On another note, yesterday I set up my own matrix-synapse [0] homeserver along with a token-based registration page [1] with nginx+lets encrypt as a reverse proxy. I spent ~1 hour setting it up on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 VM.
I then on-boarded my wife, brother, father and mother without issue. I just sent them a text with screenshots and detailed instructions on what to do. Everyone's in, and we have E2EE group chats going. Within ~20 minutes of sending instructions everyone was participating in chat.
The only issue encountered was that my mom entered the wrong homeserver URL (I set up the sign-up page to be join.subdomain.tld and the homeserver to be chat.subdomain.tld and she entered the former into Element). My dad was able to resolve the issue quickly for her.
All clients are Element [2] right now, though I plan on trying Weechat [3] this week.
Honestly, I didn't expect it to be this easy to do after seeing all the complaints on HN. I subscribed on Patreon yesterday and wish you all the best of luck!
I then on-boarded my wife, brother, father and mother without issue. I just sent them a text with screenshots and detailed instructions on what to do. Everyone's in, and we have E2EE group chats going. Within ~20 minutes of sending instructions everyone was participating in chat.
The only issue encountered was that my mom entered the wrong homeserver URL (I set up the sign-up page to be join.subdomain.tld and the homeserver to be chat.subdomain.tld and she entered the former into Element). My dad was able to resolve the issue quickly for her.
All clients are Element [2] right now, though I plan on trying Weechat [3] this week.
Honestly, I didn't expect it to be this easy to do after seeing all the complaints on HN. I subscribed on Patreon yesterday and wish you all the best of luck!
[0] https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse
[1] https://github.com/ZerataX/matrix-registration
[2] https://element.io
[3] https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix