[feature request] Demo Account
I want to propose a demonstration account so that people, especially people new to (or at least, unaware that they are familiar with) XMPP. I expect this to be controversial not least because this costs you money. This can probably be put off until you have some alpha-alpha adopters and want to target beta adopters, but I want to get the discussion started.
The features to show off are:
- You can send and receive real text messages
- You can use a client of your choice, you are not constrained by "us"
For an easy start, on the page explaining the demo account and how to add a number to text, drop a Candy install that automagically logs you, waiting, next to instructions encouraging them to try it out with other clients (targets: Conversations, iMessage, Gajim, Adium).
Ideas to avoid abuse:
- only allow up to 3 (outgoing? do you pay for incoming?) messages per IP per day
- one message isn't enough because it doesn't let someone use multiple clients
- You can enforce this with fail2ban or a custom prosody module?
- generate a unique demo account per user, but plug them all into the same SMS number
- You can use anon auth on a subdomain like demo.soprani.ca
- Though maybe not being able to demonstrate a shared roster between different clients is a problem? Or maybe I'm overthinking that.
- Set a MOTD which informs the user of how many remaining demo texts they have (you can patch mod_motd easily enough to do this)
- You can use anon auth on a subdomain like demo.soprani.ca