Please see the image file for what I have in mind here. http://oi62.tinypic.com/10x80ok.jpg
I hope this tool, when completed, can help reduce the barrier for people seeking to set up hidden services.
I anticipate this tool being able to connect to a running tor and write to that tor's torrc file. This tool will be able to connect to the network through a proxy, a standard bridge, or a pluggable transport. It will be able to send a HUP signal to tor. It will be able to read from tor's hidden service directory and tor's log.
This mockup was made with wxPython 2.8. This is partially because I'm somewhat familiar with wxWidgets already, and partially because I thought incorporating stem might be a good plan.
Here are some pitfalls and shortcomings:
* * * By it's current design, this tool has less functionality than Vidalia. As a security property, there's no interface for setting up a relay. This tool's primary focus will be running a hidden service.
By it's current design, this tool does not ship with any hosting software. The tool will inform the user that she still needs to run XAMPP or ApacheGUI to host a web page.
There's no interface for setting up or designing a blog, only for hosting one that's already designed.
I'm still investigating Python's multithreading capabilities so that the Tor log can be continuously read and reported. If I discovered that I didn't need a controller library at all, I'd consider using wxGo instead of wxPython (although writing in Go would be a new experience for me and would take longer).
* * *
Perhaps some or all of these shortcomings could be overcome given time and community feedback. I'm still not entirely sure where to take this project, if anywhere.
Before I get much further with this idea, is this project worth pursuing at all? Does this look like something that could benefit Tor users, given that Vidalia still works for many people? Do you think this tool has potential to function as a point-click-publish hidden services software?