Hi,
I’m discovering a bit mailinabox (just installed it on a domU) ; I tried the shel.io URI to join the discussion on slack, but it looks like the invitation site is down (and I was kind of curious about slack). Though, is there any IRC channel to connect to otherwise?
Thanks. We’ve moved the inviter page onto the main Mail-in-a-Box domain. You can now join at https://mailinabox.email/slack/.
The “Get my invite” button seems inactivated. Is there a trick to signing up?
Sorry try now. Thanks.
today, when I tried to use this Slack for the first time, it seems to be not available again. I am getting a 502 Gateway Timeout for the above mentioned URL.
Sorry the Slack button dies every now and then and I have to restart it. It’s back now.
thank you !
Back to the topic: For people that read this thread because they searched for “IRC”: You can connect to (this) Slack via IRC: https://mailinabox.slack.com/account/gateways
@JoshData if you’re having trouble with Slack, could I recommend setting up a RocketChat server? They have a Ubuntu Snap installer now, which makes it extremely easy to set up on a $10/mo DO Droplet.
I really don’t understand why a project that helps people run their own e-mail servers with free software uses proprietary software to communicate.
Because I don’t have the time and I don’t want to spend my personal money maintaining/hosting an open source alternative? Pretty simple reason.
@justbart that’s a pretty specious line of thinking. You might as well ask “I don’t really understand why @JoshData pays for an internet connection, or a phone plan, or anything else.”
@JoshData I only suggested it because Slack seems to be giving you trouble. I’d be happy to make a small donation to help get a chat server started for MIAB, and help you set it up if need be.
I also know that you recommend DigitalOcean as a VPS provider for running MIAB servers. If you post your referral link in the setup guide, I imagine that within a few months you’d be getting enough credit in referrals to keep the server going in perpetuity.
That is understandable @JoshData! I was not suggesting that you host something yourself.
Freenode can take care of hosting an IRC channel for you. Many FOSS projects use it for their official communication: e.g. awk, git, bash, kde, latex, postgresql, qt, redis, vim, xfce, octave, and these are just some of the ones I’m registered to.
Setting up a channel (e.g. #mailinabox or #miab) is really easy. With your permission, I can help you set one up.
Edit: I contacted a freenode admin, this is what he had to say:
[23:53:07] <kline> the most important thing for you to do is to get the
author on board with this :)
[23:54:15] <kline> once that's done, use this as
a template for an email to projects@freenode.net :
https://gist.github.com/AbstractBeliefs/f82487dc7d7db54d7c94740c25c08084
[23:55:10] <kline> you should include evidence that you're a
representative of the project, which in your case is some way for us
to verify/prove that the author has given you responsibility to run and
register the channel :)
[23:58:06] <mr_sm1th> Alright thank you I will do that.
[23:58:13] <mr_sm1th> Hope I'll manage to convince him.
So, with your blessing we can make this happen by tomorrow evening. 
If you need more information about me, you can send me a personal message.
Also, my apologies for sounding abrasive earlier. That was not my intention! I just really want to be able discuss this amazing project with you all.
We’re definitely not going to use IRC. The point of this project is to make things easy and friendly for people. IRC is not that.
I’m restarting the Slack integrator now. It gets stuck periodically.
Ohhh cool idea. I’ll look into that.
It saddens me that you feel that way about IRC. I believe connecting to an IRC channel couldn’t be easier these days with web clients like kiwi IRC (literally click a button to join). And even then I would personally rather put up a minimal technical barrier for participating than an ethical one. If I can help in any way, IRC or otherwise, to set up a free communication channel, please let me know.
@justbart The main limitation with IRC is the character limit, and that most IRC clients don’t have support for Markdown or other rich styling. Markdown support really comes in handy when you’re trying to help someone with their code!
So people usually paste chunks of code directly in chat on other platforms? Interesting. I can imagine that can be useful indeed, but it must also clutter up actual discussion really quick? On IRC people often use pastebins like GitHub’s Gists or bpaste.net.
Hi! I’m getting a 502 Bad Gateway over at https://mailinabox.email/slack/
Could you fix that or invite me manually please? I want to ask a couple of questions, and I didn’t want to pollute the discourse here too much 
(sorry if I’m out of line asking you to fix stuff)
Also, sorry for necro-ing this thread, Didn’t think it was worth creating a new one
Edit: Never mind, it’s working now
Sorry, this is a bit of an old thread, but the Slack button doesn’t seem to be working for me. Just curious if the Slack is still a thing.
I personally like IRC, but it’s definitely not something I would recommend for someone who doesn’t want to learn something new and isn’t already using IRC. However, I do know that you can have Slack IRC bridges (I think), and Discord is now a thing too. I definitely know that Discord has excellent client bridges, and you don’t need this weird invitation thing that keeps failing on you. I think Discord even has bots that don’t require a server/client to be running (I mean, of course, Discord’s server will always need to be running).
I wonder if there would be any interest in creating a Group Registration and starting a #mailinabox channel on irc.freenode.net ?
But yes, I wonder the same about Slack though I am fairly sure that it is dead.
Hmm, I posted this before rereading the entire thread … it seems that @JoshData is opposed to an IRC presence but it would be good to have a presence somewhere. If not IRC, then it could be Slack or Discord … there have been multiple times I have attempted to help someone to be limited by max number of replies allowed in PM. Maybe @JoshData just needs to kick the server again to get the Slack link working. 