Blog
Notes from the maintainer
Practical writing on winter service documentation, self-hosting, and the design decisions inside Wintertrace. No marketing posts. No algorithm-chasing. Things that someone running winter service might actually want to read.
No articles yet — by design
Wintertrace is being built in the open. Writing well takes time, and we would rather ship the software and the long-form content properly than fill this page with placeholder posts.
The first articles land alongside the first stable release. Until then, the feature pages, the FAQ, and the changelog carry the weight.
Topics in the pipeline
The early articles are already mapped out. They cover the practical questions operators tend to ask once they start looking under the hood.
-
Setting up OwnTracks for winter service
A practical walkthrough — phone, QR code, the first driver shift.
-
What an audit-trailed service proof actually contains
Fields, signatures, how the GPS-as-SVG holds up next to a raster image.
-
Self-hosting Wintertrace on a 5-euro shared host
A walkthrough of a real install on a low-end PHP host.
-
Why we sign updates with Ed25519
A short explanation of the threat model and what the signature does not protect against.
-
Anonymisation and retention in winter service data
GPS tracks, customer photos, driver identifiers — what to keep, what to drop, when.
Topic suggestions welcome
If there is a question you would want answered properly — about documentation, evidence quality, self-hosting, or anything adjacent — let us know. The early articles will follow the actual questions operators are asking.