5 StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand")
8 This is the README file for StatusNet, 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 StatusNet can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 StatusNet is a Free and Open Source microblogging platform. It helps
18 people in a community, company or group to exchange short (140
19 characters, by default) messages over the Web. Users can choose which
20 people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues'
21 status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter,
22 Google Buzz, or Yammer.
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 StatusNet supports an open standard called OStatus
29 <http://ostatus.org/> that lets users in different networks follow
30 each other. It enables a distributed social network spread all across
33 StatusNet 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
40 StatusNet, Inc. <http://status.net/> also offers this software as a
41 Web service, requiring no installation on your part. The software run
42 on status.net is identical to the software available for download, so
43 you can move back and forth between a hosted version or a version
44 installed on your own servers.
49 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
50 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
51 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
52 License, or (at your option) any later version.
54 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
55 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
56 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
57 Affero General Public License for more details.
59 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
60 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
61 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
63 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
64 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
65 you make modifications to the StatusNet source code on your server,
66 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
67 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
68 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
69 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL STATUSNET*.
71 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
72 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
73 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
74 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
80 This is a major feature release since version 0.8.3, released Feb 1
81 2010. It is the final release version of 0.9.0, replacing any beta
84 Notable changes this version:
86 - Support for the new distributed status update standard OStatus
87 <http://ostatus.org>, based on PubSubHubbub, Salmon, Webfinger,
89 - Support for location using the Geolocation API. Notices are (optionally)
90 marked with lat-long information with geo microformats, and can be shown
92 - No fixed content size. Notice size is configurable, from 1 to
93 unlimited number of characters. Default is still 140!
94 - An authorization framework, allowing different levels of users.
95 - A Web-based administration panel.
96 - A moderation system that lets site moderators sandbox, silence,
97 or delete uncooperative users.
98 - A flag system that lets users flag profiles for moderator review.
99 - Support for OAuth <http://oauth.net> authentication in the Twitter
101 - User roles system that lets the owner of the site to assign
102 administrator and moderator roles to other users.
103 - A pluggable authentication system.
104 - An authentication plugin for LDAP servers.
105 - Many features that were core in 0.8.x are now plugins, such
106 as OpenID, Twitter integration, Facebook integration
107 - A much-improved offline processing system
108 - In-browser "realtime" updates using a number of realtime
109 servers (Meteor, Orbited, Cometd)
110 - A plugin to provide an interface optimized for mobile browsers
111 - Support for Facebook Connect
112 - Support for logging in with a Twitter account
113 - Vastly improved translation with additional languages and
114 translation in plugins
115 - Support for all-SSL instances
116 - Core support for "repeats" (like Twitter's "retweets")
117 - Pluggable caching system, with plugins for Memcached,
118 APC, XCache, and a disk-based cache
119 - Plugin to support RSSCloud
120 - A framework for adding advertisements to a public site,
121 and plugins for Google AdSense and OpenX server
122 - Plugins to throttle excessive subscriptions and registrations.
123 - A plugin to blacklist particular URLs or nicknames.
125 There are also literally thousands of bugs fixed and minor features
126 added. A full changelog is available at http://status.net/wiki/StatusNet_0.9.0.
128 Under the covers, the software has a vastly improved plugin and
129 extension mechanism that makes writing powerful and flexible additions
130 to the core functionality much easier.
135 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
138 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
139 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
141 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
142 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
143 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
144 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
145 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
146 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
147 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
149 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
151 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
152 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
153 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
154 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
155 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
156 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
158 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
160 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
161 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
162 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
163 server to store the data in.
164 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
165 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
166 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
167 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
168 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
169 - bcmath or gmp. For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus). Needed
170 if you have OStatus configured.
172 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
173 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
174 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
175 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
180 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
181 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
182 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
183 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
184 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
185 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
187 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
188 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
189 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
190 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
191 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
192 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
193 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
194 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
195 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
196 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
197 but won't work with OpenID.
198 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
199 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
200 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
201 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
202 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
203 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
204 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
205 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
206 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
207 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
208 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
209 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
210 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
211 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
212 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
214 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
215 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
216 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
217 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
218 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
219 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
220 - libomb. a library for implementing OpenMicroBlogging 0.1, the
221 predecessor to OStatus.
222 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
224 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
225 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
226 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
227 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
228 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
229 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
234 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
235 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
237 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
238 command like this will work:
240 tar zxf statusnet-0.9.0.tar.gz
242 ...which will make a statusnet-0.9.0 subdirectory in your current
243 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
244 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
245 files to the server.)
247 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
248 directory. Usually something like this will work:
250 mv statusnet-0.9.0 /var/www/statusnet
252 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the statusnet path of
253 your server, like "http://example.net/statusnet". "microblog" or
254 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
255 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
256 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
258 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
260 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/
262 On some systems, this will probably work:
264 chgrp www-data /var/www/statusnet/
265 chmod g+w /var/www/statusnet/
267 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
268 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
269 a new group like "statusnet" and add the Web server's user to the group.
271 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
272 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
275 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/avatar
276 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/background
277 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/file
279 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
280 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
282 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
285 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
287 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
288 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
291 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
292 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
293 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
295 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
296 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
299 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
300 TO 'statusnetuser'@'localhost'
301 IDENTIFIED BY 'statusnetpassword';
303 You should change 'statusnetuser' and 'statusnetpassword' to your preferred new
304 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
307 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
309 http://yourserver.example.com/statusnet/install.php
311 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
312 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
313 almost-empty database.
315 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
316 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
317 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
318 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
319 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
320 URLs are stored in the database.
325 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
326 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
329 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php/statusnet/fred
331 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
334 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php?p=statusnet/fred
336 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
338 http://example.org/statusnet/fred
340 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
341 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
342 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
345 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
346 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
347 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
348 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
349 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
350 just leaving the .htaccess file.
352 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
353 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
354 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
356 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
358 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
360 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
363 http://example.net/statusnet/main/register
365 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
368 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
369 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
370 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
371 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
372 .htaccess files for more details:
374 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
376 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
378 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
383 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
384 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
386 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
387 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
389 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
390 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
392 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
397 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
398 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
399 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
400 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
401 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
402 configuration is essentially email configuration.
404 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
405 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
406 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
407 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
409 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
410 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
412 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
415 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
417 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
418 that support email SMS gateways.
420 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
422 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
424 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
425 of a filter than a daemon.
427 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
429 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
431 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
432 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
436 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
439 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
441 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
443 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
444 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
445 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
446 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
451 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
452 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
453 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
454 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
457 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
458 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
459 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
461 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
462 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
463 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
464 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
466 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
467 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
468 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
470 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
471 configuration section.
473 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
474 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
475 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
476 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
477 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
478 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
480 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
481 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
482 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
483 off of amd64 to another server.
488 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
489 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
490 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
492 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
493 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
495 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
497 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
498 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
499 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
500 consider setting up queues and daemons.
505 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
506 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
507 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
508 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
509 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
510 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
511 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
513 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
514 installed on whatever server you use.
516 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
517 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
518 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
519 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
521 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
522 server!), set the following variable:
524 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
526 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
527 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
528 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
529 They're not created automatically.
531 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
533 This will run the queue handlers:
535 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
536 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
537 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
538 them as notices in the database; also pulls queued XMPP output from
539 queuedaemon.php to push out to clients.
541 These two daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
542 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
543 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
545 Additional daemons may be also started by this script for certain
546 plugins, such as the Twitter bridge.
548 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
549 to check their status and keep them running.
551 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
552 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
555 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
556 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly
557 recommended for best response time, especially when using XMPP.
559 See the "queues" config section below for how to configure to use STOMP.
560 As of this writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ 5.3.
565 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
566 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
567 basis for other sites.
569 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
570 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
571 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
572 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
574 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
575 the config.php file. See below for details.
577 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
578 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
581 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
582 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
584 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
586 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
587 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
588 users who don't upload their own.
589 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
590 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
591 listing on profile pages.
593 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
596 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
597 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
598 modification to use the new output format.
603 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
604 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
605 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
606 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
608 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
609 you can use the Web interface at TranslateWiki.net to add one
610 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
611 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
613 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
618 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
619 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
620 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
621 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
626 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
627 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
628 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
629 management, but host it on a public server.
631 Total privacy is not guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is
632 all-or-nothing for a site; you can't have some accounts or notices
633 private, and others public. The interaction of private sites
634 with OStatus is undefined.
636 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
637 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
638 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
640 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
642 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
643 insecure way to do this is:
645 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
647 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
648 like this to your config.php:
650 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';
655 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
656 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
657 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
658 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
659 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
662 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
663 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
664 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
665 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.9.0. Try these step-by-step
666 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
668 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
670 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
671 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
672 backup. You have been warned.
673 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
674 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
676 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
677 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
678 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
679 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
680 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
681 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
682 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
683 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
684 final backup of the Web directory and database.
685 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "statusnet.bak".
686 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.9.0 tarball and move it to "statusnet" or
687 wherever your code used to be.
688 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
689 directory to your new directory.
690 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
691 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
692 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
693 if you're upgrading from another 0.9.x version).
695 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
696 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
697 do it without a known-good backup!
699 If your database is at version 0.8.0 or above, you can run a
700 special upgrade script:
702 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/08to09.sql
704 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
705 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
707 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
709 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
710 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
711 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
712 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
713 database. Make sure you have a backup.
714 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
715 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
716 script before running it.
717 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
718 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
719 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
720 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
721 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
723 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
724 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
725 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
728 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
729 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
730 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
736 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
737 StatusNet will no longer run.
742 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
743 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
744 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
745 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
748 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
749 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
750 convert your DB to the new format.
751 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
752 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
753 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
754 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
755 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
756 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
757 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
759 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
760 new notices will be stored correctly.
762 Configuration options
763 =====================
765 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
766 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
767 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/default.php (where most
768 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
769 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
771 Starting with version 0.9.0, a Web based configuration panel has been
772 added to StatusNet. The preferred method for changing config options is
775 A command-line script, setconfig.php, can be used to set individual
776 configuration options. It's in the scripts/ directory.
778 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
779 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
780 will be included in this order:
782 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
783 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
784 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
785 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
787 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
788 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
791 $config['section']['option'] = value;
793 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
799 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
801 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
802 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
803 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'statusnet' or ''
805 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
806 section above). Default is false.
807 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
808 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
810 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
811 hard errors. Default false.
812 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
813 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
814 don't need to use this.
815 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
816 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
817 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
818 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
819 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
820 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
821 no effect in practice.
822 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
823 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
825 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
827 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
828 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
829 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
830 except as the basis for your own.
831 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
832 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
833 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
834 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
835 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
836 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
837 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
838 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
839 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
840 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
841 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
842 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
843 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
844 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
845 was invited by an existing user.
846 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
847 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
848 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
849 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
851 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
852 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
853 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
855 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
856 the logo in the theme, if any.
857 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
858 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
859 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
860 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
861 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
862 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
863 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
864 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
865 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
866 preferably other cookies as well.
867 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
868 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
870 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
871 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
873 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
874 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
875 profile bios and group descriptions.
880 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
881 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
882 set are listed below for clarity.
884 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
885 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
886 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
887 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
888 'password' is the password, and etc.
889 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
890 to set this to point to the location of the
891 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
892 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
893 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
894 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
895 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
896 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
897 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
898 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
900 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
901 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
902 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
903 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
904 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
905 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
906 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
907 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
908 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
909 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
910 to include it in this array, too.
911 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
912 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
913 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
915 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
916 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
917 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
918 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
919 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
920 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
921 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
927 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
928 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
930 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
931 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
932 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
933 you can track log messages more easily.
934 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
935 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
936 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
942 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
943 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
944 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
946 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
947 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
948 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
949 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
950 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
951 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
952 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
954 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
955 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense. If running
956 multiple instances on the same server, make sure that
957 either this setting or $config['site']['nickname'] are
958 unique for each site to keep them separate.
960 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
962 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
965 stomp_persistent: keep items across queue server restart, if enabled.
967 softlimit: an absolute or relative "soft memory limit"; daemons will
968 restart themselves gracefully when they find they've hit
969 this amount of memory usage. Defaults to 90% of PHP's global
970 memory_limit setting.
972 inboxes: delivery of messages to receiver's inboxes can be delayed to
973 queue time for best interactive performance on the sender.
974 This may however be annoyingly slow when using the DB queues,
975 so you can set this to false if it's causing trouble.
977 breakout: for stomp, individual queues are by default grouped up for
978 best scalability. If some need to be run by separate daemons,
979 etc they can be manually adjusted here.
981 Default will share all queues for all sites within each group.
982 Specify as <group>/<queue> or <group>/<queue>/<site>,
983 using nickname identifier as site.
985 'main/distrib' separate "distrib" queue covering all sites
986 'xmpp/xmppout/mysite' separate "xmppout" queue covering just 'mysite'
988 max_retries: for stomp, drop messages after N failed attempts to process.
991 dead_letter_dir: for stomp, optional directory to dump data on failed
992 queue processing events after discarding them.
997 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
998 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
999 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1000 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1002 type: one of 'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved'
1003 (default copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential
1005 owner: for 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an assigned copyright
1006 holder (for example, an employer for a private site). If
1007 not specified, will be attributed to 'contributors'.
1008 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1009 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1010 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1015 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1016 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1018 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1019 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1020 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1021 them in an associative array.
1026 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1028 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1029 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1030 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1031 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1032 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1033 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1034 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1035 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1036 interesting people, or whatever.
1041 For configuring avatar access.
1043 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1044 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1045 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1046 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1047 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1048 be included with the avatar server, too.
1049 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1050 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1051 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1052 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1053 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1054 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1055 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1057 ssl: Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults to null, meaning
1058 to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
1063 For configuring the public stream.
1065 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1066 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1067 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1068 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1069 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1070 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1071 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1072 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1077 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1078 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1079 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1080 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1081 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1082 subdirectory of the install directory.
1083 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1084 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1085 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1086 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1087 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1088 ssl: Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default is null, which means
1089 guess based on site SSL settings.
1094 server: You can speed up page loading by pointing the
1095 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1096 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1097 path: Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
1098 which means to use the site path + '/js/'.
1099 ssl: Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null, which means
1100 guess based on site SSL settings.
1105 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1107 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1108 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1109 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1110 shouldn't need to change.
1111 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1112 from 'user'@'server'.
1113 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1114 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1115 password: password for the user account.
1116 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1117 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1118 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1119 case with your server.
1120 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1121 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1122 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1123 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1125 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1126 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1127 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1128 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1129 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1130 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1135 For configuring invites.
1137 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1142 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1144 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1145 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1146 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1151 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1153 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1154 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1155 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1160 For daemon processes.
1162 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1163 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1164 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1165 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1166 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1167 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1169 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1170 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1175 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1176 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1178 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1179 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1180 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1181 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1182 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1183 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1184 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1185 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1186 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1187 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1194 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1195 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1200 For SMS integration.
1202 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1203 should also be enabled.
1208 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1210 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1217 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1218 StatusNet will no longer run.
1223 For notice-posting throttles.
1225 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1226 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1227 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1228 from a user every hour.
1229 timespan: see 'count'.
1236 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1237 the site text limit default.
1242 Options with new users.
1244 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1245 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1246 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1247 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1248 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1249 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1250 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1251 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1253 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1254 be created before the configuration is updated.
1259 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1260 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1261 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1262 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1263 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1264 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1267 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1268 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1269 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1270 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1271 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1272 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1273 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1275 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1276 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1277 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1278 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1279 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1285 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1286 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1287 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1289 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1292 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1293 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1294 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1296 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1297 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1298 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1299 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1300 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1302 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1303 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1304 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1305 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1307 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1308 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1309 is smaller than file_quota.
1310 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1311 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1312 not exceed the user_quota.
1313 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1314 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1315 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1316 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1317 should be writeable by the Web user.
1318 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1319 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1320 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1321 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1322 main path + '/file/'.
1323 ssl: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
1324 guess based on other SSL settings.
1325 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1326 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1332 Options for group functionality.
1334 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1335 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1336 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1337 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1343 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1345 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1350 Some stuff for search.
1352 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1353 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1354 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1355 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1356 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1357 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1364 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1365 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1366 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1367 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1368 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1369 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1374 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1377 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1378 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1379 null; same as site server.
1380 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1381 subdir of install dir.
1382 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1383 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1384 ssl: Whether or not to use HTTPS for background files. Defaults to
1385 null, meaning to guess from site-wide SSL settings.
1390 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1391 notify third-party servers of updates.
1393 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1394 array (no notification).
1399 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1400 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1402 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1403 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1404 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1405 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1406 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1407 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1408 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1413 Configuration options specific to notices.
1415 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1416 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1422 Configuration options specific to messages.
1424 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1425 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1431 Configuration options for the login command.
1433 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1434 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1435 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1436 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1437 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1438 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1439 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1440 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1441 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1446 If an installation has only one user, this can simplify a lot of the
1447 interface. It also makes the user's profile the root URL.
1449 enabled: Whether to run in "single user mode". Default false.
1450 nickname: nickname of the single user.
1455 We put out a default robots.txt file to guide the processing of
1456 Web crawlers. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for more information
1457 on the format of this file.
1459 crawldelay: if non-empty, this value is provided as the Crawl-Delay:
1460 for the robots.txt file. see http://ur1.ca/l5a0
1461 for more information. Default is zero, no explicit delay.
1462 disallow: Array of (virtual) directories to disallow. Default is 'main',
1463 'search', 'message', 'settings', 'admin'. Ignored when site
1464 is private, in which case the entire site ('/') is disallowed.
1469 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1470 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1471 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1472 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1473 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1475 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1476 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1478 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1480 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1484 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1486 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1487 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1488 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1490 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1491 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1492 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1493 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1494 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1495 class's constructor).
1497 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1498 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1500 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1501 'param2' => 'value2'));
1503 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1504 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1505 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1506 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1509 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1514 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1515 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1516 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1518 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1519 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1520 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1521 conflicts in your code.
1523 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.9.0 without reading the "Notice
1524 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1525 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1530 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1531 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1532 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1535 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1536 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1537 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1538 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1539 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1541 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1542 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1543 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1544 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1545 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1546 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1547 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1552 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1553 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1554 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1556 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1558 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1559 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1560 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1561 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1562 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1563 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1564 installing it on your production machines.
1566 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1571 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1573 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1574 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1575 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1576 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1577 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1578 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/> (!)
1583 * Microblogging messages to http://support.status.net/ are very welcome.
1584 * The microblogging group http://identi.ca/group/statusnet is a good
1585 place to discuss the software.
1586 * StatusNet has a bug tracker for any defects you may find, or ideas for
1587 making things better. http://status.net/bugs
1592 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1593 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1594 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1596 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1597 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1598 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1599 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1600 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1601 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1612 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1616 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1617 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1619 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1623 * Tobias Diekershoff
1635 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1636 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1637 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what