5 StatusNet 0.8.2 ("Life and How to Live It")
8 This is the README file for StatusNet (formerly Laconica), the Open
9 Source microblogging platform. It includes installation instructions,
10 descriptions of options you can set, warnings, tips, and general info
11 for administrators. Information on using StatusNet can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 StatusNet (formerly Laconica) is a Free and Open Source microblogging
18 platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange
19 short (140 character) 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 Jaiku, Yammer, 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 StatusNet 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 StatusNet was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
34 Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
35 too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
36 more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
38 http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
40 StatusNet, Inc. <http://status.net/> also offers this software as a
41 Web service, requiring no installation on your part. The software run
42 on status.net is identical to the software available for download, so
43 you can move back and forth between a hosted version or a version
44 installed on your own servers.
49 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
50 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
51 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
52 License, or (at your option) any later version.
54 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
55 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
56 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
57 Affero General Public License for more details.
59 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
60 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
61 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
63 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
64 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
65 you make modifications to the StatusNet source code on your server,
66 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
67 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
68 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
69 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL STATUSNET*.
71 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
72 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
73 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
74 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
80 This is a minor feature and bugfix release since version 0.8.1,
81 released Aug 26 2009. Notable changes this version:
83 - New script for deleting user accounts. Not particularly safe or
84 community-friendly. Better for deleting abusive accounts than for
85 users who are 'retiring'.
86 - Improved detection of URLs in notices, specifically for punctuation
87 chars like ~, :, $, _, -, +, !, @, and %.
88 - Removed some extra <dl> semantic HTML code.
89 - Correct error in status-network database ini file (having multiple
90 statusnet sites with a single codebase)
91 - Fixed error output for Twitter posting failures.
92 - Fixed bug in Twitter queue handler that requeued inapplicable
94 - Improve FOAF output for remote users.
95 - new commands to join and leave groups.
96 - Fixed bug in which you cannot turn off importing friends timelines
98 - Better error handling in Twitter posting.
99 - Show oEmbed data for XHTML files as well as plain HTML.
100 - Updated bug database link in README.
101 - require HTML tidy extension.
102 - add support for HTTP Basic Auth in PHP CGI or FastCGI (e.g. GoDaddy).
103 - autofocus input to selected entry elements depending on page.
104 - updated layout for filter-by-tag form.
105 - better layout for inbox and outbox pages.
106 - fix highlighting search terms in attributes of notice list elements.
107 - Correctly handle errors in linkback plugin.
109 - Updated cloudy theme.
110 - Don't match '::' as an IPv6 address.
111 - Use the same decision logic for deciding whether to mark an
112 attachment as an enclosure in RSS or as a paperclip item in Web
114 - Fixed a bug in the Piwik plugin that hard-coded the site ID.
115 - Add a param, inreplyto, to notice/new to allow an explicit response
117 - Show username in subject of emails.
118 - Check if avatar exists before trying to delete it.
119 - Correctly add omb_version to response for request token in OMB.
120 - Add a few more SMS carriers.
121 - Add a few more notice sources.
123 - Improvements to the AutoCompletePlugin.
124 - Check for 'dl' before using it.
125 - Make it impossible to delete self-subscriptions via the API.
126 - Fix pagination of tagged user pages.
127 - Make PiwikAnalyticsPlugin work with addPlugin().
128 - Removed trailing single space in user nicknames in notice lists.
129 - Show context link if a notice starts a conversation.
130 - blacklist all files and directories in install dir.
131 - handle GoDaddy-style PATH_INFO, including script name.
132 - add home_timeline synonym for friends_timeline.
133 - Add a popup window for the realtime plugin.
134 - Add some more streams for the realtime plugin.
135 - Fix a bug that overwrote group creation timestamp on every edit.
136 - Moved HTTP error code strings to a class variable.
137 - The Twitter API now returns server errors in the correct format.
138 - Reset the doctype for HTML output.
139 - Fixed a number of notices.
140 - Don't show search suggestions for private sites.
141 - Some corrections to FBConnect nav overrides.
142 - Slightly less database-intensive session management.
143 - Updated name of software in installer script.
144 - Include long-form attachment URLs if url-shortener is disabled.
145 - Include updated localisations for Polish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic,
146 Norwegian, and Chinese.
147 - Include upstream fixes to gettext.php.
148 - Correct for regression in Facebook API for updates.
149 - Ignore "Sent from my iPhone" (and similar) in mail updates.
150 - Use the NICKNAME_FMT constant for detecting nicknames.
151 - Check for site servername config'd.
152 - Compatibility fix for empty status updates with Twitter API.
153 - Option to show files privately (EXPERIMENTAL! Use with caution.)
158 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
161 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
162 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
164 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
165 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
166 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
167 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
168 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
169 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
170 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
172 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
174 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
175 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
176 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
177 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
178 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
179 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
180 - tidy. Used to clean up HTML/URLs for the URL shortener to consume.
182 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
184 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
185 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
186 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
187 server to store the data in.
188 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
189 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
190 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
191 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
192 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
194 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
195 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
196 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
197 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
202 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
203 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
204 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
205 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
206 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
207 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
209 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
210 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
211 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
212 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
213 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
214 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
215 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
216 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
217 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
218 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
219 but won't work with OpenID.
220 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
221 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
222 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
223 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
224 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
225 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
226 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
227 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
228 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
229 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
230 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
231 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
232 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
233 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
234 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
236 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
237 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
238 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
239 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
240 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
241 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
243 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
244 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
245 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
246 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
247 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
248 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
253 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
254 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
256 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
257 command like this will work:
259 tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
261 ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 subdirectory in your current
262 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
263 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
264 files to the server.)
266 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
267 directory. Usually something like this will work:
269 mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
271 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
272 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
273 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
274 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
275 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
277 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
279 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
281 On some systems, this will probably work:
283 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
284 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
286 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
287 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
288 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
290 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
291 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
294 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
295 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
296 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
298 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
299 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
301 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
304 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
306 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
307 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
310 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
311 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
312 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
314 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
315 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
318 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
319 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
320 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
322 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
323 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
326 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
328 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
330 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
331 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
332 almost-empty database.
334 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
335 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
336 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
337 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
338 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
339 URLs are stored in the database.
344 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
345 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
348 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
350 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
353 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
355 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
357 http://example.org/mublog/fred
359 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
360 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
361 mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
364 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
365 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
366 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
367 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
368 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
369 just leaving the .htaccess file.
371 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
372 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
373 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
375 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
377 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
379 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
382 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
384 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
390 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
391 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
392 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
393 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
394 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
396 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
397 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
399 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
400 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
401 indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
402 every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
403 to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
408 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
409 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
410 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
411 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
412 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
413 configuration is essentially email configuration.
415 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
416 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
417 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
418 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
420 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
421 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
423 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
426 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
428 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
429 that support email SMS gateways.
431 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
433 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
435 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
436 of a filter than a daemon.
438 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
440 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
442 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
443 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
447 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
450 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
452 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
454 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
455 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
456 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
457 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
462 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
463 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
464 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
465 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
468 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
469 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
470 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
472 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
473 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
474 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
475 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
477 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
478 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
479 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
481 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
482 configuration section.
484 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
485 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
486 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
487 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
488 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
489 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
491 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
492 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
493 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
494 off of amd64 to another server.
499 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
500 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
501 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
503 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
504 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
506 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
508 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
509 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
510 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
511 consider setting up queues and daemons.
516 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
517 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
518 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
519 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
520 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
521 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
522 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
524 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
525 installed on whatever server you use.
527 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
528 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
529 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
530 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
532 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
533 server!), set the following variable:
535 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
537 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
538 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
539 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
540 They're not created automatically.
542 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
543 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
544 StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
546 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
548 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
549 them as notices in the database.
550 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
551 registered users who should receive them.
552 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
553 public feed listeners.
554 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
555 recipients on foreign servers.
556 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
558 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
561 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
562 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
563 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
564 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
565 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
566 to check their status and keep them running.
568 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
569 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
572 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
573 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
574 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
575 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
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. StatusNet 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 StatusNet 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 StatusNet: "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 StatusNet 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 StatusNet 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 StatusNet are very easy:
661 you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/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 StatusNet. You can make
669 backups of a working StatusNet 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.
690 If fancy URLs is enabled, access to file attachments can also be
691 restricted to logged-in users only. Uncomment the appropriate rewrite
693 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf. (This most likely will
694 not work if you are using a virtual server for attachments, so consider
695 the performance/security tradeoff.)
697 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf.
698 >>>>>>> 446de62... Revert "Added some explanatory text to README":README
703 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
704 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
705 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
706 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
707 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
710 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
711 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
712 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
713 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. Try these step-by-step
714 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
716 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
718 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
719 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
720 backup. You have been warned.
721 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
722 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
724 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
725 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
726 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
727 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
728 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
729 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
730 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
731 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
732 final backup of the Web directory and database.
733 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
734 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
735 wherever your code used to be.
736 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
737 directory to your new directory.
738 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
739 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
740 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
741 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
743 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
744 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
745 do it without a known-good backup!
747 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
750 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
752 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
753 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
755 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
757 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
758 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
759 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
760 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
761 database. Make sure you have a backup.
762 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
763 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
764 script before running it.
765 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
766 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
767 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
768 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
769 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
771 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
772 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
773 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
776 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
777 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
778 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
784 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
785 StatusNet will no longer run.
790 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
791 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
792 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
793 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
796 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
797 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
798 convert your DB to the new format.
799 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
800 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
801 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
802 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
803 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
804 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
805 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
807 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
808 new notices will be stored correctly.
810 Configuration options
811 =====================
813 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
814 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
815 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
816 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
817 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
819 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
820 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
821 will be included in this order:
823 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
824 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
825 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
826 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
828 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
829 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
832 $config['section']['option'] = value;
834 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
840 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
842 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
843 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
844 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
846 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
847 section above). Default is false.
848 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
849 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
851 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
852 hard errors. Default false.
853 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
854 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
855 don't need to use this.
856 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
857 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
858 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
860 "unset($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 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
891 the logo in the theme, if any.
892 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
893 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
894 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
895 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
896 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
897 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
898 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
899 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
900 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
901 preferably other cookies as well.
902 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
903 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
905 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
906 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
908 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
909 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
910 profile bios and group descriptions.
915 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
916 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
917 set are listed below for clarity.
919 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
920 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
921 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
922 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
923 'password' is the password, and etc.
924 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
925 to set this to point to the location of the
926 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
927 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
928 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
929 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
930 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
931 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
932 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
933 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
935 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
936 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
937 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
938 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
939 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
940 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
941 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
942 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
943 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
944 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
945 to include it in this array, too.
946 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
947 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
948 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
950 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
951 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
952 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
953 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
954 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
955 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
956 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
962 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
963 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
965 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
966 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
967 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
968 you can track log messages more easily.
969 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
970 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
971 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
977 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
978 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
979 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
981 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
982 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
983 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
984 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
985 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
986 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
987 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
989 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
990 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
991 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
993 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
998 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
999 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1000 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1001 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1003 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1004 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1005 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1010 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1011 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1013 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1014 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1015 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1016 them in an associative array.
1021 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1023 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1024 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1025 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1026 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1027 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1028 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1029 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1030 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1031 interesting people, or whatever.
1036 For configuring avatar access.
1038 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1039 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1040 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1041 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1042 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1043 be included with the avatar server, too.
1044 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1045 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1046 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1047 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1048 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1049 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1050 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1056 For configuring the public stream.
1058 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1059 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1060 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1061 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1062 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1063 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1064 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1065 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1070 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1071 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1072 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1073 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1074 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1075 subdirectory of the install directory.
1076 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1077 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1078 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1079 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1080 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1085 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1087 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1088 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1089 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1090 shouldn't need to change.
1091 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1092 from 'user'@'server'.
1093 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1094 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1095 password: password for the user account.
1096 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1097 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1098 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1099 case with your server.
1100 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1101 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1102 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1103 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1105 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1106 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1107 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1108 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1109 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1110 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1115 For configuring invites.
1117 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1122 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1124 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1125 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1126 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1131 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1133 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1134 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1135 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1140 For daemon processes.
1142 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1143 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1144 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1145 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1146 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1147 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1149 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1150 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1155 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1156 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1158 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1159 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1160 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1161 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1162 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1163 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1164 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1165 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1166 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1167 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1172 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1173 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1174 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1176 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1177 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1178 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1185 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1186 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1191 For SMS integration.
1193 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1194 should also be enabled.
1199 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1201 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1208 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1209 StatusNet will no longer run.
1214 For notice-posting throttles.
1216 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1217 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1218 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1219 from a user every hour.
1220 timespan: see 'count'.
1227 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1228 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1229 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1230 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1231 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1232 the site text limit default.
1237 Options with new users.
1239 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1240 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1241 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1242 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1243 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1244 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1245 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1246 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1248 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1249 be created before the configuration is updated.
1254 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1255 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1256 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1257 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1258 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1259 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1262 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1263 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1264 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1265 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1266 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1267 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1268 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1270 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1271 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1272 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1273 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1274 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1280 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1281 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1282 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1284 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1287 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1288 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1289 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1291 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1292 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1293 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1294 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1295 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1297 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1298 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1299 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1300 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1302 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1303 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1304 is smaller than file_quota.
1305 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1306 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1307 not exceed the user_quota.
1308 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1309 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1310 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1311 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1312 should be writeable by the Web user.
1313 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1314 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1315 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1316 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1317 main path + '/file/'.
1318 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1319 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1325 Options for group functionality.
1327 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1328 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1329 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1330 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1336 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1338 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1343 Some stuff for search.
1345 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1346 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1347 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1348 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1349 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1350 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1357 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1358 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1359 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1360 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1361 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1362 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1367 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1370 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1371 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1372 null; same as site server.
1373 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1374 subdir of install dir.
1375 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1376 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1381 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1382 notify third-party servers of updates.
1384 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1385 array (no notification).
1390 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1391 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1393 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1394 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1395 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1396 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1397 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1398 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1399 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1404 Configuration options specific to notices.
1406 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1407 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1413 Configuration options specific to messages.
1415 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1416 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1422 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1423 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1424 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1425 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1426 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1428 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1429 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1431 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1433 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1437 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1439 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1440 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1441 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1443 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1444 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1445 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1446 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1447 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1448 class's constructor).
1450 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1451 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1453 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1454 'param2' => 'value2'));
1456 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1457 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1458 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1459 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1462 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1467 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1468 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1469 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1471 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1472 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1473 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1474 conflicts in your code.
1476 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
1477 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1478 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1483 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1484 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1485 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1488 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1489 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1490 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1491 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1492 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1494 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1495 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1496 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1497 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1498 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1499 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1500 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1505 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1506 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1507 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1509 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1511 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1512 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1513 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1514 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1515 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1516 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1517 installing it on your production machines.
1519 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1524 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1526 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1527 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1528 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1529 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1530 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1531 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1536 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1537 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1538 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1539 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1540 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1545 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1546 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1547 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1549 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1550 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1551 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1552 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1553 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1554 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1565 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1569 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1570 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1572 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1576 * Tobias Diekershoff
1586 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1587 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1588 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what