Nextcloud is a file synchronization service similar to Dropbox or Google Drive. A daemon sits on your desktop or your phone and watches a directory (or directories) you specify, maintaining a mirror image of that directory on Moonbeam.town's server. This basic principle is expanded upon to provide other kinds of synchronization, and plugins installed server-side provide additional functionality.

Nextcloud's base functionality allows you to synchronize files from your computer and/or phone to the server, as well as share those files with others via download links. Via plugins, Moonbeam.town's Nextcloud service allows you to synchronize calendar, contacts, WebDAV apps, to-do lists, and bookmarks. You can also create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly from the web interface.

Every citizen of Moonbeam.town has 10GB of space available for file storage and synchronization.

You can access the Nextcloud web interface at https://cloud.moonbeam.town/nextcloud, or by clicking “Nextcloud” on your Moonbeam.town control panel. From there, you can see your files, create new documents, access your contacts and calendar, manage your tasks, and make use of whatever other plugins are available to you. Your Nextcloud credentials are the same as your Moonbeam.town credentials, and if you are already logged in at Moonbeam.town you shouldn't be prompted to re-enter those credentials.

In order to sync files between the cloud and your computer, you'll use the Nextcloud desktop client appropriate to your operating system. This can be downloaded from https://nextcloud.com/install/#install-clients or from the repos for your OS. (I'd recommend against using the AppImage but that's mostly because I don't especially like them – it should be fine to use.) Once you have that installed, start it up and do the following:

1. Click “Log in to your Nextcloud instance”
2. Enter “https://cloud.moonbeam.town” as the server and click Login
3. You'll be prompted to log in in your web browser. If you're already logged in to Moonbeam.town on your browser you'll just be prompted to authorize the app, otherwise you'll log in with your Moonbeam.town credentials
4. Select the folder you'd like to synchronize; the default is $HOMEDIR/Nextcloud but you can change it to anything including a folder that already has stuff in it
5. You can leave all the other options as they are, or you can tweak them at your discretion.

After you've finished, the syncing process should begin. Anything you do to your local folder will be automatically synchronized to the Moonbeam.town server as well as to any other clients you link to this account.

Many services (such as Contacts and Calendar) can be synced to Nextcloud via a protocol called “WebDAV” and/or “CalDAV.” This doesn't work out-of-box; you need a DAV client on your mobile device in order to enable this synchronization. The community standard for Android seems to be DAVx5, which can be found both on F-Droid and the Google Play store. Once again, I'm not really sure how it works with iOS.

1. Download DAVx5 and install it
2. Open the client and click through to the “DAVx5” screen, then click the + button to add a WebDAV account
3. Select “Login with URL and user name”
4. The “Base URL” is https://cloud.moonbeam.town
5. Your “User name” and “Password” are the same as your Moonbeam.town logins
6. Click “Login” and you'll be brought back to the “DAVx5” screen, where you should see your new account displayed.

Once this is set up you can configure your phone to automatically synchronize with your calendar, contacts, tasks, and other services on Moonbeam.town. See the steps below for individual services.

You can sync any calendar you have created on Moonbeam.town with your phone's calendar app, and even add events from your phone to your Moonbeam.town calendars. As far as I can tell you can't automatically create or import calendars you have created on your phone with Nextcloud, but we'll touch on that later.

Here are the steps to sync your calendars with the “Simple Calendar Pro” calendar app, available on F-droid or the Play store (for a small cost). Other calendar apps should be similar but specific steps may vary.

1. Open DAVx5 and tap on your Moonbeam.town account
2. Select the “CALDAV” tab
3. Enable the calendars you'd like to sync. If the calendars don't show up, drag down to refresh.
4. Open Simple Calendar and go to Settings
5. Enable “CalDAV sync” and click “Manage synced calendars”
6. Enable the calendars you'd like to sync. If they aren't showing up, back out to your calendar view and select “Refresh CalDAV calendars”

Once this is done, events you create through the web interface should show up in your phone's calendar, and events you create via your phone's calendar should show up on the web interface.

If you've already created a calendar that you'd like to start syncing with the web, do the following:

1. From your calendar view, select “Export events to an .ics file” from the drop-down
2. Select the calendar(s) you'd like to export
3. Select a location and save the file

You should be able to import this to your Nextcloud but that doesn't seem to be working. Troubleshooting is underway.