Cloudillo v0.8.13 — Calendar, Contacts, and Communities That Click
CalDAV/CardDAV sync, real community flows, and friendlier cross-server interaction
0.8.13 is out. A handful of things from the last stretch of work, plus a note at the bottom about what comes next.
Calendar and contacts that talk to your existing apps
Two new built-in apps. Calendar and Contacts, both speaking the standards your iPhone calendar and Thunderbird’s address book already speak: CalDAV and CardDAV.
So you point Apple Calendar, Thunderbird, DAVx⁵ on Android, whatever you’ve got, at your Cloudillo account. It syncs. No exporting .ics files by hand, no “well, I guess I’ll keep using Google for that one thing.” Your data lives on your server. Apple Calendar just sees it and gets on with its life.
This was the slowest part of the release to ship. Also the one I’m most relieved about.
Communities are starting to click
This is the release where communities stopped feeling like a placeholder.
Invite people through an actual invite dialog. Approve or decline join requests. Pin the communities you care about to the sidebar, and from the same spot you can peek at the unpinned ones too. Group invites show up as proper messages now, so it’s clear who’s inviting you and where to.
Two small things I particularly like. The “your community needs verifying” reminder used to nag everyone. Now it only nags the leaders who can actually do something about it. And posts can finally go to one community without going to the whole internet, which is what most people meant by “share” all along.
Cross-server feels less weird
When two Cloudillo servers reconnect, they catch up on what they missed. Suspended profiles handle gracefully. Talking to someone on a different server now behaves the way you’d expect it to. Same as Gmail emailing your friend’s mailbox, just for collaboration.
Tools for people running a Cloudillo
If you’re hosting Cloudillo for friends, family, or a small org, this release is for you. Set defaults for everyone, override per person. Take a user out gracefully, or wipe them entirely.
When email sending breaks, the test button finally tells you why instead of shrugging. Useful, since “outgoing mail is silently dead” is the kind of thing you really want to know about before users start asking why nobody got their notifications. And new accounts get their welcome email only once the domain is fully set up, so no more “click here to log in” messages arriving before login actually works. Which, frankly, was embarrassing.
The smaller stuff
Prezillo handles PowerPoint files now, in and out. File uploads got faster and use less memory. The notifications panel got a proper redesign: grouped by date, with actions you can take right where you see them. Signup has a password strength bar; we’d been meaning to.
Profiles from other servers get friendlier handling, with three settings: Always trust, Ask me, Never. Browsing across servers stops feeling sketchy.
The files panel can now browse shared folders that live on a friend’s server. With a working back button.
What’s next
Beta.
The next few releases won’t be about new apps. They’ll be about sanding the rough edges off the ones we already have. Less ribbon-cutting, more sanding. If something’s been bugging you, this is the moment to tell us.
Big thanks to everyone running their own server, kicking the tires, reporting the strange corners. A federated network gets a lot less weird when there’s more than one server in the room.