5 StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand")
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 is a Free and Open Source microblogging platform. It helps
18 people in a community, company or group to exchange short (140
19 characters, by default) messages over the Web. Users can choose which
20 people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues'
21 status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter,
22 Google Buzz, or Yammer.
24 With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
25 instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
26 desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
28 StatusNet supports an open standard called OStatus
29 <http://ostatus.org/> that lets users in different networks follow
30 each other. It enables a distributed social network spread all across
33 StatusNet was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
34 Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
35 too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
36 more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
38 http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
40 StatusNet, Inc. <http://status.net/> also offers this software as a
41 Web service, requiring no installation on your part. The software run
42 on status.net is identical to the software available for download, so
43 you can move back and forth between a hosted version or a version
44 installed on your own servers.
49 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
50 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
51 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
52 License, or (at your option) any later version.
54 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
55 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
56 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
57 Affero General Public License for more details.
59 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
60 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
61 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
63 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
64 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
65 you make modifications to the StatusNet source code on your server,
66 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
67 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
68 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
69 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL STATUSNET*.
71 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
72 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
73 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
74 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
80 This is a major feature release since version 0.8.3, released Feb 1
81 2010. It is the final release version of 0.9.0.
83 Notable changes this version:
85 - Support for the new distributed status update standard OStatus
86 <http://ostatus.org>, based on PubSubHubbub, Salmon, Webfinger,
88 - Support for location. Notices are (optionally) marked with lat-long
89 information, and can be shown on a map.
90 - No fixed content size. Notice size is configurable, from 1 to
91 unlimited number of characters. Default is still 140!
92 - An authorization framework, allowing different levels of users.
93 - A Web-based administration panel.
94 - A moderation system that lets site moderators sandbox, silence,
95 or delete uncooperative users.
96 - A flag system that lets users flag profiles for moderator review.
97 - Support for OAuth <http://oauth.net> authentication in the Twitter
99 - A pluggable authentication system.
100 - An authentication plugin for LDAP servers.
101 - Many features that were core in 0.8.x are now plugins, such
102 as OpenID, Twitter integration, Facebook integration
103 - A much-improved offline processing system
104 - In-browser "realtime" updates using a number of realtime
105 servers (Meteor, Orbited, Cometd)
106 - A plugin to provide an interface optimized for mobile browsers
107 - Support for Facebook Connect
108 - Support for logging in with a Twitter account
109 - Vastly improved translation with additional languages and
110 translation in plugins
111 - Support for all-SSL instances
112 - Core support for "repeats" (like Twitter's "retweets")
113 - Pluggable caching system, with plugins for Memcached,
114 APC, XCache, and a disk-based cache
115 - Plugin to support RSSCloud
116 - A framework for adding advertisements to a public site,
117 and plugins for Google AdSense and OpenX server
119 There are also literally thousands of bugs fixed and minor features
120 added. A full changelog is available at http://status.net/wiki/StatusNet_0.9.0.
122 Under the covers, the software has a vastly improved plugin and
123 extension mechanism that makes writing powerful and flexible additions
124 to the core functionality much easier.
129 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
132 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
133 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
135 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
136 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
137 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
138 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
139 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
140 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
141 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
143 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
145 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
146 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
147 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
148 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
149 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
150 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
152 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
154 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
155 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
156 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
157 server to store the data in.
158 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
159 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
160 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
161 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
162 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
164 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
165 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
166 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
167 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
172 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
173 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
174 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
175 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
176 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
177 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
179 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
180 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
181 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
182 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
183 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
184 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
185 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
186 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
187 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
188 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
189 but won't work with OpenID.
190 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
191 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
192 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
193 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
194 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
195 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
196 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
197 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
198 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
199 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
200 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
201 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
202 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
203 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
204 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
206 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
207 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
208 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
209 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
210 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
211 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
213 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
214 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
215 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
216 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
217 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
218 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
223 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
224 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
226 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
227 command like this will work:
229 tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
231 ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 subdirectory in your current
232 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
233 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
234 files to the server.)
236 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
237 directory. Usually something like this will work:
239 mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
241 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
242 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
243 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
244 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
245 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
247 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
249 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
251 On some systems, this will probably work:
253 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
254 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
256 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
257 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
258 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
260 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
261 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
264 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
265 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
266 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
268 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
269 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
271 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
274 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
276 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
277 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
280 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
281 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
282 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
284 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
285 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
288 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
289 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
290 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
292 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
293 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
296 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
298 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
300 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
301 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
302 almost-empty database.
304 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
305 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
306 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
307 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
308 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
309 URLs are stored in the database.
314 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
315 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
318 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
320 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
323 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
325 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
327 http://example.org/mublog/fred
329 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
330 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
331 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
334 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
335 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
336 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
337 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
338 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
339 just leaving the .htaccess file.
341 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
342 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
343 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
345 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
347 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
349 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
352 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
354 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
357 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
358 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
359 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
360 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
361 .htaccess files for more details:
363 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
365 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
367 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
372 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
373 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
375 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
376 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
378 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
379 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
381 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
386 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
387 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
388 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
389 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
390 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
391 configuration is essentially email configuration.
393 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
394 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
395 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
396 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
398 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
399 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
401 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
404 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
406 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
407 that support email SMS gateways.
409 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
411 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
413 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
414 of a filter than a daemon.
416 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
418 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
420 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
421 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
425 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
428 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
430 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
432 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
433 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
434 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
435 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
440 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
441 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
442 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
443 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
446 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
447 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
448 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
450 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
451 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
452 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
453 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
455 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
456 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
457 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
459 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
460 configuration section.
462 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
463 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
464 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
465 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
466 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
467 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
469 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
470 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
471 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
472 off of amd64 to another server.
477 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
478 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
479 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
481 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
482 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
484 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
486 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
487 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
488 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
489 consider setting up queues and daemons.
494 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
495 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
496 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
497 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
498 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
499 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
500 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
502 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
503 installed on whatever server you use.
505 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
506 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
507 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
508 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
510 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
511 server!), set the following variable:
513 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
515 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
516 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
517 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
518 They're not created automatically.
520 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
521 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
522 StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
524 This will run the queue handlers:
526 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
527 pushing out to OMB, SMS, XMPP, etc.
528 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
529 them as notices in the database; also pulls queued XMPP output from
530 queuedaemon.php to push out to clients.
532 These two daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
533 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
534 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
536 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
537 to check their status and keep them running.
539 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
540 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
543 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
544 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
545 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
546 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ.
551 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
552 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
553 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
556 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
557 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
558 put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
559 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
560 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
561 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
562 available through HTTP.
564 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
566 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
568 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
569 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
570 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
571 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
572 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
574 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
575 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
576 following to your robots.txt file:
578 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
580 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
581 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
582 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
588 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
589 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
590 basis for other sites.
592 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
593 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
594 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
595 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
597 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
598 the config.php file. See below for details.
600 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
601 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
604 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
605 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
607 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
609 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
610 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
611 users who don't upload their own.
612 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
613 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
614 listing on profile pages.
616 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
619 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
620 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
621 modification to use the new output format.
626 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
627 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
628 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
629 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
631 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
632 you can use the Web interface at TranslateWiki.net to add one
633 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
634 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
636 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
641 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
642 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
643 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
644 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
649 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
650 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
651 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
652 management, but host it on a public server.
654 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
655 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
656 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
657 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OStatus is
658 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
659 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
660 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
661 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
663 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
664 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
665 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
667 mkdir /var/www/mublog-files
669 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
670 insecure way to do this is:
672 chmod a+x /var/www/mublog-files
674 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
675 like this to your config.php:
677 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/mublog-files';
682 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
683 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
684 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
685 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
686 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
689 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
690 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
691 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
692 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. Try these step-by-step
693 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
695 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
697 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
698 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
699 backup. You have been warned.
700 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
701 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
703 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
704 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
705 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
706 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
707 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
708 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
709 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
710 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
711 final backup of the Web directory and database.
712 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
713 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
714 wherever your code used to be.
715 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
716 directory to your new directory.
717 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
718 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
719 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
720 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
722 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
723 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
724 do it without a known-good backup!
726 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
729 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
731 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
732 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
734 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
736 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
737 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
738 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
739 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
740 database. Make sure you have a backup.
741 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
742 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
743 script before running it.
744 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
745 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
746 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
747 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
748 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
750 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
751 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
752 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
755 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
756 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
757 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
763 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
764 StatusNet will no longer run.
769 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
770 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
771 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
772 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
775 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
776 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
777 convert your DB to the new format.
778 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
779 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
780 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
781 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
782 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
783 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
784 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
786 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
787 new notices will be stored correctly.
789 Configuration options
790 =====================
792 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
793 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
794 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
795 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
796 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
798 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
799 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
800 will be included in this order:
802 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
803 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
804 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
805 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
807 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
808 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
811 $config['section']['option'] = value;
813 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
819 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
821 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
822 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
823 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
825 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
826 section above). Default is false.
827 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
828 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
830 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
831 hard errors. Default false.
832 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
833 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
834 don't need to use this.
835 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
836 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
837 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
838 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
839 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
840 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
841 no effect in practice.
842 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
843 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
845 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
847 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
848 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
849 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
850 except as the basis for your own.
851 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
852 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
853 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
854 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
855 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
856 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
857 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
858 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
859 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
860 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
861 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
862 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
863 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
864 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
865 was invited by an existing user.
866 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
867 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
868 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
869 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
871 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
872 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
873 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
875 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
876 the logo in the theme, if any.
877 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
878 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
879 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
880 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
881 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
882 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
883 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
884 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
885 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
886 preferably other cookies as well.
887 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
888 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
890 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
891 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
893 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
894 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
895 profile bios and group descriptions.
900 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
901 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
902 set are listed below for clarity.
904 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
905 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
906 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
907 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
908 'password' is the password, and etc.
909 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
910 to set this to point to the location of the
911 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
912 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
913 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
914 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
915 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
916 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
917 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
918 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
920 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
921 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
922 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
923 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
924 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
925 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
926 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
927 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
928 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
929 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
930 to include it in this array, too.
931 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
932 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
933 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
935 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
936 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
937 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
938 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
939 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
940 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
941 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
947 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
948 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
950 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
951 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
952 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
953 you can track log messages more easily.
954 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
955 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
956 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
962 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
963 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
964 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
966 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
967 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
968 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
969 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
970 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
971 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
972 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
974 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
975 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
976 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
978 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
983 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
984 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
985 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
986 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
988 type: one of 'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved'
989 (default copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential
991 owner: for 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an assigned copyright
992 holder (for example, an employer for a private site). If
993 not specified, will be attributed to 'contributors'.
994 url: URL of the license, used for links.
995 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
996 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1001 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1002 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1004 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1005 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1006 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1007 them in an associative array.
1012 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1014 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1015 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1016 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1017 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1018 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1019 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1020 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1021 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1022 interesting people, or whatever.
1027 For configuring avatar access.
1029 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1030 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1031 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1032 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1033 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1034 be included with the avatar server, too.
1035 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1036 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1037 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1038 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1039 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1040 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1041 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1043 ssl: Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults to null, meaning
1044 to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
1049 For configuring the public stream.
1051 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1052 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1053 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1054 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1055 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1056 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1057 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1058 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1063 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1064 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1065 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1066 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1067 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1068 subdirectory of the install directory.
1069 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1070 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1071 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1072 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1073 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1074 ssl: Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default is null, which means
1075 guess based on site SSL settings.
1080 server: You can speed up page loading by pointing the
1081 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1082 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1083 path: Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
1084 which means to use the site path + '/js/'.
1085 ssl: Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null, which means
1086 guess based on site SSL settings.
1091 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1093 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1094 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1095 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1096 shouldn't need to change.
1097 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1098 from 'user'@'server'.
1099 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1100 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1101 password: password for the user account.
1102 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1103 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1104 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1105 case with your server.
1106 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1107 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1108 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1109 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1111 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1112 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1113 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1114 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1115 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1116 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1121 For configuring invites.
1123 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1128 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1130 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1131 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1132 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1137 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1139 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1140 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1141 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1146 For daemon processes.
1148 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1149 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1150 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1151 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1152 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1153 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1155 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1156 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1161 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1162 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1164 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1165 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1166 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1167 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1168 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1169 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1170 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1171 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1172 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1173 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1180 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1181 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1186 For SMS integration.
1188 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1189 should also be enabled.
1194 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1196 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1203 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1204 StatusNet will no longer run.
1209 For notice-posting throttles.
1211 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1212 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1213 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1214 from a user every hour.
1215 timespan: see 'count'.
1222 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1223 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1224 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1225 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1226 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1227 the site text limit default.
1232 Options with new users.
1234 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1235 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1236 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1237 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1238 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1239 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1240 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1241 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1243 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1244 be created before the configuration is updated.
1249 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1250 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1251 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1252 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1253 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1254 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1257 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1258 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1259 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1260 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1261 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1262 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1263 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1265 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1266 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1267 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1268 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1269 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1275 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1276 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1277 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1279 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1282 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1283 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1284 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1286 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1287 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1288 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1289 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1290 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1292 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1293 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1294 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1295 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1297 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1298 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1299 is smaller than file_quota.
1300 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1301 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1302 not exceed the user_quota.
1303 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1304 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1305 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1306 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1307 should be writeable by the Web user.
1308 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1309 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1310 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1311 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1312 main path + '/file/'.
1313 ssl: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
1314 guess based on other SSL settings.
1315 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1316 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1322 Options for group functionality.
1324 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1325 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1326 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1327 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1333 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1335 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1340 Some stuff for search.
1342 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1343 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1344 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1345 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1346 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1347 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1354 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1355 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1356 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1357 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1358 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1359 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1364 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1367 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1368 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1369 null; same as site server.
1370 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1371 subdir of install dir.
1372 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1373 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1374 ssl: Whether or not to use HTTPS for background files. Defaults to
1375 null, meaning to guess from site-wide SSL settings.
1380 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1381 notify third-party servers of updates.
1383 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1384 array (no notification).
1389 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1390 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1392 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1393 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1394 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1395 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1396 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1397 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1398 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1403 Configuration options specific to notices.
1405 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1406 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1412 Configuration options specific to messages.
1414 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1415 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1421 Configuration options for the login command.
1423 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1424 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1425 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1426 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1427 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1428 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1429 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1430 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1431 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1436 If an installation has only one user, this can simplify a lot of the
1437 interface. It also makes the user's profile the root URL.
1439 enabled: Whether to run in "single user mode". Default false.
1440 nickname: nickname of the single user.
1445 We put out a default robots.txt file to guide the processing of
1446 Web crawlers. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for more information
1447 on the format of this file.
1449 crawldelay: if non-empty, this value is provided as the Crawl-Delay:
1450 for the robots.txt file. see http://ur1.ca/l5a0
1451 for more information. Default is zero, no explicit delay.
1452 disallow: Array of (virtual) directories to disallow. Default is 'main',
1453 'search', 'message', 'settings', 'admin'. Ignored when site
1454 is private, in which case the entire site ('/') is disallowed.
1459 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1460 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1461 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1462 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1463 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1465 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1466 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1468 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1470 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1474 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1476 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1477 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1478 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1480 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1481 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1482 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1483 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1484 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1485 class's constructor).
1487 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1488 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1490 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1491 'param2' => 'value2'));
1493 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1494 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1495 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1496 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1499 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1504 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1505 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1506 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1508 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1509 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1510 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1511 conflicts in your code.
1513 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
1514 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1515 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1520 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1521 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1522 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1525 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1526 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1527 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1528 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1529 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1531 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1532 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1533 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1534 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1535 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1536 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1537 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1542 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1543 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1544 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1546 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1548 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1549 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1550 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1551 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1552 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1553 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1554 installing it on your production machines.
1556 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1561 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1563 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1564 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1565 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1566 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1567 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1568 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1573 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1574 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1575 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1576 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1577 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1582 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1583 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1584 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1586 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1587 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1588 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1589 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1590 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1591 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1602 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1606 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1607 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1609 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1613 * Tobias Diekershoff
1625 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1626 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1627 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what