Instructions are unclear for less-experienced users about server HOT 4 CLOSED

You did everything right, the only thing missing is that "0.0.0.0:8000" means that you can access the server on any address that leads to this computer. So from the same computer you can use: localhost:8000, from another computer, you'd need to use your computer's IP address.

I understand where you are coming from with the instructions being raw and require a lot of prior knowledge - because it's true. There is A LOT to cover when it comes to setting up your own server, and as you briefly mentioned, there are also a lot of alternatives. For example nginx vs Apache. Trying to cover all of them is just infeasible, and anyhow, even if we do manage, there are a lot of implications for every decision you make. The surface area is just too large.
Another such example: even if you got everything working, you'd probably need to set up port forwarding so your server can be accessed from the outside internet. Same with opening firewall ports. There really is just too much, and your setup (of having the server run on Windows) is rather unique which doesn't help. :)

As for packages: we wish, though it's a lot of work as you said and for not a lot of benefit. Only recently we added packages for some popular Linux distros and even that was a community contribution.

With that being said, if you see an easy way to improve it (now that you got it working), please open a PR! We would love to improve!

I'm closing this as I assume it works (the only thing you have missing is knowing which IP to connect to). Please reopen if it doesn't.

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Thanks for the fast response. I should have mentioned, in addition to trying 0.0.0.0:8000 in the browser, I did also already try localhost:8000 and [my local IP]:8000, but both of those returned "Bad Request (400)" errors (that was why I thought I was missing a step in regards to nginx, port-forwarding, etc). However, when I navigated to localhost:8000, I did notice that my console output the following:
[date & time] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 400 26

And navigating to [my local IP]:8000 output:
[date & time] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 400 26
[date & time] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 400 26

Unfortunately, I don't know what that means. I'm guessing I'm successfully connecting to the port, but there's something wrong with my install? Not sure how to troubleshoot further though.

(Btw, I totally understand why making a Win package isn't worth the effort. As you can tell, I'm not the most experienced programmer, but I'm trying to run etesync as a pet project to learn from the process. Ideally, I would have a dedicated Linux device to host on, but since a Windows desktop is all I have at the moment, that's what I'm trying to make work.)

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Update: After doing a bit of research into the 400 error I found this article: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19875789/django-gives-bad-request-400-when-debug-false and realized I had configured allowed_host1 wrong in etesync-server.ini. Now when I navigate to localhost:8000 I get a message reading: "It works!" and instructions to read the readme. I assume that once I forward the port in my router and assign a URL to it, I should be able to plug that into the etesync app and connect.

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Yes, that is correct, it looks like it works. :)
Just to make sure: don't forget to use nginx/apache in front of the server and in general follow the django security best practices (there's a link from the readme).

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