Postcards

Overview

This application was created just for you to take a chance to send someone a thoughtful SMS or a MMS picture to remind them just how awesome they are.

Reading this will prepare you to install and start your brand new Postcards application and get on the road to brightening someone's day.

postcards.png

Things you will need

  • A Skyetel phone and SMS/MMS account. If you don't have one, visit www.skyetel.com and try it.
    • A Skyetel phone number with SMS/MMS feature enabled
    • Inside your Skyetel account retrieve your API SID and Secret to send messages
  • Super user access to a Linux-based server that does not already host a website
    • This works best on CentOS 7 and newer, but should also work on most Debian-based servers
    • Windows servers are not currently supported
  • A public domain name like myserver.example.com that points to your server
  • Your server should have at least 2GB of RAM, and we recommend 4GB if possible. 

Start installing

  1. Install this application onto your server as the super user
mkdir -p /opt/postcards
curl https://bitbucket.org/skyetel/postcards-installer/get/master.tar.gz | tar xvz --strip 1 -C /opt/postcards
  1. Start the configuration, and build process
cd /opt/postcards
./run.sh
  1. Enter your configuration
Enter your public DNS name (ex: talk.example.com): myserver.example.com
Enter an email where you can be reached (ex: me@example.com): me@myserver.example.com
Enter a password to protect your administrator account: DontUseThisPassword1
Enter a name for your app: Postcards
Enter a URL for your app logo (https only): https://mycoolwebsite.com/myawesomelogo.png
Enter your login.skyetel.com API SID: XXXXXXXXXXX
Enter your login.skyetel.com API Secret: XXXXXXXXXX

Your brand new application will need a few minutes to build and start for the very first time. During that time it will setup the application with all your settings and will finally report back to you when it is completed with the following message:

In a few moments vist https://myserver.example.com/backend/admin in your browser

Username: admin
Password: DontUseThisPassword1

----------------

Setup your Skyetel SMS & MMS setting on your selected phonenumbers as follows: 

Forward:  Callback URL
URL:      https://myserver.example.com/backend/api/in?key=fa32f9ec93ca356
Method:   POST

Setting up your Users and Phone Numbers

  1. Visit the Skyetel dashboard https://login.skyetel.com and update your Skyetel Phone Number with the newly created Callback URL.
  2. Visit your new Administrator console https://myserver.example.com/backend/admin and login with "admin" user and your administrator password.
  3. Create a new user with an email address, display name, and password.
  4. Create a phone number record that matches your Skyetel SMS/MMS enabled Phone Number
  5. Assign your phone number to a user

Use the Postcards user interface to make someone's day!

  1. Login to your Postcards user interface by visiting your website https://myserver.example.com with a user email address and password setup by the Postcards Administrator
  2. Send an SMS or picture MMS to your favorite contact Phone Number

Minor Version Updates

Re-Install this application onto your server as the super user in the root directory

curl https://bitbucket.org/skyetel/postcards-installer/get/master.tar.gz | tar xvz --strip 1 -C /opt/postcards --overwrite

Start the configuration, and build process

cd /opt/postcards
./run.sh

Enter your configuration (hit enter to use previous values)

Would you like to reconfigure (Y/N)? y

Restart your application

Would you like to restart it (Y/N)? y

Postcards Support

Postcards is offered as an open source, free project and we think you will love it. However, Skyetel Support has not been trained extensively on Postcards and cannot offer support for Postcards related issues. If you have technical issues with Postcards or would like to submit a bug report or feature request, please visit this link.

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