5 Laconica 0.8.0 ("Shiny Happy People")
8 This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
9 platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
10 options you can set, warnings, tips, and general info for
11 administrators. Information on using Laconica can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 Laconica (pronounced "luh-KAWN-ih-kuh") is a Free and Open Source
18 microblogging platform. It helps people in a community, company or
19 group to exchange short (140 character) messages over the Web. Users
20 can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or
21 colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites
22 like Twitter, Jaiku and Plurk.
24 With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
25 instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
26 desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
28 Laconica supports an open standard called OpenMicroBlogging
29 <http://openmicroblogging.org/> that lets users on different Web sites
30 or in different companies subscribe to each others' notices. It
31 enables a distributed social network spread all across the Web.
33 Laconica was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
34 Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
35 too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
36 more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
38 http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
43 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
44 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
45 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
46 License, or (at your option) any later version.
48 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
49 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
50 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
51 Affero General Public License for more details.
53 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
54 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
55 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
57 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
58 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
59 you make modifications to the Laconica source code on your server,
60 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
61 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
62 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
63 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL LACONICA*.
65 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
66 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
67 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
68 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
74 This is a major feature release since version 0.7.4, released May 31
75 2009. Notable changes this version:
77 - Support for a hosted service (status network). Multiple sites can
78 share the same codebase but use different databases.
79 - OEmbed. Links to pages that support OEmbed (http://www.oembed.com/)
80 become popup links, and the media are shown in a special lightbox.
81 - File attachments. Users can attach files of the size and type approved
82 by an administrator, and a shortened link will be included in the
84 - Related notices are organized into conversations, with each reply a
85 branch in a tree. Conversations have pages and are linked to from each
86 notice in the conversation.
87 - User designs. Users can specify colours and backgrounds
88 for their profile pages and other "personal" pages.
89 - Group designs. Group administrators can specify similar designs for
90 group profiles and related pages.
91 - Site designs. Site authors can specify a design (background and
93 - New themes. Five new themes are added to the base release; these show
94 off the flexibility of Laconica's theming system.
95 - Statistics. Public sites will periodically send usage statistics,
96 configuration options, and dependency information to Laconica dev site.
97 This will help us understand how the software is used and plan future
98 versions of the software.
99 - Additional hooks. The hooks and plugins system introduced in 0.7.x was
100 expanded with additional points of access.
101 - Facebook Connect. A new plugin allows logging in with Facebook Connect
102 (http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php).
103 - A session handler. A new optional session handler class to manage PHP
104 sessions reliably and quickly for large sites.
105 - STOMP queuing. Queue management for offline daemons has been
106 abstracted with three concrete instances. A new interface that should
107 work with STOMP servers like ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ is available, which
108 should make things scale better.
109 - Group block. Group admins can block users from joining or posting to
111 - Group aliases. Groups can be referred to with aliases, additional
112 names. For example, "!yul" and "!montreal" can be the same group.
113 - Bidirectional Twitter bridge. Users can read the tweets their Twitter
114 friends post on Twitter.
115 - Adaptation of WordPress.com Terms of Service (http://en.wordpress.com/tos/)
116 as default TOS for Laconica sites.
117 - Better command-line handling for scripts, including standard options
118 and ability to set hostname and path from the command line.
119 - An experimental plugin to use Meteor (http://www.meteorserver.org/)
120 for "real-time" updates.
121 - A new framework for "real-time" updates, making it easier to develop
122 plugins for different browser-based update modes.
123 - RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds for groups.
124 - RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds for tags.
125 - Attachments can be sent by email.
126 - Attachments are encoded as enclosures in RSS 2.0 and Atom.
127 - Notices with attachments display in Facebook as media inline.
129 - Many, many bug fixes.
134 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
137 - PHP 5.2.x. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
138 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
140 - MySQL 5.x. The Laconica database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
141 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
142 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
143 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
144 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
145 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
146 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
148 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
150 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
151 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
152 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
153 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
154 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
155 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
157 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
159 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
160 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
161 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
162 server to store the data in.
163 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
164 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
165 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
166 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
167 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
169 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
170 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
171 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
172 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
177 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
178 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
179 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
180 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
181 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
182 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
184 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
185 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
186 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
187 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
188 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
189 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
190 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
191 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
192 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
193 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
194 but won't work with OpenID.
195 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
196 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
197 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
198 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
199 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
200 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
201 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
202 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
203 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
204 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
205 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
206 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
207 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
208 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
209 version may render your Laconica site unable to send or receive XMPP
211 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
212 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
213 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
214 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
215 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
216 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
218 A design goal of Laconica is that the basic Web functionality should
219 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
220 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
221 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
222 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
223 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
228 Installing the basic Laconica Web component is relatively easy,
229 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
231 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
232 command like this will work:
234 tar zxf laconica-0.8.0.tar.gz
236 ...which will make a laconica-0.8.0 subdirectory in your current
237 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
238 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
239 files to the server.)
241 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
242 directory. Usually something like this will work:
244 mv laconica-0.8.0 /var/www/mublog
246 This will make your Laconica instance available in the mublog path of
247 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
248 "laconica" might also be good path names. If you know how to
249 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
250 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
252 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
254 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
256 On some systems, this will probably work:
258 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
259 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
261 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
262 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
263 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
265 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
266 writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
268 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
270 You can also make the avatar directory writeable by the Web server
271 group, as noted above.
273 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
276 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create laconica
278 Note that Laconica must have its own database; you can't share the
279 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
282 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
283 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
284 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
286 6. Create a new database account that Laconica will use to access the
287 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
290 GRANT ALL on laconica.*
291 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
292 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
294 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
295 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
298 7. In a browser, navigate to the Laconica install script; something like:
300 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
302 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
303 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
304 almost-empty database.
306 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
307 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
308 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
309 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
310 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
311 URLs are stored in the database.
316 By default, Laconica will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
317 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
320 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
322 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
325 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
327 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
329 http://example.org/mublog/fred
331 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
332 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
333 mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
336 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your Laconica
337 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
338 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
339 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
340 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
341 just leaving the .htaccess file.
343 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
344 to your Laconica installation on your server. Typically this will
345 be the path to your Laconica directory relative to your Web root.
347 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
349 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
351 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
354 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
356 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
362 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
363 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
364 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
365 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
366 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
368 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
369 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
371 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
372 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
373 indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
374 every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
375 to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
380 Laconica supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
381 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
382 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
383 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
384 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
385 configuration is essentially email configuration.
387 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
388 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
389 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
390 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
392 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
393 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
395 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your Laconica database. This will
398 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" laconica < db/carrier.sql
400 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
401 that support email SMS gateways.
403 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
405 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
407 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
408 of a filter than a daemon.
410 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
412 *: /path/to/laconica/scripts/maildaemon.php
414 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
415 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
419 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
422 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
424 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
426 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
427 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
428 server, you'll need to have a full installation of Laconica, a working
429 config.php, and access to the Laconica database from the mail server.
434 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
435 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
436 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
437 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
440 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
441 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
442 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
444 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
445 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
446 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
447 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
449 Laconica will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
450 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
451 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
453 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
454 configuration section.
456 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
457 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
458 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
459 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
460 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
461 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
463 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
464 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
465 work around this bug in Laconica; current recommendation is to move
466 off of amd64 to another server.
471 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
472 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
473 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
475 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
476 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
478 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
480 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
481 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
482 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
483 consider setting up queues and daemons.
488 Some activities that Laconica needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
489 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
490 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
491 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
492 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
493 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
494 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
496 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
497 installed on whatever server you use.
499 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install Laconica
500 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
501 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
502 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
504 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
505 server!), set the following variable:
507 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
509 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
510 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
511 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
512 They're not created automatically.
514 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
515 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
516 Laconica dir, "." should suffice.
518 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
520 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
521 them as notices in the database.
522 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
523 registered users who should receive them.
524 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
525 public feed listeners.
526 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
527 recipients on foreign servers.
528 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
530 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
532 * twitterqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Twitter for user
533 who have opted to set up Twitter bridging.
534 * facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
535 of the built-in Facebook application.
537 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
538 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
539 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
540 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
541 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
542 to check their status and keep them running.
544 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
545 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
548 With version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
549 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
550 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
551 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
553 Twitter Friends Syncing
554 -----------------------
556 As of Laconica 0.6.3, users may set a flag in their settings ("Subscribe
557 to my Twitter friends here" under the Twitter tab) to have Laconica
558 attempt to locate and subscribe to "friends" (people they "follow") on
559 Twitter who also have accounts on your Laconica system, and who have
560 previously set up a link for automatically posting notices to Twitter.
562 Optionally, there is a script (./scripts/synctwitterfriends.php), meant
563 to be run periodically from a job scheduler (e.g.: cron under Unix), to
564 look for new additions to users' friends lists. Note that the friends
565 syncing only subscribes users to each other, it does not unsubscribe
566 users when they stop following each other on Twitter.
570 # Update Twitter friends subscriptions every half hour
571 0,30 * * * * /path/to/php /path/to/laconica/scripts/synctwitterfriends.php>&/dev/null
573 Built-in Facebook Application
574 -----------------------------
576 Laconica's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
577 update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
578 their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
579 timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
580 is built into Laconica and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
581 status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
582 facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
585 Quick setup instructions*:
587 Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
589 http://www.facebook.com/developers/
591 Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
592 Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
593 key and secret, e.g.:
595 # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
596 $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
597 $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
599 In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
601 - Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
602 - Post-Remove URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
603 - Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
604 - Canvas URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
606 (Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
607 to your Laconica installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
608 Facebook application you created.)
610 Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
611 In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
612 "Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
613 Everything else can be left with default values.
615 *For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
618 http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
623 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
624 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
625 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
628 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. Laconica creates a number of
629 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
630 put these in a sub-directory of your Laconica directory to avoid
631 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
632 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
633 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
634 available through HTTP.
636 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
638 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
640 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
641 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
642 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
643 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
644 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
646 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
647 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
648 following to your robots.txt file:
650 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
652 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
653 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
654 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
660 There are two themes shipped with this version of Laconica: "identica",
661 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
662 basis for other sites.
664 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
665 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
666 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
667 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
669 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
670 the config.php file. See below for details.
672 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
673 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
676 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
677 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
679 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
681 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
682 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
683 users who don't upload their own.
684 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
685 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
686 listing on profile pages.
688 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
691 NOTE: the HTML generated by Laconica changed *radically* between
692 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
693 modification to use the new output format.
698 Translations in Laconica use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
699 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
700 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
701 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
703 Contributions of translation information to Laconica are very easy:
704 you can use the Web interface at http://laconi.ca/pootle/ to add one
705 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
706 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
711 There is no built-in system for doing backups in Laconica. You can make
712 backups of a working Laconica system by backing up the database and
713 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
714 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
719 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
720 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
721 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
722 management, but host it on a public server.
724 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
725 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
726 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
727 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
728 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
729 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
730 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
731 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
736 IMPORTANT NOTE: Laconica 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
737 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
738 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
739 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
740 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
743 If you've been using Laconica 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
744 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
745 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
746 upgrade procedure in Laconica 0.8.0. Try these step-by-step
747 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
749 0. Download Laconica and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
751 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
752 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
753 backup. You have been warned.
754 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
755 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
757 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
758 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
759 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
760 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
761 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
762 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
763 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
764 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
765 final backup of the Web directory and database.
766 6. Move your Laconica directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
767 7. Unpack your Laconica 0.8.0 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
768 wherever your code used to be.
769 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
770 directory to your new directory.
771 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
772 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
773 10. Rebuild the database. NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
774 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
775 do it without a known-good backup!
777 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
780 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
782 Otherwise, go to your Laconica directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
783 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
785 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/laconica.sql
787 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
788 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
789 that's _not_ the user Laconica runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
790 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
791 database. Make sure you have a backup.
792 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
793 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
794 script before running it.
795 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
796 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
797 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
798 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
799 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
801 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
802 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
803 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
806 NOTE: the database definition file, stoica.ini, has been renamed to
807 laconica.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
808 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
814 Before version 0.6.2, the page showing all notices from people the
815 user is subscribed to ("so-and-so with friends") was calculated at run
816 time. Starting with 0.6.2, we have a new data structure for holding a
817 user's "notice inbox". (Note: distinct from the "message inbox", which
818 is the "inbox" tab in the UI. The notice inbox appears under the
821 Notices are added to the inbox when they're created. This speeds up
822 the query considerably, and also allows us the opportunity, in the
823 future, to add different kind of notices to an inbox -- like @-replies
824 or subscriptions to search terms or hashtags.
826 Notice inboxes are enabled by default for new installations. If you
827 are upgrading an existing site, this means that your users will see
828 empty "Personal" pages. The following steps will help you fix the
831 0. $config['inboxes']['enabled'] can be set to one of three values. If
832 you set it to 'false', the site will work as before. Support for this
833 will probably be dropped in future versions.
834 1. Setting the flag to 'transitional' means that you're in transition.
835 In this mode, the code will run the "new query" or the "old query"
836 based on whether the user's inbox has been updated.
837 2. After setting the flag to "transitional", you can run the
838 fixup_inboxes.php script to create the inboxes. You may want to set
839 the memory limit high. You can re-run it without ill effect.
840 3. When fixup_inboxes is finished, you can set the enabled flag to
843 NOTE: we will drop support for non-inboxed sites in the 0.9.x version
844 of Laconica. It's time to switch now!
849 Laconica 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
850 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
851 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
852 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
855 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
856 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
857 convert your DB to the new format.
858 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
859 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
860 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
861 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
862 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
863 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
864 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
866 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
867 new notices will be stored correctly.
869 Configuration options
870 =====================
872 The main configuration file for Laconica (excepting configurations for
873 dependency software) is config.php in your Laconica directory. If you
874 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
875 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
876 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
878 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
879 /etc/laconica/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
880 will be included in this order:
882 * /etc/laconica/laconica.php - server-wide config
883 * /etc/laconica/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
884 * /etc/laconica/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
885 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
887 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
888 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
891 $config['section']['option'] = value;
893 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
899 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
901 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
902 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
903 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
905 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
906 section above). Default is false.
907 logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
908 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
910 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
911 hard errors. Default false.
912 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
913 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
914 don't need to use this.
915 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
916 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
917 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
919 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
921 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
922 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
923 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
924 except as the basis for your own.
925 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
926 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
927 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
928 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
929 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
930 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
931 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
932 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
933 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
934 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
935 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
936 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
937 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
938 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
939 was invited by an existing user.
940 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
941 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
942 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
943 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
945 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
946 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
947 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
949 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
950 the logo in the theme, if any.
951 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
952 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
953 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
954 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
955 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
956 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
957 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
958 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
959 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
960 preferably other cookies as well.
961 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
962 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
964 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
965 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
971 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
972 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
973 set are listed below for clarity.
975 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your Laconica database. This is
976 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
977 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
978 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
979 'password' is the password, and etc.
980 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'laconica', you'll need
981 to set this to point to the location of the
982 laconica.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
983 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
984 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
985 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
986 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
987 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
988 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
989 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
991 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
992 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
993 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
994 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
995 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
996 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
997 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
998 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
999 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
1000 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
1001 to include it in this array, too.
1002 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
1003 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
1004 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
1010 By default, Laconica sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
1011 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
1013 appname: The name that Laconica uses to log messages. By default it's
1014 "laconica", but if you have more than one installation on the
1015 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
1016 you can track log messages more easily.
1017 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
1018 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
1019 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
1025 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
1026 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
1027 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
1029 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
1030 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
1031 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
1032 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
1033 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
1034 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
1035 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
1037 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
1038 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
1039 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1041 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1046 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
1047 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1048 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1049 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1051 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1052 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1053 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1058 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1059 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1061 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1062 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1063 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1064 them in an associative array.
1069 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1071 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1072 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1073 used by Laconica (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1074 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1075 installed in a subdirectory of Laconica or if you just
1076 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1077 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1078 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1079 interesting people, or whatever.
1084 For configuring avatar access.
1086 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1087 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1088 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1089 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1090 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1091 be included with the avatar server, too.
1092 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1093 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1094 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1095 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1096 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1097 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1098 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1104 For configuring the public stream.
1106 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1107 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1108 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1109 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1110 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1111 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1112 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1113 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1118 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1119 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1120 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1121 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1122 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1123 subdirectory of the install directory.
1124 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1125 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1126 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1127 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1128 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1133 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1135 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1136 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1137 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1138 shouldn't need to change.
1139 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1140 from 'user'@'server'.
1141 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1142 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1143 password: password for the user account.
1144 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1145 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1146 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1147 case with your server.
1148 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between Laconica and the
1149 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1150 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1151 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1153 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1154 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1155 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1156 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1157 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1158 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1163 For configuring invites.
1165 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1170 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1172 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1173 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1174 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1179 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1181 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1182 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1183 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1188 For daemon processes.
1190 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1191 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1192 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1193 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1194 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1195 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1197 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1198 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1203 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1204 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1206 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1207 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1208 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1209 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1210 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1211 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1212 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1213 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1214 Laconica site using your memcached server.
1215 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1220 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1221 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1222 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1224 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1225 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1226 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1231 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1233 source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
1234 to 'laconica', but if you request your own source name from
1235 Twitter <http://twitter.com/help/request_source>, you can use
1236 that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
1238 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1245 enabled: A three-valued flag for whether to use notice inboxes (see
1246 upgrading info above for notes about this change). Can be
1247 'false', 'true', or '"transitional"'.
1252 For notice-posting throttles.
1254 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1255 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1256 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1257 from a user every hour.
1258 timespan: see 'count'.
1265 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1266 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1267 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1268 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1273 Options with new users.
1275 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1276 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1277 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1278 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1279 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1280 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1281 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1282 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1284 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1285 be created before the configuration is updated.
1290 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1291 local installation to a stats server on the laconi.ca Web site. This
1292 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1293 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1294 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1295 helps Laconica developers take your needs into account when updating
1298 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1299 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1300 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1301 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1302 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1303 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1304 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1306 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to Laconica developers'
1307 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1308 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1309 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1310 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1316 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1317 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1318 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1320 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1323 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1324 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1325 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1327 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1328 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1329 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1330 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1331 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1333 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1334 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1335 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1336 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1338 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1339 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1340 is smaller than file_quota.
1341 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1342 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1343 not exceed the user_quota.
1344 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1345 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1346 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1347 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1348 should be writeable by the Web user.
1349 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1350 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1351 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1352 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1353 main path + '/file/'.
1354 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1355 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1361 Options for group functionality.
1363 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1364 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1369 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1371 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1376 Some stuff for search.
1378 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1379 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1380 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1381 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1382 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1383 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1390 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1391 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1392 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1393 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1394 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1395 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1400 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1403 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1404 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1405 null; same as site server.
1406 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1407 subdir of install dir.
1408 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1409 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1414 A bi-direction bridge to Twitter (http://twitter.com/).
1416 enabled: default false. If true, will show user's Twitter friends'
1417 notices in their inbox and faves pages, only to the user. You
1418 must also run the twitterstatusfetcher.php script.
1423 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1424 notify third-party servers of updates.
1426 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1427 array (no notification).
1432 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1433 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1435 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1436 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1437 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1438 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1439 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1440 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1441 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1446 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, Laconica has supported a simple but
1447 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1448 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1449 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1450 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1452 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1453 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1455 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1457 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1461 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1463 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1464 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1465 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1467 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1468 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1469 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1470 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1471 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1472 class's constructor).
1474 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1475 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1477 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1478 'param2' => 'value2'));
1480 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1481 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1482 plugins that ship with Laconica) or in the local/ directory (for
1483 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1486 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1491 The primary output for Laconica is syslog, unless you configured a
1492 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1493 getting weird behaviour from Laconica.
1495 If you're tracking the unstable version of Laconica in the git
1496 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1497 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1498 conflicts in your code.
1500 If you upgraded to Laconica 0.7.4 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
1501 section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty, read the
1502 "Notice inboxes" section above.
1507 These are some myths you may see on the Web about Laconica.
1508 Documentation from the core team about Laconica has been pretty
1509 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1512 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1513 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1514 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1515 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1516 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1518 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1519 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1520 used by the running software. It was removed from the Laconica
1521 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1522 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1523 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1524 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1529 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1530 development version of Laconica. To get it, use the git version
1531 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1533 git clone http://laconi.ca/software/laconica.git
1535 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1540 There are several ways to get more information about Laconica.
1542 * There is a mailing list for Laconica developers and admins at
1543 http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
1544 * The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1545 * The Laconica wiki, http://laconi.ca/trac/
1550 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1551 * Laconica's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1552 or ideas for making things better. http://laconi.ca/trac/
1553 * e-mail to evan@identi.ca will usually be read and responded to very
1554 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1559 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1560 Laconi.ca. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@identi.ca know
1561 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1563 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1564 * Zach Copley, Control Yourself, Inc.
1565 * Earle Martin, Control Yourself, Inc.
1566 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1567 * Sarven Capadisli, Control Yourself, Inc.
1568 * Robin Millette, Control Yourself, Inc.
1579 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1583 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1584 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1586 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1590 * Tobias Diekershoff
1599 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1600 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed Laconi.ca,
1601 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what