5 StatusNet 0.9.6 "Man on the Moon"
6 25 October 2010 - RELEASE CANDIDATE
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. See
42 <http://status.net/signup> for details. The software run
43 on status.net is identical to the software available for download, so
44 you can move back and forth between a hosted version or a version
45 installed on your own servers.
47 A commercial software subscription is available from StatusNet Inc. It
48 includes 24-hour technical support and developer support. More
49 information at http://status.net/contact or email sales@status.net.
54 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
55 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
56 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
57 License, or (at your option) any later version.
59 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
60 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
61 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
62 Affero General Public License for more details.
64 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
65 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
66 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
68 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
69 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
70 you make modifications to the StatusNet source code on your server,
71 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
72 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
73 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
74 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL STATUSNET*.
76 Documentation in the /doc-src/ directory is available under the
77 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, with attribution to
78 "StatusNet". See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ for details.
80 CSS and images in the /theme/ directory are available under the
81 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, with attribution to
82 "StatusNet". See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ for details.
84 Our understanding and intention is that if you add your own theme that
85 uses only CSS and images, those files are not subject to the copyleft
86 requirements of the Affero General Public License 3.0. See
87 http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/ . This is not
88 legal advice; consult your lawyer.
90 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
91 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
92 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
93 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
99 This is a security, bug and feature release since version 0.9.5 released on
102 For best compatibility with client software and site federation, and a lot of
103 bug fixes, it is highly recommended that all public sites upgrade to the new
106 Notable changes this version:
108 - Site moderators can now delete groups.
109 - New themes: clean, shiny, mnml, victorian
110 - New YammerImport plugin allows site admins to import non-private profiles and
111 message from an authenticated Yammer site.
112 - New experimental plugins: AnonFavorites, SlicedFavorites, GroupFavorited,
113 ForceGroup, ShareNotice
114 - OAuth upgraded to 1.0a
115 - Localization updates now include plugins, thanks to translatewiki.net!
116 - SSL link generation should be more consistent; alternate SSL URLs can be
117 set in the admin UI for more parts of the system.
118 - Experimental backupuser.php, restoreuser.php command-line scripts to
119 dump/restore a user's complete activity stream. Can be used to transfer
120 accounts manually between sites, or to save a backup before deleting.
121 - Unicode fixes for OStatus notices
122 - Header metadata on notice pages to aid in manual reposting on Facebook
123 - Lots of little fixes...
125 A full changelog is available at http://status.net/wiki/StatusNet_0.9.6.
130 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
133 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
134 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
135 in PHP 5.2 or above. 5.2.6 or later is needed for XMPP background
136 daemons on 64-bit platforms. PHP 5.3.x should work correctly in this
137 release, but problems with some plugins are possible.
138 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
139 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
140 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
141 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
142 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
143 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
144 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
146 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
148 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
149 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
150 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
151 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
152 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
154 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
156 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
157 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
158 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
159 server to store the data in.
160 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
161 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
162 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
163 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
164 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
165 - bcmath or gmp. For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus). Needed
166 if you have OStatus configured.
167 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
168 will be emulated if not present.
170 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
171 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
172 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
173 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
178 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
179 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
180 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
181 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
182 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
183 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
185 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
186 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
187 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
188 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
189 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
190 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
191 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
192 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
193 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
194 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
195 but won't work with OpenID.
196 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
197 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
198 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
199 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
200 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
201 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
202 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
203 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
204 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
205 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
206 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
207 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
208 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
209 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
210 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
212 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
213 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
214 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
215 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
216 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
217 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
218 - libomb. a library for implementing OpenMicroBlogging 0.1, the
219 predecessor to OStatus.
220 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
222 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
223 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
224 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
225 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
226 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
227 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
232 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
233 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
235 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
236 command like this will work:
238 tar zxf statusnet-0.9.6.tar.gz
240 ...which will make a statusnet-0.9.6 subdirectory in your current
241 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
242 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
243 files to the server.)
245 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
246 directory. Usually something like this will work:
248 mv statusnet-0.9.6 /var/www/statusnet
250 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the statusnet path of
251 your server, like "http://example.net/statusnet". "microblog" or
252 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
253 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
254 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
256 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
258 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/
260 On some systems, this will probably work:
262 chgrp www-data /var/www/statusnet/
263 chmod g+w /var/www/statusnet/
265 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
266 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
267 a new group like "statusnet" and add the Web server's user to the group.
269 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
270 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
273 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/avatar
274 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/background
275 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/file
277 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
278 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
280 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
283 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
285 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
286 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
289 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
290 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
291 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
293 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
294 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
297 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
298 TO 'statusnetuser'@'localhost'
299 IDENTIFIED BY 'statusnetpassword';
301 You should change 'statusnetuser' and 'statusnetpassword' to your preferred new
302 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
305 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
307 http://yourserver.example.com/statusnet/install.php
309 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
310 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
311 almost-empty database.
313 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
314 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
315 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
316 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
317 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
318 URLs are stored in the database.
323 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
324 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
327 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php/statusnet/fred
329 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
332 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php?p=statusnet/fred
334 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
336 http://example.org/statusnet/fred
338 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
339 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
340 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
343 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
344 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
345 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
346 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
347 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
348 just leaving the .htaccess file.
350 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
351 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
352 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
354 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
356 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
358 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
361 http://example.net/statusnet/main/register
363 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
366 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
367 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
368 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
369 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
370 .htaccess files for more details:
372 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
374 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
376 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
381 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
382 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
384 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
385 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
387 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
388 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
390 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
395 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
396 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
397 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
398 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
399 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
400 configuration is essentially email configuration.
402 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
403 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
404 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
405 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
407 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
408 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
410 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
413 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
415 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
416 that support email SMS gateways.
418 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
420 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
422 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
423 of a filter than a daemon.
425 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
427 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
429 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
430 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
434 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
437 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
439 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
441 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
442 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
443 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
444 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
449 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
450 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
451 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
452 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
455 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
456 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
457 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
459 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
460 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
461 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
462 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
464 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
465 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
466 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
468 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
469 configuration section.
471 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
472 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
473 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
474 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
475 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
476 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
478 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
479 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
480 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
481 off of amd64 to another server.
486 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
487 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
488 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
490 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
491 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
493 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
495 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
496 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
497 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
498 consider setting up queues and daemons.
503 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
504 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
505 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
506 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
507 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
508 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
509 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
511 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
512 installed on whatever server you use.
514 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
515 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
516 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
517 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
519 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
520 server!), set the following variable:
522 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
524 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
525 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
526 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
527 They're not created automatically.
529 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
531 This will run the queue handlers:
533 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
534 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
535 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
536 them as notices in the database; also pulls queued XMPP output from
537 queuedaemon.php to push out to clients.
539 These two daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
540 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
541 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
543 Additional daemons may be also started by this script for certain
544 plugins, such as the Twitter bridge.
546 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
547 to check their status and keep them running.
549 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
550 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
553 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
554 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly
555 recommended for best response time, especially when using XMPP.
557 See the "queues" config section below for how to configure to use STOMP.
558 As of this writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ 5.3.
563 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
564 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
565 basis for other sites.
567 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
568 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
569 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
570 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
572 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
573 the config.php file. See below for details.
575 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
576 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
579 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
580 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
582 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
584 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
585 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
586 users who don't upload their own.
587 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
588 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
589 listing on profile pages.
591 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
594 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
595 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
596 modification to use the new output format.
601 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
602 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
603 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
604 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
606 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
607 you can use the Web interface at translatewiki.net to add one
608 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
609 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
611 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
616 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
617 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
618 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
619 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
624 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
625 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
626 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
627 management, but host it on a public server.
629 Total privacy is not guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is
630 all-or-nothing for a site; you can't have some accounts or notices
631 private, and others public. The interaction of private sites
632 with OStatus is undefined.
634 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
635 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
636 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
638 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
640 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
641 insecure way to do this is:
643 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
645 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
646 like this to your config.php:
648 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';
653 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
654 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
655 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
656 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
657 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
660 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
661 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
662 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
663 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.9.6. Try these step-by-step
664 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
666 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
668 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
669 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
670 backup. You have been warned.
671 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
672 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
674 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
675 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
676 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
677 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
678 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
679 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
680 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
681 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
682 final backup of the Web directory and database.
683 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "statusnet.bak".
684 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.9.6 tarball and move it to "statusnet" or
685 wherever your code used to be.
686 8. Copy the config.php file and the contents of the avatar/, background/,
687 file/, and local/ subdirectories from your old directory to your new
689 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
690 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
691 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
692 if you're upgrading from another 0.9.x version).
694 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
695 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
696 do it without a known-good backup!
698 If your database is at version 0.8.0 or above, you can run a
699 special upgrade script:
701 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/08to09.sql
703 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
704 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
706 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
708 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
709 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
710 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
711 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
712 database. Make sure you have a backup.
713 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
714 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
715 script before running it.
716 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
717 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
718 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
719 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
720 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
722 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
723 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
724 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
727 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
728 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
729 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
735 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
736 StatusNet will no longer run.
741 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
742 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
743 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
744 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
747 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
748 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
749 convert your DB to the new format.
750 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
751 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
752 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
753 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
754 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
755 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
756 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
758 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
759 new notices will be stored correctly.
761 Configuration options
762 =====================
764 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
765 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
766 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/default.php (where most
767 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
768 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
770 Starting with version 0.9.0, a Web based configuration panel has been
771 added to StatusNet. The preferred method for changing config options is
774 A command-line script, setconfig.php, can be used to set individual
775 configuration options. It's in the scripts/ directory.
777 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
778 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
779 will be included in this order:
781 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
782 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
783 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
784 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
786 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
787 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
790 $config['section']['option'] = value;
792 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
798 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
800 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
801 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
802 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'statusnet' or ''
804 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
805 section above). Default is false.
806 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
807 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
809 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
810 hard errors. Default false.
811 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
812 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
813 don't need to use this.
814 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
815 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
816 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
817 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
818 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
819 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
820 no effect in practice.
821 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
822 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
824 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
826 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
827 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
828 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
829 except as the basis for your own.
830 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
831 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
832 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
833 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
834 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
835 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
836 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
837 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
838 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
839 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
840 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
841 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
842 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
843 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
844 was invited by an existing user.
845 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
846 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
847 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
848 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
850 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
851 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
852 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
854 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
855 the logo in the theme, if any.
856 ssllogo: URL of an image file to use as the logo on SSL pages. If unset,
857 theme logo is used instead.
858 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
859 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
860 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
861 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
862 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
863 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
864 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
865 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
866 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
867 preferably other cookies as well.
868 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
869 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
871 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
872 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
874 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
875 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
876 profile bios and group descriptions.
881 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
882 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
883 set are listed below for clarity.
885 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
886 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
887 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
888 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
889 'password' is the password, and etc.
890 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
891 to set this to point to the location of the
892 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
893 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
894 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
895 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
896 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
897 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
898 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
899 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
901 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
902 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
903 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
904 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
905 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
906 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
907 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
908 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
909 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
910 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
911 to include it in this array, too.
912 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
913 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
914 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
916 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
917 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
918 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
919 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
920 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
921 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
922 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
928 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
929 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
931 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
932 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
933 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
934 you can track log messages more easily.
935 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
936 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
937 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
943 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
944 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
945 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
947 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
948 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
949 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
950 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
951 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
952 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
953 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
955 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
956 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense. If running
957 multiple instances on the same server, make sure that
958 either this setting or $config['site']['nickname'] are
959 unique for each site to keep them separate.
961 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
963 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
966 stomp_persistent: keep items across queue server restart, if enabled.
967 Under ActiveMQ, the server configuration determines if and how
968 persistent storage is actually saved.
970 If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
971 need to disable this if it does not support persistence.
973 stomp_transactions: use transactions to aid in error detection.
974 A broken transaction will be seen quickly, allowing a message
975 to be redelivered immediately if a daemon crashes.
977 If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
978 need to disable this if it does not support transactions.
980 stomp_acks: send acknowledgements to aid in flow control.
981 An acknowledgement of successful processing tells the server
982 we're ready for more and can help keep things moving smoothly.
984 This should *not* be turned off when running with ActiveMQ, but
985 if using another message queue server that does not support
986 acknowledgements you might need to disable this.
988 softlimit: an absolute or relative "soft memory limit"; daemons will
989 restart themselves gracefully when they find they've hit
990 this amount of memory usage. Defaults to 90% of PHP's global
991 memory_limit setting.
993 inboxes: delivery of messages to receiver's inboxes can be delayed to
994 queue time for best interactive performance on the sender.
995 This may however be annoyingly slow when using the DB queues,
996 so you can set this to false if it's causing trouble.
998 breakout: for stomp, individual queues are by default grouped up for
999 best scalability. If some need to be run by separate daemons,
1000 etc they can be manually adjusted here.
1002 Default will share all queues for all sites within each group.
1003 Specify as <group>/<queue> or <group>/<queue>/<site>,
1004 using nickname identifier as site.
1006 'main/distrib' separate "distrib" queue covering all sites
1007 'xmpp/xmppout/mysite' separate "xmppout" queue covering just 'mysite'
1009 max_retries: for stomp, drop messages after N failed attempts to process.
1012 dead_letter_dir: for stomp, optional directory to dump data on failed
1013 queue processing events after discarding them.
1015 stomp_no_transactions: for stomp, the server does not support transactions,
1016 so do not try to user them. This is needed for http://www.morbidq.com/.
1018 stomp_no_acks: for stomp, the server does not support acknowledgements.
1019 so do not try to user them. This is needed for http://www.morbidq.com/.
1024 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
1025 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1026 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1027 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1029 type: one of 'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved'
1030 (default copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential
1032 owner: for 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an assigned copyright
1033 holder (for example, an employer for a private site). If
1034 not specified, will be attributed to 'contributors'.
1035 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1036 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1037 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1042 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1043 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1045 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1046 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1047 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1048 them in an associative array.
1053 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1055 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1056 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1057 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1058 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1059 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1060 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1061 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1062 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1063 interesting people, or whatever.
1068 For configuring avatar access.
1070 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1071 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1072 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1073 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1074 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1075 be included with the avatar server, too.
1076 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1077 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1078 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1079 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1080 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1081 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1082 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1084 ssl: Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults to null, meaning
1085 to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
1090 For configuring the public stream.
1092 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1093 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1094 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1095 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1096 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1097 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1098 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1099 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1104 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1105 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1106 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1107 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1108 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1109 subdirectory of the install directory.
1110 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1111 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1112 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1113 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1114 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1115 ssl: Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default is null, which means
1116 guess based on site SSL settings.
1117 sslserver: SSL server to use when page is HTTPS-encrypted. If
1118 unspecified, site ssl server and so on will be used.
1119 sslpath: If sslserver if defined, path to use when page is HTTPS-encrypted.
1124 server: You can speed up page loading by pointing the
1125 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1126 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1127 path: Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
1128 which means to use the site path + '/js/'.
1129 ssl: Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null, which means
1130 guess based on site SSL settings.
1131 sslserver: SSL server to use when page is HTTPS-encrypted. If
1132 unspecified, site ssl server and so on will be used.
1133 sslpath: If sslserver if defined, path to use when page is HTTPS-encrypted.
1138 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1140 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1141 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1142 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1143 shouldn't need to change.
1144 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1145 from 'user'@'server'.
1146 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1147 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1148 password: password for the user account.
1149 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1150 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1151 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1152 case with your server.
1153 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1154 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1155 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1156 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1158 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1159 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1160 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1161 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1162 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1163 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1168 For configuring invites.
1170 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1175 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1177 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1178 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1179 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1184 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1186 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1187 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1188 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1193 For daemon processes.
1195 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1196 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1197 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1198 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1199 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1200 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1202 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1203 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1208 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1209 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1211 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1212 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1213 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1214 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1215 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1216 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1217 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1218 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1219 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1220 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1227 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1228 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1233 For SMS integration.
1235 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1236 should also be enabled.
1241 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1243 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1250 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1251 StatusNet will no longer run.
1256 For notice-posting throttles.
1258 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1259 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1260 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1261 from a user every hour.
1262 timespan: see 'count'.
1269 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1270 the site text limit default.
1275 Options with new users.
1277 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1278 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1279 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1280 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1281 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1282 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1283 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1284 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1286 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1287 be created before the configuration is updated.
1292 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1293 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1294 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1295 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1296 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1297 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1300 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1301 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1302 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1303 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1304 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1305 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1306 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1308 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1309 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1310 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1311 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1312 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1318 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1319 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1320 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1322 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1325 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1326 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1327 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1329 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1330 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1331 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1332 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1333 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1335 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1336 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1337 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1338 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1340 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1341 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1342 is smaller than file_quota.
1343 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1344 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1345 not exceed the user_quota.
1346 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1347 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1348 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1349 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1350 should be writeable by the Web user.
1351 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1352 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1353 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1354 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1355 main path + '/file/'.
1356 ssl: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
1357 guess based on other SSL settings.
1358 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1359 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1361 sslserver: if specified, this server will be used when creating HTTPS
1362 URLs. Otherwise, the site SSL server will be used, with /file/ path.
1363 sslpath: if this and the sslserver are specified, this path will be used
1364 when creating HTTPS URLs. Otherwise, the attachments|path value
1370 Options for group functionality.
1372 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1373 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1374 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1375 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1381 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1383 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1388 Some stuff for search.
1390 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1391 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1392 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1393 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1394 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1395 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1402 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1403 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1404 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1405 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1406 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1407 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1412 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1415 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1416 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1417 null; same as site server.
1418 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1419 subdir of install dir.
1420 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1421 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1422 sslserver: SSL server to use when page is HTTPS-encrypted. If
1423 unspecified, site ssl server and so on will be used.
1424 sslpath: If sslserver if defined, path to use when page is HTTPS-encrypted.
1429 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1430 notify third-party servers of updates.
1432 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1433 array (no notification).
1438 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1439 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1441 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1442 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1443 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1444 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1445 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1446 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1447 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1452 Configuration options specific to notices.
1454 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1455 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1461 Configuration options specific to messages.
1463 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1464 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1470 Configuration options for the login command.
1472 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1473 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1474 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1475 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1476 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1477 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1478 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1479 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1480 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1485 If an installation has only one user, this can simplify a lot of the
1486 interface. It also makes the user's profile the root URL.
1488 enabled: Whether to run in "single user mode". Default false.
1489 nickname: nickname of the single user. If no nickname is specified,
1490 the site owner account will be used (if present).
1495 We put out a default robots.txt file to guide the processing of
1496 Web crawlers. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for more information
1497 on the format of this file.
1499 crawldelay: if non-empty, this value is provided as the Crawl-Delay:
1500 for the robots.txt file. see http://ur1.ca/l5a0
1501 for more information. Default is zero, no explicit delay.
1502 disallow: Array of (virtual) directories to disallow. Default is 'main',
1503 'search', 'message', 'settings', 'admin'. Ignored when site
1504 is private, in which case the entire site ('/') is disallowed.
1509 Options for the Twitter-like API.
1511 realm: HTTP Basic Auth realm (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2617
1512 for details). Some third-party tools like ping.fm want this to be
1513 'Identi.ca API', so set it to that if you want to. default = null,
1514 meaning 'something based on the site name'.
1519 We optionally put 'rel="nofollow"' on some links in some pages. The
1520 following configuration settings let you fine-tune how or when things
1521 are nofollowed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow for more
1522 information on what 'nofollow' means.
1524 subscribers: whether to nofollow links to subscribers on the profile
1525 and personal pages. Default is true.
1526 members: links to members on the group page. Default true.
1527 peopletag: links to people listed in the peopletag page. Default true.
1528 external: external links in notices. One of three values: 'sometimes',
1529 'always', 'never'. If 'sometimes', then external links are not
1530 nofollowed on profile, notice, and favorites page. Default is
1536 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1537 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1538 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1539 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1540 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1542 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1543 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1545 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1547 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1551 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1553 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1554 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1555 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1557 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1558 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1559 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1560 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1561 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1562 class's constructor).
1564 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1565 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1567 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1568 'param2' => 'value2'));
1570 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1571 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1572 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1573 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1576 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1581 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1582 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1583 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1585 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1586 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1587 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1588 conflicts in your code.
1590 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.9.x without reading the "Notice
1591 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1592 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1597 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1598 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1599 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1602 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1603 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1604 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1605 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1606 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1608 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1609 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1610 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1611 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1612 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1613 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1614 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1619 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1620 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1621 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1623 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1625 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1626 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1627 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1628 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1629 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1630 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1631 installing it on your production machines.
1633 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1638 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1640 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1641 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1642 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1643 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1644 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1645 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/> (!)
1650 * Microblogging messages to http://support.status.net/ are very welcome.
1651 * The microblogging group http://identi.ca/group/statusnet is a good
1652 place to discuss the software.
1653 * StatusNet has a bug tracker for any defects you may find, or ideas for
1654 making things better. http://status.net/bugs
1659 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1660 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1661 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1663 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1664 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1665 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1666 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1667 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1668 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1679 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1683 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1684 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1686 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1690 * Tobias Diekershoff
1701 * Siebrand Mazeland and the amazing volunteer translators at translatewiki.net
1702 * Brion Vibber, StatusNet, Inc.
1703 * James Walker, StatusNet, Inc.
1704 * Samantha Doherty, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1706 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1707 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1708 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what