5 StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand") Release Candidate 2
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 characters, by default) messages over the Web. Users can
20 choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or
21 colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites
22 like Twitter, Jaiku, 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 major feature release since version 0.8.2, released Nov 1 2009.
81 Notable changes this version:
83 - Records of deleted notices are stored without the notice content.
84 - Much of the optional core featureset has been moved to plugins.
85 - OpenID support moved from core to a plugin. Helps test the strength of
86 our plugin architecture and makes it easy to disable this
87 functionality for e.g. intranet sites.
88 - Many additional hook events (see EVENTS.txt for details).
89 - OMB 0.1 support re-implemented using libomb.
90 - Re-structure database so notices, messages, bios and group
91 descriptions can be over 140 characters. Limit defined by
92 site administrator as configuration option; can be unlimited.
93 - Configuration data now optionally stored in the database, which
94 overrides any settings in config files.
95 - Twitter integration re-implemented as a plugin.
96 - Facebook integration re-implemented as a plugin.
97 - Role-based authorization framework. Users can have named roles, and
98 roles can have rights (e.g., to delete notices, change configuration
99 data, or ban uncooperative users). Default roles 'admin' (for
100 configuration) and 'moderator' (for community management) added.
101 - Plugin for PubSubHubBub (PuSH) support.
102 - Considerable code style cleanup to meet PEAR code standards.
103 - Made a common library for HTTP-client access which uses available
104 HTTP libraries where possible.
105 - Added statuses/home_timeline method to API.
106 - Hooks for plugins to handle notices offline, either by defining
107 their own queue handler scripts or to use a default plugin queue
109 - Plugins can now modify the database schema, adding their own tables
110 or modifying existing ones.
112 - Twitter API supports Web caching for some methods.
113 - Twitter API refactored into one-action-per-method.
114 - Realtime plugin supports a tear-off window.
116 - Moved all JavaScript tags to just before </body> by default,
117 significantly speeding up apparent page load time.
118 - Added a Realtime plugin for Orbited server.
119 - Added a mobile plugin to give a more mobile-phone-friendly layout
120 when a mobile browser is detected.
121 - Use CSS sprites for most common icons.
122 - Fixes for images and buttons on Web output.
123 - New plugin requires that users validate their email before posting.
124 - New plugin UserFlag lets users flag other profiles for review.
125 - Considerably better i18n support. Use TranslateWiki to update
127 - Notices and profiles now store location information.
128 - New plugin, Geonames, for turning location names and lat/long pairs
129 into structured IDs and vice versa. Architecture reusable for other
131 - Better check of license compatibility between site licenses.
132 - Some improvements in XMPP output.
133 - Media upload in the API.
134 - Replies appear in the user's inbox.
135 - Improved the UI on the bookmarklet.
136 - StatusNet identities can be used as OpenID identities.
137 - Script to register a user.
138 - Script to make someone a group admin.
139 - Script to make someone a site admin or moderator.
141 - Pluggable authentication.
142 - LDAP authentication plugin.
143 - Script for console interaction with the site (!).
144 - Users don't see group posts from people they've blocked.
145 - Admin panel interface for changing site configuration.
146 - Users can be sandboxed (limited contributions) or silenced
147 (no contributions) by moderators.
148 - Many changes to make language usage more consistent.
149 - Sphinx search moved to a plugin.
151 - Profile and group lists support hAtom.
152 - Massive refactoring of util.js.
153 - Mapstraction plugin to show maps on inbox and profile pages.
154 - Play/pause buttons for realtime notices.
155 - Support for geo microformat.
156 - Partial support for feed subscriptions, RSSCloud, PubSubHubBub.
157 - Support for geolocation in browser (Chrome, Firefox).
158 - Quit trying to negotiate HTML format. Always use text/html.
159 We lose, and so do Web standards. Boo.
160 - Better logging of request info.
161 - Better output for errors in Web interface.
162 - No longer store .mo files; these need to be generated.
164 - Events to allow pluginizing logger.
165 - New framework for plugin localization.
167 - Add support for "repeats" (similar to Twitter's "retweets").
168 - Support for repeats in Twitter API.
169 - Better notification of direct messages.
174 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
177 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
178 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
180 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
181 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
182 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
183 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
184 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
185 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
186 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
188 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
190 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
191 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
192 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
193 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
194 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
195 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
197 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
199 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
200 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
201 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
202 server to store the data in.
203 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
204 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
205 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
206 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
207 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
209 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
210 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
211 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
212 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
217 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
218 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
219 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
220 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
221 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
222 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
224 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
225 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
226 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
227 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
228 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
229 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
230 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
231 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
232 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
233 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
234 but won't work with OpenID.
235 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
236 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
237 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
238 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
239 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
240 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
241 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
242 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
243 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
244 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
245 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
246 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
247 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
248 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
249 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
251 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
252 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
253 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
254 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
255 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
256 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
258 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
259 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
260 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
261 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
262 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
263 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
268 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
269 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
271 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
272 command like this will work:
274 tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
276 ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 subdirectory in your current
277 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
278 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
279 files to the server.)
281 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
282 directory. Usually something like this will work:
284 mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
286 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
287 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
288 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
289 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
290 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
292 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
294 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
296 On some systems, this will probably work:
298 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
299 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
301 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
302 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
303 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
305 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
306 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
309 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
310 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
311 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
313 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
314 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
316 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
319 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
321 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
322 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
325 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
326 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
327 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
329 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
330 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
333 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
334 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
335 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
337 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
338 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
341 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
343 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
345 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
346 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
347 almost-empty database.
349 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
350 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
351 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
352 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
353 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
354 URLs are stored in the database.
359 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
360 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
363 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
365 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
368 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
370 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
372 http://example.org/mublog/fred
374 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
375 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
376 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
379 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
380 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
381 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
382 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
383 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
384 just leaving the .htaccess file.
386 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
387 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
388 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
390 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
392 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
394 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
397 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
399 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
402 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
403 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
404 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
405 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
406 .htaccess files for more details:
408 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
410 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
412 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
417 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
418 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
420 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
421 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
423 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
424 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
426 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
431 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
432 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
433 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
434 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
435 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
436 configuration is essentially email configuration.
438 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
439 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
440 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
441 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
443 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
444 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
446 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
449 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
451 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
452 that support email SMS gateways.
454 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
456 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
458 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
459 of a filter than a daemon.
461 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
463 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
465 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
466 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
470 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
473 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
475 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
477 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
478 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
479 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
480 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
485 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
486 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
487 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
488 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
491 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
492 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
493 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
495 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
496 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
497 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
498 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
500 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
501 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
502 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
504 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
505 configuration section.
507 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
508 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
509 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
510 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
511 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
512 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
514 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
515 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
516 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
517 off of amd64 to another server.
522 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
523 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
524 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
526 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
527 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
529 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
531 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
532 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
533 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
534 consider setting up queues and daemons.
539 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
540 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
541 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
542 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
543 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
544 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
545 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
547 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
548 installed on whatever server you use.
550 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
551 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
552 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
553 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
555 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
556 server!), set the following variable:
558 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
560 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
561 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
562 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
563 They're not created automatically.
565 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
566 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
567 StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
569 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
571 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
572 them as notices in the database.
573 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
574 registered users who should receive them.
575 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
576 public feed listeners.
577 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
578 recipients on foreign servers.
579 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
581 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
584 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
585 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
586 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
587 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
588 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
589 to check their status and keep them running.
591 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
592 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
595 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
596 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
597 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
598 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
603 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
604 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
605 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
608 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
609 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
610 put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
611 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
612 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
613 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
614 available through HTTP.
616 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
618 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
620 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
621 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
622 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
623 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
624 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
626 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
627 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
628 following to your robots.txt file:
630 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
632 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
633 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
634 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
640 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
641 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
642 basis for other sites.
644 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
645 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
646 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
647 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
649 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
650 the config.php file. See below for details.
652 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
653 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
656 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
657 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
659 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
661 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
662 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
663 users who don't upload their own.
664 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
665 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
666 listing on profile pages.
668 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
671 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
672 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
673 modification to use the new output format.
678 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
679 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
680 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
681 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
683 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
684 you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/pootle/ to add one
685 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
686 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
691 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
692 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
693 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
694 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
699 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
700 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
701 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
702 management, but host it on a public server.
704 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
705 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
706 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
707 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
708 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
709 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
710 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
711 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
713 If fancy URLs is enabled, access to file attachments can also be
714 restricted to logged-in users only. Uncomment the appropriate rewrite
716 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf. (This most likely will
717 not work if you are using a virtual server for attachments, so consider
718 the performance/security tradeoff.)
720 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf.
721 >>>>>>> 446de62... Revert "Added some explanatory text to README":README
726 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
727 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
728 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
729 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
730 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
733 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
734 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
735 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
736 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. Try these step-by-step
737 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
739 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
741 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
742 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
743 backup. You have been warned.
744 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
745 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
747 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
748 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
749 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
750 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
751 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
752 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
753 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
754 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
755 final backup of the Web directory and database.
756 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
757 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
758 wherever your code used to be.
759 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
760 directory to your new directory.
761 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
762 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
763 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
764 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
766 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
767 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
768 do it without a known-good backup!
770 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
773 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
775 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
776 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
778 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
780 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
781 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
782 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
783 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
784 database. Make sure you have a backup.
785 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
786 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
787 script before running it.
788 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
789 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
790 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
791 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
792 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
794 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
795 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
796 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
799 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
800 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
801 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
807 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
808 StatusNet will no longer run.
813 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
814 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
815 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
816 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
819 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
820 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
821 convert your DB to the new format.
822 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
823 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
824 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
825 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
826 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
827 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
828 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
830 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
831 new notices will be stored correctly.
833 Configuration options
834 =====================
836 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
837 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
838 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
839 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
840 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
842 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
843 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
844 will be included in this order:
846 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
847 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
848 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
849 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
851 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
852 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
855 $config['section']['option'] = value;
857 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
863 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
865 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
866 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
867 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
869 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
870 section above). Default is false.
871 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
872 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
874 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
875 hard errors. Default false.
876 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
877 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
878 don't need to use this.
879 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
880 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
881 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
882 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
883 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
884 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
885 no effect in practice.
886 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
887 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
889 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
891 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
892 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
893 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
894 except as the basis for your own.
895 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
896 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
897 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
898 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
899 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
900 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
901 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
902 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
903 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
904 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
905 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
906 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
907 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
908 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
909 was invited by an existing user.
910 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
911 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
912 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
913 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
915 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
916 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
917 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
919 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
920 the logo in the theme, if any.
921 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
922 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
923 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
924 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
925 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
926 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
927 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
928 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
929 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
930 preferably other cookies as well.
931 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
932 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
934 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
935 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
937 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
938 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
939 profile bios and group descriptions.
944 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
945 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
946 set are listed below for clarity.
948 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
949 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
950 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
951 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
952 'password' is the password, and etc.
953 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
954 to set this to point to the location of the
955 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
956 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
957 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
958 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
959 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
960 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
961 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
962 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
964 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
965 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
966 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
967 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
968 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
969 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
970 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
971 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
972 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
973 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
974 to include it in this array, too.
975 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
976 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
977 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
979 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
980 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
981 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
982 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
983 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
984 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
985 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
991 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
992 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
994 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
995 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
996 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
997 you can track log messages more easily.
998 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
999 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
1000 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
1006 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
1007 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
1008 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
1010 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
1011 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
1012 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
1013 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
1014 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
1015 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
1016 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
1018 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
1019 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
1020 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1022 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1027 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
1028 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1029 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1030 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1032 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1033 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1034 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1039 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1040 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1042 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1043 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1044 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1045 them in an associative array.
1050 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1052 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1053 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1054 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1055 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1056 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1057 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1058 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1059 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1060 interesting people, or whatever.
1065 For configuring avatar access.
1067 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1068 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1069 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1070 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1071 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1072 be included with the avatar server, too.
1073 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1074 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1075 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1076 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1077 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1078 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1079 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1085 For configuring the public stream.
1087 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1088 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1089 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1090 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1091 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1092 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1093 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1094 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1099 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1100 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1101 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1102 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1103 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1104 subdirectory of the install directory.
1105 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1106 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1107 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1108 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1109 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1114 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1116 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1117 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1118 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1119 shouldn't need to change.
1120 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1121 from 'user'@'server'.
1122 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1123 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1124 password: password for the user account.
1125 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1126 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1127 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1128 case with your server.
1129 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1130 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1131 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1132 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1134 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1135 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1136 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1137 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1138 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1139 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1144 For configuring invites.
1146 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1151 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1153 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1154 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1155 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1160 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1162 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1163 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1164 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1169 For daemon processes.
1171 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1172 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1173 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1174 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1175 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1176 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1178 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1179 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1184 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1185 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1187 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1188 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1189 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1190 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1191 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1192 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1193 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1194 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1195 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1196 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1203 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1204 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1209 For SMS integration.
1211 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1212 should also be enabled.
1217 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1219 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1226 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1227 StatusNet will no longer run.
1232 For notice-posting throttles.
1234 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1235 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1236 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1237 from a user every hour.
1238 timespan: see 'count'.
1245 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1246 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1247 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1248 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1249 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1250 the site text limit default.
1255 Options with new users.
1257 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1258 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1259 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1260 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1261 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1262 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1263 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1264 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1266 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1267 be created before the configuration is updated.
1272 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1273 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1274 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1275 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1276 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1277 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1280 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1281 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1282 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1283 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1284 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1285 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1286 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1288 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1289 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1290 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1291 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1292 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1298 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1299 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1300 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1302 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1305 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1306 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1307 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1309 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1310 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1311 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1312 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1313 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1315 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1316 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1317 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1318 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1320 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1321 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1322 is smaller than file_quota.
1323 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1324 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1325 not exceed the user_quota.
1326 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1327 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1328 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1329 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1330 should be writeable by the Web user.
1331 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1332 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1333 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1334 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1335 main path + '/file/'.
1336 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1337 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1343 Options for group functionality.
1345 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1346 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1347 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1348 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1354 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1356 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1361 Some stuff for search.
1363 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1364 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1365 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1366 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1367 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1368 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1375 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1376 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1377 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1378 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1379 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1380 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1385 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1388 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1389 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1390 null; same as site server.
1391 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1392 subdir of install dir.
1393 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1394 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1399 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1400 notify third-party servers of updates.
1402 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1403 array (no notification).
1408 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1409 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1411 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1412 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1413 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1414 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1415 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1416 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1417 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1422 Configuration options specific to notices.
1424 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1425 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1431 Configuration options specific to messages.
1433 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1434 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1440 Configuration options for the login command.
1442 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1443 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1444 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1445 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1446 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1447 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1448 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1449 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1450 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1455 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1456 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1457 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1458 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1459 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1461 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1462 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1464 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1466 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1470 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1472 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1473 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1474 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1476 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1477 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1478 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1479 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1480 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1481 class's constructor).
1483 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1484 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1486 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1487 'param2' => 'value2'));
1489 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1490 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1491 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1492 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1495 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1500 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1501 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1502 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1504 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1505 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1506 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1507 conflicts in your code.
1509 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
1510 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1511 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1516 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1517 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1518 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1521 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1522 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1523 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1524 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1525 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1527 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1528 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1529 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1530 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1531 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1532 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1533 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1538 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1539 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1540 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1542 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1544 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1545 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1546 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1547 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1548 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1549 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1550 installing it on your production machines.
1552 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1557 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1559 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1560 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1561 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1562 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1563 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1564 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1569 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1570 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1571 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1572 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1573 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1578 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1579 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1580 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1582 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1583 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1584 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1585 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1586 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1587 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1598 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1602 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1603 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1605 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1609 * Tobias Diekershoff
1620 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1621 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1622 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what