A lot of people have asked various questions about DAV: what it is, what it is for, how is it different or better than XYZ, etc. Hopefully, this page will address those questions.
What is this PH Cloud thing?
PH Cloud is a file sharing server that puts the control and security of your own data back into your hands, and an email client.
Today, most people have their digital life stored on online servers from various companies. Think Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Instagram and many others. You uploaded your pictures, your music, your daily ramblings, happy and sad thoughts. You use these services to share with others, to send and receive emails, store address books, play music and video, have your files available on any device you want. All great features, no doubt! When your phone breaks, just having to log in to the new one to find all your pictures, contacts and other settings is an amazing and reassuring capability brought by these services, often (perhaps incorrectly) called 'the cloud'.
But you might wonder: "Where is this data? Who has access to it?"
These questions have become more pressing since the revelations that our own government is spying on us, and collecting and snooping into virtually all of our online communications. We know that foreign and our own governments have access. Criminals and large corporations, too. This knowledge about us can be used and abused in many ways, for financial gain, for control, for harmless and harmful fun.
Many people prefer to have more control over who gets to see the photos they send to their spouse or friends, who gets to read their bank account statements or determine their political allegiance. Or know where they are - as mobile phones track your location pretty much continuously...
This is where PH Cloud and similar technologies come in. PH Cloud offers you the option to take back your data. Once you install it on a server (or let somebody do that for you! Decentralization is an important tool to protect privacy) you can access your private data in an easy to use web interface or synchronize it with your devices like Android and iPhones. You can store your contacts and calendar as well as files on PH Cloud and use it to store passwords, play music and movies and so on. It also allows you to securely share with other people and collaborate on documents.
I have a different question
You may ask whatever at contact us
Why is PH Cloud Server written in PHP?
PH Cloud is for everybody. We picked PHP because:
- PHP runs anywhere and is supported everywhere. Even the cheapest hosting provider should support PH Cloud and PHP makes that possible.
- PHP is easy to learn which makes it easy for people to contribute. The ease of PHP also allows you to check the code that runs your PH Cloud and make changes that you need.
- This software uses the follow liberties that are written in PHP:
- Joomla!
- Sabres DAV
- Roundcube
Why do you use HTTP and not another protocol?
HTTP goes through every firewall and proxy.
Does PH Cloud work with Microsoft Outlook?
Outlook does not support CalDAV, and therefore it is also not possible to sync with PH Cloud (or any other CalDAV implementation).
There's a few plugins though that add this functionality to outlook:
Bynari WebDAV collaborator is a very active, non-free plugin for outlook. It works well with PH Cloudand syncs contacts, calendars and tasks.
iCal4OL is another (non-free, but it has a trial). I have personally not tested it so if it worked with PH Cloud, but we have had good reports.
Open Connector is a free plugin for Outlook that is supposed to provide support for this, but the project appears unmaintained since 2008, and I personally haven't gotten it to work. If you did, let me know how.