation layer? or were you just looking for the command-line tools? have you tried downloading and installing them?

Hi,

Thanks for the addition of fossil and mutabit to the white list. The previous Saturday we used local fossil and just explained the basic concepts of DVCS, so we're not testing yet the support in python anywhere. For our workshop, we just need the command prompt support and the hability to sync with repos put on mutabit, so there is no problem if we don't have the cgi enabled web interface.

By the way, speaking of the workshop, the limitations on free account (which are fine for me and you're pretty responsive) brought the theme of USD 5 per month hosting on Digital Ocean. Their prices are really good and in fact, today I will start to moving my servers from Linode to Digital Ocean, because their starting price is unbeatable. You have a similar starting price and of course is based on a different experience, more newbie friendly and focussed on python (you don't need to configure the whole http + web2py server and stuff like that). I just want to let you know how the workshop went and that people is willing to pay, at least the first month, for enabling the total experience they have in their local machines (web2py + nikola + IPython + fossil) in the web also. In that sense, would be nice enabling some how the fossil cgi web interface, so people could pass from free workshops to paying customers of your infrastructure in the point where the amount of free consoles or hard disk is not enough.

Facilitators and teachers for the workshops can help spreading the word and building a stronger community around python in general and Python Anywhere in particular. For that, at least in South America (but I think that in most places of the Global South) is important to think in:

• Bridges with the local communities (your free hosting + workshops in local hackerspaces are a good starting point).
• Contents under a Free Cultural Work License. (The ones we're developing fall under this category).
• Some kind of virtual wallet for the personal account. Most of the people here doesn't have a credit card and don't want to start having one just to spend 5 USD/Month. Being able to purchase some code using somebody's else credit card and then expend that money in the way you want with your products without having to depend on cards holder is a way to go. Ouya has this kind of virtual wallets (I bougth a console and a wallet) and they would work nicely here.
• Forums (in fact conversations) are an important part of an educative experience (this in an example). Having your forums with some kind of "teacher" account for free workshops will enable a lot of conversations on how to use/extend your infrastructure to support better learning experiences. That will go beyond asking to the extended community (this one), but also having open conversations on the subjects that are been taught in the workshops, and they can be in different languages. Think about it. It can be just one click away of what you're offering right now.
• Data portability goes beyond DVCS like git, mercurial or fossil. A lot of valuable interaction will happen in forums and other social places. Being this a programmers oriented site, DVCS are just the beginning.

Having this in the radar would help to build something different of a QA site (like Stack Overflow) or a hosting place (like Digital Ocean), something unique and valuable.

Cheers and thanks again. Your community support is awesome :-),

Offray

Thanks, that's really useful feedback! Do people in your part of the world tend to have PayPal accounts? I know they might not be able to pay for a recurring subscription with a PayPal account that doesn't have a credit card associated with it, but perhaps they could fund a virtual wallet with one...?

Most of the people here doesn't tend to have paypal accounts at least not the ones which are using the free account and will go with the hacker ones. I will explore the idea of having paypal with a virtual wallet.

OK, so just to make sure I understand: with a virtual wallet system, people would ask their friends who had credit cards or PayPal accounts to make a payment to PythonAnywhere for some amount of money. We'd store that money, and they'd be able to use it to pay for a PythonAnywhere account over some period of time.

Is that right? If so, how much do you think people would want to put into such a wallet at a time?

Virtual Wallet, at least in Ouya is just an alphanumeric code you buy with certain amount of money attached to it. You get that code and you can use it to buy from Ouya. You can also "transfer" that money to anyone who has an Ouya account just by mailing it. My idea is to have the same here. Let me ask directly to the people who is attending the workshop what amount of money they're willing to pay in their virtual wallets. I will have an answer on Saturday.

Lets check virtual wallets first, but out of the box fossil support (including cgi enabled interface) and forums for small groups can be part of the better educative experience you can bring to Python Anywhere.

Cheers

OK, thanks! I can't promise we'll be adding those soon, but they sound like great features and I've made sure they're appropriately upvoted on our to-do list.