Private Web app for a couple, similar to social networks and team communication tools (self-hosted & free/libre)

Question

I’m looking for a Web app which two people can use to plan their free time together and share parts of their lives with each other. A platform for a couple or best friends. For the fun, not for the boring stuff.

I never used Slack or Facebook, but from what I read about these services, I imagine the Web app to be a combination of them: a mix between a dashboard, a collaboration tool, and a social network (or to be more precise: the stream that seems to be typical for social networks), but only for two people, and without focus on work/development.

Required (no room for compromises)

• It must be free/libre software.
• It must run on a GNU/Linux server (I’ll self-host it).
• Everything must be private, only accessible to the two user accounts.

Desired features (fine if I can’t have everything)

• Chat / status updates. Similar to the Stack Exchange chat or a microblog.
• Create/share posts (text, audio, video, image, file). Both can comment on each post. Inform the other one about new posts/comments. Similar to a blog.
• Create a text document that can be edited by both. Inform the other one about new documents/edits, and color the parts differently. Similar to a wiki, or even similar to Etherpad.
• Manage a shared to-do list. Both can add (and mark as done) entries. Support for categories would be fantastic.
• Add events/dates, maybe with a simple calendar.

Presentation (just an idea)

• The content from all of the features listed above should ideally be listed in one big stream. So a chat message could be followed by an image post, which could be followed by a log entry that a text was edited, which could be followed by the reply to the first chat message.

• It should mark entries which are new (i.e., still unread) somehow, so that the users notice when they saw everything.

• Filters could be used to show only image posts, or only to-do entries from the "Watch movies" category. A search could be used to find chat messages, posts, etc.

• A dashboard/sidebar should give easy access to the "stable" content: the to-do list, the events, and the (active) text collaborations.

• An indicator that the other user is currently online would be great. If offline, it should ideally show when the other user was last seen.

Answer 1

You can try Sandstorm:

Required (no room for compromises)

• It must be free/libre software. - ✓
• It must run on a GNU/Linux server (I’ll self-host it). - ✓ (only 64 bit)
• Everything must be private, only accessible to the two user accounts. - ✓

Desired features (fine if I can’t have everything)

• Chat / status updates. Similar to the Stack Exchange chat or a microblog. - ✓ Rocket.Chat or Let's Chat
• Create/share posts (text, audio, video, image, file). Both can comment on each post. Inform the other one about new posts/comments. Similar to a blog. - ✓ Ghost
• Create a text document that can be edited by both. Inform the other one about new documents/edits, and color the parts differently. Similar to a wiki, or even similar to Etherpad. - ✓ Etherpad or MediaWiki or DokuWiki
• Manage a shared to-do list. Both can add (and mark as done) entries. Support for categories would be fantastic. - ✓ WeKan or Simple Todos
• Add events/dates, maybe with a simple calendar. - ✓ Radicale

Answer 2

I would consider WordPress as an option. It meets all your requirements and all your desired features of,

Requirements

• Being free/libre software ✓ - open source
• Self-hosted on GNU/Linux server ✓ - written in PHP and uses MySQL, which can be setup on Linux servers
• Ability to restrict everything to unwelcome visitors ✓ - using this plugin would be the easiest way, wp-require-login, simply create two accounts for your friend and yourself

Desired features

• Chat / status updates ✓ - using any chat plugin, I would recommend WpChats
• Create/share posts (text, audio, video, image, file) ✓ - This is built into WordPress itself, you can comment on any post
• Create a text document that can be edited by both. ✓ - you could do this with editing posts, WordPress has a built in revisions function that shows what is different between each one using color-coded text. You could also comment about each revision as well.
• Manage a shared to-do list. ✓ - Can be done using a plugin called Cleverness To-Do List. It can create shared and private to do lists with category support
• Add events/dates, maybe with a simple calendar ✓ - Can be done using a calendar plugin, I would recommend the plugin The Events Calendar

WordPress is a very powerful system, any other functionality you may need will most likely be able to be accomplished through plugins.

Answer 3

If you are ready to program a little and play around with javascript, there is a meteor which has an app called rocket.chat

Due to meteor structure, you could implement those by checking if there are any node libs who would give you the other features you would need.

https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=calendar

but again only if you are really looking forward to the program else I would go with an easier way.

Bests