Super easy to use?

I’m quite motivated about using Threefold. Everything is super easy, you all say. But for everything I try to do with Threefold I feel stupid. 30 years of IT experience is not enough to do things quickly and easily for me. Simple questions I have can not be answered by all your information you provide, which is somewhat unstructured and incomplete to me. It is EASY to get lost in ID’s, tokens, Polkadot accounts, Threebot, Twin adresses, mnemonics, etc etc.

Quick example:
I managed to have terraform spin up something, don’t know what. 2 contracts appear, but now what? Do I have a VM or not? Can’t find anything. Should ‘terraform apply’ have told me anything IIP address or what?) ? It didn’t. It might all be very easy to you.

Don’t know if Threefold is suitable for anything without any expert help?

Hi @sleipnir

Thanks for your feedback.

First I’d say that Threefold is always becoming easier to use. For example, some months ago, creating a farm and a 3node took several steps. Now it’s pretty much one-click solution with the Threefold Connect App. Also, documentation will be added progressively to help users and farmers interact easily with the TF Grid. Indeed as of now it’s not 100% well structured and it’s incomplete.

All this to say, using the Grid will be easier as documentation and upgrades are made.

That being said, as @weynandkuijpers explains in this video, TF Grid is not end user ready, in the sense that it’s utility to run applications and that accessible layers will be built by the TF Community and other communities to make it 100% user-friendly.


Now for your specific quick example, as of now Terraform does not “support updates/upgrades, if you want a change you need to destroy a deployment & re-create”

Also, did you check this video by @scott ? It might have some useful information for your current situation.


I’m sure more knowledgeable TF people will jump in and help you out.

It’s great to have such feedback so we can see how to improve the overall ecosystem.

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I would agree, its not ready for a typical cloud end user. But it is getting closer everyday.

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It is a bit disjointed, but it gets easier, it’s unlikely I would have set up larger servers without Nelson’s videos.

based on what you specified in the output section, you can do terraform show or terraform output to get the information like IP, wireguard configurations, planetary network IP,… etc https://library.threefold.me/info/manual/#/manual3_iac/grid3_terraform/manual__terraform_basics

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You can also go to https://play.grid.tf to deploy something.

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I have to agree with Sleipnir. And trust me if I say that I have less knowledge in ICT, but more than average I would say. Still, this concept is either too complicated or (despite many brave attempts) not explained in a language that most people will understand. It’s a professor trying to show children the greatness of Einstein’s theory of relativity. But I fully understand, I’m an engineer and also used to find it hard teaching operators our machines.

Although I successfully deployed my first r620 diy 3node today, I’m still trying to find out how to use it now.

Since I’m a business owner in Europe as well as in West Africa I even signed up to help selling and advertising 3nodes and provide support and services. No response on my submission.
Our strongest asset is that we are able to convince people and persuade them to participate. But if I have a hard time explaining it in simple language, that will be impossible.

The way I see it is this; if we imagine 3 sort of people regarding understanding of ICT, I would say there’s a top layer of less than 0,5% that has a lot of knowledge and amongst are the threefold builders. Then there’s my estimation of 50% of the worlds population who it should be explained to in a simple way for them to participate and the remaining 49,5% will never learn or use it. For threefold to become successful they need a big chunck of the middle 50% which is were guys like me come in. But only 1) if I fully understand so I can explain it to others and 2) have something to show. (and get a reply to my 3node partnership request)

I have spend over a week now jumping from forms to wiki to youtube and back trying to grasp it and again, you need guys like me to understand to be able to ventilate and make it grow.

Last; I thank you all for setting this up!. I came across threefold while reading and helping setting up society 4.0. Decentralized internet, food supply, currencies etc. Great way to go, let’s make the world a better place.

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Thanks for this great feedback.

Indeed, we need to improve the documentation and develop guides for everyone to be able to use the Threefold Grid, whether the person is a user, a farmer, a validator, or a developer.

To begin, for people to have the big picture of Threefold, the Litepaper is an excellent place to start.

Threefold Litepaper

For now, the DIY Videos, the Farming Guide and the FAQ should suffice to help farmers build a Threefold farm. We will improve and upgrade the documentation and also create new content in different formats to reach different audiences.

On the user side, Weynand did a great video showing how to deploy CapRover. Just with CapRover, users have access to hundreds of apps. That’s a start.

Here is a list of Threefold documentation.

Threefold Library

Threefold Weblets Library

Deploy Discourse and Wordpress with CapRover Video Guide

Deploy Wordpress Picture Guide

3node DIY Videos

Farming Guide Part 1

Farming Guide Part 2

FAQ Part 1

FAQ Part 2

Rack Server DIY Picture Guide

Further documentation for users and developers would help make this part of Threefold super easy to use. We invite everyone to join us in contributing to building this documentation.

Once again thanks @RobertL and also @sleipnir for your feedback!

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@Mik Thank you SO much. Awesome. This is a fantastic list to go through the next couple of days. I already found some very useful topics!
Is there a topic Farming Guide Part 3 in the making showing DIY users how yo set-up multiple servers in a datacenter?

Good to know it helps.

It’s a good idea to add more information on how to set up a Threefold farm in a datacenter.

There is a section written by @FLnelson in the Farming Guide part 1 on PXE booting which is useful in datacenter settings.

Then, here is the documentation: to set the public IP, which is possible in a datacenter: https://library.threefold.me/info/manual/#/manual__public_config

I agree that more information on how to set a Threefold farm in datacenter would be great.
That being said, the current information should be sufficient for people to set up their Threefold farm in a datacenter.

If other farmers have idea of what information to add, it could then be documented.

As farmers set up their farms in datacenter, we will add in the documentation the knowledge they gather.

Thanks @RobertL for your feedback!

EDIT: For now I will try and add some useful informations for datacenter Threefold farming.

As far as I know no one has actually made the move yet, but several are getting close. I’m not ready to publicly post since I don’t want to give wrong info, but DM me if you want to get started on the transition.

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I’d like to invite all of our brave testers to join the testing group on Telegram. It’s the best place to get fast or real time help: https://t.me/threefoldtesting

@sleipnir, @RobertL, and anyone else who’s trying to create deployments on the Grid, please also feel free to reach out to me directly on Telegram (@scottyeager) or send me a DM here on the forum (slower response). I’d love to know more about your experience and how we can tune up the documentation. Thanks for being here.

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@scott wonderful! Became a member instantly. When I find the time I’m going to setup a WordPress site following Weynands instructions. I’ll let you know how a non-tech guy experiences this and keep notes!

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