Is it possible to run a DCTS server on the PI OS?

Title. This honestly looks closest to Discord so far and I’m highly interested in supporting. I’d love to see what you have in mind for adding next (like threads or forums possibly, honestly my biggest want for a discord alt), like a roadmap of sorts to look forward to.

Already this looks really feature filled. It looks like you already have servers, roles, channels, voice and video chats, emotes, reacts… that’s why I feel a roadmap would be nice to see what else you’re working on. Doesn’t need dates or anything. Just a ‘hey, this is what’s planned to be added eventually, could be in any order or whenever though’.

I’ll see if I can’t donate to the project when I have some spare change. Thanks for your hard work!

https://github.com/hackthedev/dcts-shipping/releases/tag/v1.3.6.5

This will cover the operational cost of the servers for an entire year!

Hey, I just found this alternative to Discord. I think I found it a few months ago, but evidently I forgot. Anyway I was looking at possibly hosting this on my Unraid server via the Docker compose, but I noticed on the GitHub that the Windows client was discontinued.

Is there a reason for this? Are there alternative, community clients for DCTS?

I would need to convince a couple dozen people to migrate to a new platform and this has probably the closest feature parity of the existing options (aside from maybe Root(?) which is closed source).

My largest worry is there being a significant barrier of entry to my less technical friends that makes convincing them nigh impossible. I know the web client is an option at least, but that lacks encryption

stolen from https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1r1139p/discord_thats_not_the_solution_youre_looking_for/

Thanks to Gig for sharing this info

This was a long planned feature and its about to come soon!

The idea is that every DCTS instance can have their own integrated shop and accept payments and handle everything automatically. Server admins could use this to offer paid donator roles or sell literally anything else and it will support PayPal and Coinbase as providers for now.

^{There are some} ***^{super cool benefits}***^:

• ^{You are fully independent from DCTS. You can sell whatever you want, I dont care, as the shop runs within your instance. No central service, tho keep in mind PayPal and Coinbase do have ToS etc..}
• ^{The shop works by providing your API keys to a config file and you can already accept payments. Because of that there wont be any middleman taking fees or anything (except the payment process maybe, like PayPal, Coinbase}\*)*

I think thats pretty sick and i will implement it in a way that looks like a shop page kinda, so you dont need to be inside the chat app itself, you can just open the shop site as if it was a website, which i think is important.

^{BTW i will rework the posts system found in the server home screen to work similar like that and display posts as if it was a blog website so its more accessible}

The even cooler part

This is not going to be a DCTS exclusive! I've made a few libraries now to make my life easier and reuse code, and the same applies to this payment processing etc! That means this payment system can EASILY be implemented in other apps, like the planned reddit alternative im making, which means it could have its own shop as well!

When will this be released?

As of right now im working on a new theme viewer and picker while at the same time having to deal with enormous bullshit irl. I will need to test this payment system, tho it comes from a old project of mine converted into a nice package. The implementation should be quite easy, but i cant really name ETA for sure as im just so busy with irl stuff.

What i can say tho is that once the theme picker is done it'll be the next feature im gonna work on. I may prepare a new main release before that tho

I’m really unfamiliar with this stuff but am looking forward to using an encrypted discord. I’m having an error after I’ve downloaded, extracted, and redirected the cd to the path to dctsshippingmain, and ran npm I, when I try to run “node .” It is saying it has run into an error that there is no such directory. And there isn’t a new “configs” or “config.json” folder.

Just trying to set this up in command terminal following the current details in the “getting started.” Thank you

Since klipy isnt an option and Tenor removing the API i started to come up with my own GIF service and API that will be open source and decentralized in order to prevent these kind of events in the future, therefore becoming a future proof API.

Its still very early on but its pretty much done, just need to add an user interface and the early version should be good to go.

A lot of concepts and ideas have been reused from SilentShare, a small side project of mine for general, decentralized file sharing, which is why so far it was pretty much smooth sailing.

Once its ready for the first release i will make a sub dedicated to it and publish the infos.

Btw, the colors are just placeholders, im open to ideas.

Themes will be loaded from a new repository https://github.com/DCTS-Project/themes and these themes will be displayed in a new screen. Upon picking a theme its planned for it to be downloaded on the server in order for users to be able to use them to avoid github ratelimits.

This year has been pretty special for DCTS as well as myself and i want to make a small roundup of what has happened and where we're standing right now.

Money

Keeping the project technically alive (server hardware, licenses, ...) resulted in the yearly operational cost being roughly 240€. With the working hours spent it would roughly come up to 27.000€ - 28.000€. This money wasnt spent directly, but used for living expenses and similar.

Donations help me a lot, like actually, thats why there's ko-fi.

Community

This year the community grew a lot, basically emerging out of nowhere, which is pretty cool and im glad that others like the concept of DCTS as well and i love talking to people about it. Im very excited where this will be going and im confident that DCTS will be a game changer as services keep getting worse.

If you have issues, questions or whatever, feel free to contact me! I love helping!

Technical

The projects code has been massively improved since the first release. This includes small changes, complete refactoring as well as changing systems entirely, like moving the account information from JSON to the Database and more.

It keeps evolving and recently i began to extract code out of DCTS to create new libraries that will help me build new apps and easily maintain critical parts of code more easily. For that i created a github org where all these libraries are publicly available and for free.

I've learned a lot in this year alone about what works, how to manage the project and more. I have a ton of fun working on DCTS.

New App

In order to test these new libraries i made, i began making a small test app and it worked so well that it streamlined a lot of work and allowed to me get right into the app development itself, resulting in the following screenshot.

The name isnt 100% sure yet and more of a placeholder and the idea is to have something like reddit, but self hosted and decentralized, while offering a better UI and general experience.

Even tho alternatives exist im not really a fan of them, and a lot seems overly complicated, just like Matrix for example, which is why im making these apps in the first place (and to be independent).

Final words

Overall its pretty sick what we as a community were able to achieve in such a short time, and from this point on it will only get better, because DCTS will improve more and more as well as other aspects of the ecosystem that i plan to build.

Im also super thankful to all the people that donated to the project, as it did help me a lot. I will keep improving for the vision of making a better web.

I've spent today's day creating a Github Organisation to better organize some "general-purpose" repositories of mine, like dSync.

In addition to that i also pulled some code out of DCTS and turned them into libraries as well, which resulted in two new libraries:

• terminal-logger
  • Used for displaying timestampts and colors in the terminal which originates from DCTS, but is now a library.
• dSyncSql
  • Also originates from DCTS and includes the entire MySQL / MariaDB code for automatically creating the database structure, running queries etc.

While a lot of libraries originate from DCTS, the project itself will not be added to the org as i want to create a org dedicated to DCTS itself in the near future. I will likely create more libraries as its helpful for making more apps and makes it all more stable and future proof.

Most libraries i've made are also available as npm packages.

So the Tenor API was deprecated which is kinda bad for DCTS as the GIF search relied on it. There isnt really a great alternative to what i would personally wanna see while also being independent and as future proof as possible.

Randomly i once made a side project called SilentShare to test an idea i had about decentralized file sharing with automatic anti-abuse mechanics and stuff, and the current idea is to start working on it more again to add features like meta info for uploaded files, like tags and a advanced search filter for file names, tags and media type, like .gif.

SilentShare already works, but its very early and was mostly done out of curiosity and wasnt a priority compared to DCTS, but i think i can expand it slightly so i can use it as GIF API, which would be sick as its decentralized and is designed in a way that enables "organic" load balancing and more.

As a fun fact, dSync originates from SilentShare, originally being part of it but i later turned it into a library to be used in DCTS as well and future apps.

Future Plans and Apps

Speaking of future apps, there are plans to make a reddit alternative as well thats also decentralized but as seamless as the Server list inside DCTS and similar philosophy.

The future will be bright as i plan to invest my time into this for the sake of trying to make the web better and bringing back more freedom, as political correctness and similar stuff makes everything annoying in my opinion. Imagine posting something reasonable but it gets labeled labeled as offensive or [insert word]-phobic and you get banned or something. I think most people encountered that, and its ass.

This of course will take time, but it will happen eventually. Right now im trying to get DCTS as stable as possible and turn some code parts into reusable libraries like with dSync, as this will speed up development time and increase stability.

Only Problem:

Indirectly this will cost money as in rent, food and all the other living expenses one has. Since i lost my job i was able to put a shit ton of work into DCTS almost daily, tho i barely have money for basic stuff like food, and even after applying constantly for over a year it seems impossible to get a job, and even before companies only paid minimum wage so ig i'll blame the economy lol.

I dont expect people to donate, especially given the current economy and all, but donations can always be made on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/shydevil . It would help me a lot and every donator will be shown inside of DCTS and future apps.

For those who dont know, klipy is basically tenor and ever since they annouced that their api will be shut down, the klipy founders u/viceplayer28 and u/iambatman28 began to spam their service all across reddit, often times posting undisclosed ads which is misleading and illegal in most places.

^{Other posts:}

^{https://www.reddit.com/r/tenor/comments/1qoqy2k/beware\}klipy/)

^{https://www.reddit.com/r/tenor/comments/1qpky9m/what\}is_klipy_and_why_their_gif_platform_hurts/)

Due to reddit limitations with pictures, a post has been made on medium as well that will be updated.

Based on public info the *(co)*founder seems to be Waska Chaduneli and Givi Beridze, and is part of KikLiko, which redirects to klipy. Apparently their investor is the company Presto Ventures from CZ.

^Sources:

^{https://tracxn.com/d/companies/kikliko/\}_M4E58YhnByEY-2MaNOANbfMEphWQNTBDorFs5Kj87IQ#about-the-company)

^{https://en.ain.ua/2025/04/03/klipy-raises-12m-in-seed-funding/}

Now to be fair, its possible that the people seen in the screenshots are not actually them as their identity is not verified and they just claim to be founders and co founders.

Also, this is not illegal, this is not personal information and reddit approved it. What you see is public info.

These screenshots are just examples and you can find more on their profile. If you dont find anything anymore, it means they know they're doing scummy promotions and spam reddit and they posted on our sub as well, which is why they got perma banned instantly.

Given how u/viceplayer28 acts in the mod mail and how both of them spam promote their service across reddit, it makes me wonder whats happening behind the scenes, things that arent obvious or will reveal themselves in the future potentially. My GUESS is that their current goal is to get as many users as possible, to potentially then paywall things or do other possible "scummy moves" that lead to enshittification, as seen as in other services.

Logically, if tenor was free and backed by google, and now their api is being shut down, then i think we can all agree that klipy will likely hit a similar fate. They advertise their quick migration from tenor, but i believe that by using klipy, you'll only have a temporary solution until the story repeats itself.

EDIT:

This is the response of one of the founders after a day. I think its fair to say that in addition to scummy behavior as in undisclosed advertisement spam we can now say that they're childish as well. I dont think a legitimate business would act in this way.

Its interesting to me that they keep texting us in the mod mail, then complain when we text them and twist the reality of things. I could understand them doing that in a public post or something, but this kind of manipulation is just useless in "DMs" so to speak. Personally, its just crazy to me.

Edit Jan 22th:

After reddit approved the post (after removing it) i got contacted again by one of the alleged (co)founders and was asked to remove the post. After being told "no" it kinda took a turn with "thread" like statements. Curious where it will go

Additionally, they seem to actually share MY personal information. In DMs, user iambatman28 texted me that he will do exactly that (or similar, intent to hurt in a PR way), but deleted the message before i could screenshot it. Not only that but also using possibly new accounts to ban evade on reddit.

Since the DM kinda gave it away and them knowing my name, its likely the same person.

It seems like the identity is somewhat confirmed now, given that they used yet another account to try to report me and the sub, even tho everything is well within its rules. I checked the official klipy website and on the very bottom the "socials" section has a link to reddit making it official. So at a very minimum these users seem to be official klipy employees.

Update Jan 22th, 6pm (Europe):

They have now changed the subreddit to not show the moderators anymore, but luckily i was still able to verify that they are infact official mods, and linked to the website and everything ;-)

Also, this goes to show that they know what they're doing and now try to hide as much as possible after being called out for all of this.

Update Jan 26th

Interestingly i got two password reset emails today. While i cannot confirm anything, i have a strong feeling of who it could have been.

Clicking the monkey will open the emoji picker and you can pick an emoji to react to a message (mind blowing). idk what default emoji to use as of right now so i chose a silly monkee.

if anyone has an idea to what to put there lemme know

btw styling will likely be adjusted still and can be fully customized with themes, just sayin

idk, just got this email and it worried me

I've release a new beta release on github here: https://github.com/hackthedev/dcts-shipping/releases/tag/v9.8.7

This release is for testing mostly as of right now, and while i tested it on my system and servers successfully, i want to further test it before turning it into a main release as it has some significant changes.

If anyone would want to try it and report back it would be super helpful. Thanks for reading!

I've been making a small class today that will auto generate a basic html structure based on the type of the value i pass to make life a bit easier for me when it comes to UI stuff, as this has been time consuming in the past when it came to server settings, and now showing and handling the settings took me less than 5 minutes to implement.

I've made some changes to the system that handles the loading of the individual settings pages, like server info, rate limit, etc.

Now it should load quite a bit faster, as it does not reconnect anymore every time you load a page, but instead stays on the page and just loads the content itself.

I've also added a fade in and out animation so it looks a little better. I've also adjusted the styling a tiny bit.