5 Laconica 0.7.3 ("You Are The Everything")
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 minor bug-fix and feature release since version 0.7.2.1,
75 released Mar 11 2009. Notable changes this version:
77 - A plugin to allow a templating language for customization
78 - A plugin for Piwik Analytics engine
79 - A bookmarklet for posting a notice about a Web page you're reading
80 - A welcome notice ('welcomebot') and default subscription for new users
81 - Support for SSL for some or all pages on the site
82 - Better handling of empty notice lists on many pages
83 - Major improvements to the Twitter friend-sync offline processing
84 - subscribers, subscriptions, groups are listed on the Personal page.
85 - "Invite" link restored to main menu
86 - Better memory handling in FOAF output
87 - Fix for SUP support (FriendFeed)
88 - Correct and intelligent redirect HTTP status codes
89 - Fix DB collations for search and sort
90 - Better H1s and Titles using user full names
91 - Fixes to make the linkback plugin operational
92 - Better indication that a notice is being published by Ajax (spinner)
93 - Better and unified Atom output
94 - Hiding "register" and "join now" messages when site is closed
95 - ping, twitter and facebook queuehandlers working better
101 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
104 - PHP 5.2.x. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
105 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
107 - MySQL 5.x. The Laconica database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
108 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
109 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
110 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
111 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
112 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
113 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
115 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
117 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
118 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
119 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
120 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
121 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
122 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
124 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
126 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
127 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
128 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
129 server to store the data in.
130 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
131 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
132 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
133 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
134 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
136 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
137 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
138 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
139 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
144 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
145 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
146 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
147 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
148 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
149 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
151 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
152 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
153 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
154 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
155 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
156 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
157 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
158 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
159 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
160 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
161 but won't work with OpenID.
162 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
163 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
164 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
165 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
166 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
167 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
168 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
169 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
170 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
171 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
172 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
173 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
174 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
175 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
176 version may render your Laconica site unable to send or receive XMPP
178 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
180 A design goal of Laconica is that the basic Web functionality should
181 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
182 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
183 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
184 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
185 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
190 Installing the basic Laconica Web component is relatively easy,
191 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
193 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
194 command like this will work:
196 tar zxf laconica-0.7.3.tar.gz
198 ...which will make a laconica-0.7.3 subdirectory in your current
199 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
200 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
201 files to the server.)
203 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
204 directory. Usually something like this will work:
206 mv laconica-0.7.3 /var/www/mublog
208 This will make your Laconica instance available in the mublog path of
209 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
210 "laconica" might also be good path names. If you know how to
211 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
212 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
214 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
216 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
218 On some systems, this will probably work:
220 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
221 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
223 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
224 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
225 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
227 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
228 writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
230 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
232 You can also make the avatar directory writeable by the Web server
233 group, as noted above.
235 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
238 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create laconica
240 Note that Laconica must have its own database; you can't share the
241 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
244 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
245 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
246 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
248 6. Create a new database account that Laconica will use to access the
249 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
252 GRANT ALL on laconica.*
253 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
254 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
256 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
257 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
260 7. In a browser, navigate to the Laconica install script; something like:
262 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
264 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
265 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
266 almost-empty database.
268 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
269 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
270 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
271 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
272 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
273 URLs are stored in the database.
278 By default, Laconica will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
279 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
282 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
284 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
287 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
289 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
291 http://example.org/mublog/fred
293 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
294 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
295 mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
298 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your Laconica
299 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
300 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
301 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
302 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
303 just leaving the .htaccess file.
305 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
306 to your Laconica installation on your server. Typically this will
307 be the path to your Laconica directory relative to your Web root.
309 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
311 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
313 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
316 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
318 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
324 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
325 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
326 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
327 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
328 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
330 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
331 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
333 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
334 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
335 indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
336 every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
337 to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
342 Laconica supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
343 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
344 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
345 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
346 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
347 configuration is essentially email configuration.
349 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
350 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
351 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
352 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
354 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
355 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
357 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your Laconica database. This will
360 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" laconica < db/carrier.sql
362 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
363 that support email SMS gateways.
365 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
367 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
369 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
370 of a filter than a daemon.
372 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
374 *: /path/to/laconica/scripts/maildaemon.php
376 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
377 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
381 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
384 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
386 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
388 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
389 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
390 server, you'll need to have a full installation of Laconica, a working
391 config.php, and access to the Laconica database from the mail server.
396 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
397 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
398 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
399 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
402 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
403 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
404 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
406 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
407 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
408 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
409 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
411 Laconica will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
412 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
413 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
415 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
416 configuration section.
418 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
419 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
420 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
421 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
422 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
423 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
425 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
426 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
427 work around this bug in Laconica; current recommendation is to move
428 off of amd64 to another server.
433 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
434 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
435 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
437 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
438 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
440 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
442 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
443 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
444 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
445 consider setting up queues and daemons.
450 Some activities that Laconica needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
451 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
452 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
453 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
454 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
455 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
456 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
458 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
459 installed on whatever server you use.
461 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install Laconica
462 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
463 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
464 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
466 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
467 server!), set the following variable:
469 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
471 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
472 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
473 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
474 They're not created automatically.
476 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
477 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
478 Laconica dir, "." should suffice.
480 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
482 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
483 them as notices in the database.
484 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
485 registered users who should receive them.
486 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
487 public feed listeners.
488 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
489 recipients on foreign servers.
490 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
492 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
494 * twitterqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Twitter for user
495 who have opted to set up Twitter bridging.
496 * facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
497 of the built-in Facebook application.
499 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
500 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
501 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
502 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
503 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
504 to check their status and keep them running.
506 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
507 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
510 Twitter Friends Syncing
511 -----------------------
513 As of Laconica 0.6.3, users may set a flag in their settings ("Subscribe
514 to my Twitter friends here" under the Twitter tab) to have Laconica
515 attempt to locate and subscribe to "friends" (people they "follow") on
516 Twitter who also have accounts on your Laconica system, and who have
517 previously set up a link for automatically posting notices to Twitter.
519 Optionally, there is a script (./scripts/synctwitterfriends.php), meant
520 to be run periodically from a job scheduler (e.g.: cron under Unix), to
521 look for new additions to users' friends lists. Note that the friends
522 syncing only subscribes users to each other, it does not unsubscribe
523 users when they stop following each other on Twitter.
527 # Update Twitter friends subscriptions every half hour
528 0,30 * * * * /path/to/php /path/to/laconica/scripts/synctwitterfriends.php>&/dev/null
530 Built-in Facebook Application
531 -----------------------------
533 Laconica's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
534 update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
535 their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
536 timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
537 is built into Laconica and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
538 status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
539 facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
542 Quick setup instructions*:
544 Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
546 http://www.facebook.com/developers/
548 Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
549 Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
550 key and secret, e.g.:
552 # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
553 $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
554 $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
556 In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
558 - Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
559 - Post-Remove URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
560 - Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
561 - Canvas URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
563 (Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
564 to your Laconica installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
565 Facebook application you created.)
567 Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
568 In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
569 "Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
570 Everything else can be left with default values.
572 *For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
575 http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
580 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
581 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
582 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
585 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. Laconica creates a number of
586 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
587 put these in a sub-directory of your Laconica directory to avoid
588 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
589 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
590 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
591 available through HTTP.
593 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
595 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
597 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
598 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
599 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
600 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
601 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
603 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
604 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
605 following to your robots.txt file:
607 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
609 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
610 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
611 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
617 There are two themes shipped with this version of Laconica: "identica",
618 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
619 basis for other sites.
621 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
622 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
623 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
624 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
626 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
627 the config.php file. See below for details.
629 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
630 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
633 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
634 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
636 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
638 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
639 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
640 users who don't upload their own.
641 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
642 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
643 listing on profile pages.
645 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
648 NOTE: the HTML generated by Laconica changed *radically* between
649 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
650 modification to use the new output format.
655 Translations in Laconica use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
656 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
657 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
658 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
660 Contributions of translation information to Laconica are very easy:
661 you can use the Web interface at http://laconi.ca/pootle/ to add one
662 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
663 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
668 There is no built-in system for doing backups in Laconica. You can make
669 backups of a working Laconica system by backing up the database and
670 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
671 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
676 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
677 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
678 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
679 management, but host it on a public server.
681 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
682 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
683 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
684 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
685 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
686 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
687 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
688 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
693 IMPORTANT NOTE: Laconica 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
694 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
695 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
696 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
697 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
700 If you've been using Laconica 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've been
701 tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably want
702 to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated upgrade
703 procedure in Laconica 0.7.3. Try these step-by-step instructions; read
704 to the end first before trying them.
706 0. Download Laconica and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
708 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
709 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
710 backup. You have been warned.
711 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
712 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
714 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
715 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
716 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
717 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
718 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
719 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
720 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
721 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
722 final backup of the Web directory and database.
723 6. Move your Laconica directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
724 7. Unpack your Laconica 0.6 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
725 wherever your code used to be.
726 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
727 directory to your new directory.
728 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
729 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
730 10. Rebuild the database. For MySQL, go to your Laconica directory and
731 run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
733 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/laconica.sql
735 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
736 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
737 that's _not_ the user Laconica runs as.
738 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
739 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
740 script before running it.
741 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
742 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
743 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
744 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
745 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
747 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
748 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
749 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
752 NOTE: the database definition file, stoica.ini, has been renamed to
753 laconica.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
754 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
760 Before version 0.6.2, the page showing all notices from people the
761 user is subscribed to ("so-and-so with friends") was calculated at run
762 time. Starting with 0.6.2, we have a new data structure for holding a
763 user's "notice inbox". (Note: distinct from the "message inbox", which
764 is the "inbox" tab in the UI. The notice inbox appears under the
767 Notices are added to the inbox when they're created. This speeds up
768 the query considerably, and also allows us the opportunity, in the
769 future, to add different kind of notices to an inbox -- like @-replies
770 or subscriptions to search terms or hashtags.
772 Notice inboxes are enabled by default for new installations. If you
773 are upgrading an existing site, this means that your users will see
774 empty "Personal" pages. The following steps will help you fix the
777 0. $config['inboxes']['enabled'] can be set to one of three values. If
778 you set it to 'false', the site will work as before. Support for this
779 will probably be dropped in future versions.
780 1. Setting the flag to 'transitional' means that you're in transition.
781 In this mode, the code will run the "new query" or the "old query"
782 based on whether the user's inbox has been updated.
783 2. After setting the flag to "transitional", you can run the
784 fixup_inboxes.php script to create the inboxes. You may want to set
785 the memory limit high. You can re-run it without ill effect.
786 3. When fixup_inboxes is finished, you can set the enabled flag to
792 Laconica 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
793 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
794 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
795 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
798 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
799 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
800 convert your DB to the new format.
801 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
802 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
803 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
804 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
805 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
806 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
807 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
809 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
810 new notices will be stored correctly.
812 Configuration options
813 =====================
815 The sole configuration file for Laconica (excepting configurations for
816 dependency software) is config.php in your Laconica directory. If you
817 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
818 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
819 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
821 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
822 /etc/laconica/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
823 will be included in this order:
825 * /etc/laconica/laconica.php - server-wide config
826 * /etc/laconica/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
827 * /etc/laconica/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
828 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
830 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
831 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
834 $config['section']['option'] = value;
836 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
842 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
844 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
845 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
846 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
848 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
849 section above). Default is false.
850 logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
851 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
853 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
854 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
855 don't need to use this.
856 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
857 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
858 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
860 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
862 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
863 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
864 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
865 except as the basis for your own.
866 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
867 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
868 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
869 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
870 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
871 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
872 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
873 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
874 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
875 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
876 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
877 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
878 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
879 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
880 was invited by an existing user.
881 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
882 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
883 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
884 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
886 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
887 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
888 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
890 dupelimit: Time in which it's not OK for the same person to post the
891 same notice; default = 60 seconds.
892 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
893 the logo in the theme, if any.
894 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
895 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
896 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
897 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
898 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
899 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
900 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
901 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
902 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
903 preferably other cookies as well.
908 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
909 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
910 set are listed below for clarity.
912 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your Laconica database. This is
913 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
914 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
915 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
916 'password' is the password, and etc.
917 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'laconica', you'll need
918 to set this to point to the location of the
919 laconica.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
920 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
921 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
922 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
923 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
924 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
925 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
926 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
928 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
929 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
930 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
931 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
932 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
933 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
934 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
935 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
936 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
937 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
938 to include it in this array, too.
939 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
940 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
941 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
947 By default, Laconica sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
948 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
950 appname: The name that Laconica uses to log messages. By default it's
951 "laconica", but if you have more than one installation on the
952 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
953 you can track log messages more easily.
958 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
959 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
960 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
962 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
967 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
968 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
969 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
970 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
972 url: URL of the license, used for links.
973 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
974 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
979 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
980 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
982 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
983 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
984 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
985 them in an associative array.
990 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
992 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
993 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
994 used by Laconica (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
995 but you may want to add others if you have other software
996 installed in a subdirectory of Laconica or if you just
997 don't want certain words used as usernames.
998 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
999 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1000 interesting people, or whatever.
1005 For configuring avatar access.
1007 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1008 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1009 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1010 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1011 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1012 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1013 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1019 For configuring the public stream.
1021 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1022 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1023 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1024 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1025 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1026 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1031 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1032 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real). The
1033 theme server's root path should map to the Laconica "theme"
1034 subdirectory. Defaults to NULL.
1039 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1041 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1042 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1043 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1044 shouldn't need to change.
1045 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1046 from 'user'@'server'.
1047 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1048 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1049 password: password for the user account.
1050 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1051 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1052 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1053 case with your server.
1054 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between Laconica and the
1055 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1056 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1057 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1059 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1060 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1061 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1062 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1063 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1064 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1069 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1071 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1072 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1073 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1078 For daemon processes.
1080 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1081 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1082 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1083 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1084 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1085 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1087 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1088 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1093 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1094 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1096 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1097 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1098 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1103 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1104 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1105 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1107 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1108 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1109 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1114 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1116 source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
1117 to 'laconica', but if you request your own source name from
1118 Twitter <http://twitter.com/help/request_source>, you can use
1119 that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
1127 enabled: A three-valued flag for whether to use notice inboxes (see
1128 upgrading info above for notes about this change). Can be
1129 'false', 'true', or '"transitional"'.
1134 For notice-posting throttles.
1136 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1137 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1138 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1139 from a user every hour.
1140 timespan: see 'count'.
1147 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1148 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1149 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1150 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1155 Options with new users.
1157 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1158 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1159 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1160 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1161 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1162 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1163 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1164 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1166 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1167 be created before the configuration is updated.
1172 The primary output for Laconica is syslog, unless you configured a
1173 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1174 getting weird behaviour from Laconica.
1176 If you're tracking the unstable version of Laconica in the git
1177 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1178 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1179 conflicts in your code.
1181 If you upgraded to Laconica 0.7.3 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
1182 section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty, read the
1183 "Notice inboxes" section above.
1188 These are some myths you may see on the Web about Laconica.
1189 Documentation from the core team about Laconica has been pretty
1190 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1193 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1194 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1195 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1196 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1197 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1199 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1200 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1201 used by the running software. It was removed from the Laconica
1202 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1203 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1204 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1205 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1210 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1211 development version of Laconica. To get it, use the git version
1212 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1214 git clone http://laconi.ca/software/laconica.git
1216 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1221 There are several ways to get more information about Laconica.
1223 * There is a mailing list for Laconica developers and admins at
1224 http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
1225 * The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1226 * The Laconica wiki, http://laconi.ca/trac/
1231 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1232 * Laconica's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1233 or ideas for making things better. http://laconi.ca/trac/
1234 * e-mail to evan@identi.ca will usually be read and responded to very
1235 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1240 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1241 Laconi.ca. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@identi.ca know
1242 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1244 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1245 * Zach Copley, Control Yourself, Inc.
1246 * Earle Martin, Control Yourself, Inc.
1247 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1248 * Sarven Capadisli, Control Yourself, Inc.
1249 * Robin Millette, Control Yourself, Inc.
1260 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1264 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1265 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n managerx)
1267 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1271 * Tobias Diekershoff
1273 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1274 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed Laconi.ca,
1275 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what