Set up Dozokit Ideas in five minutes

The steps

1. Click the Deploy to Cloudflare button above.
2. Sign in to Cloudflare, or create your free account.
3. When Cloudflare asks, connect your GitHub account.
4. Leave the suggested names (dozokit-ideas) as they are.
5. In the PASSWORD field, type the password for your admin page: 12 characters or more. Write it down.
6. Click Create and deploy, then wait a minute or two.
7. Open the address Cloudflare shows at the end (something like dozokit-ideas.your-name.workers.dev) and add /admin at the end. Sign in with your password.
8. Click New board, give it a name, and choose Public or Private.
9. Click Copy link and put that link behind an “Ideas” button in your product.

Let your users vote and suggest

On the board’s card, click Settings, then Connect to your product. Click Copy instructions for your developer: it copies the board’s link, its secret and a ready example, to give to your developer or a coding assistant. Your product then makes a link that signs each person in to that board with their name and email when they click Ideas. Click Open as a test person to see the board the way your users will. Keep the instructions private: they hold the board’s secret.

Run the board

Signed in to the admin page, you vote, suggest and comment as the board’s team, and your comments show as Official answer. Open an idea to change its status, or to merge it into another with Merge into…. In the board’s Settings, Look sets its name, public or private, logo, colour, language, and your product’s name and link. Statuses adds, renames, reorders or removes statuses.

Your own address (optional, from version 1.3.0)

In the admin page, open Settings, then Your own address, and say whether you have a domain. Follow the steps (in Cloudflare, add it to the dozokit-ideas Worker’s Domains), then click Check and connect: it is saved only once it reaches your copy. Board links and the developer instructions then use it. The old address keeps working, but people sign in on each address separately, so point your product’s Ideas button at the new one.

Backups

Every Sunday at 03:00 UTC, your boards, ideas, votes and comments are copied to a private storage space in your Cloudflare account, named dozokit-ideas-backups. The last 4 copies are kept. A copy holds each board’s secret, so keep that storage private.

If you forget the password

In Cloudflare, open the Worker, then Settings → Variables and Secrets, and edit PASSWORD. That password works straight away. Signed in, you can also change it in Settings → Change password.

Updating

When a newer version is out, the admin page says so in Settings → Updates. You update on GitHub:

1. On github.com, open dozokit-ideas, the copy Cloudflare made in your name.
2. Click the Actions tab.
3. Click Update Dozokit Ideas in the list on the left.
4. Click Run workflow, then the green Run workflow button.

The first time only: Cloudflare’s Deploy button copies everything except the update button, so add it once. In the admin page, open Settings, then Updates, paste your copy’s GitHub address under Your copy on GitHub, and click Add the update button. GitHub opens the file ready to save: click Commit changes. The button installs a release only once it checks the release is signed by Dozokit, so an update can only come from Dozokit.

A couple of minutes later, Cloudflare has put the new version online by itself. Your boards, ideas and votes stay. What’s new in each version

To tell you about new versions, the admin page asks dozokit.com once a day, sending only its version number and a random id made for your copy. Untick Check for new versions in Settings → Updates and nothing is sent.