5 Laconica 0.7.4 ("Can't Get There From Here")
8 This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
9 platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
10 options you can set, warnings, tips, and general info for
11 administrators. Information on using Laconica can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 Laconica (pronounced "luh-KAWN-ih-kuh") is a Free and Open Source
18 microblogging platform. It helps people in a community, company or
19 group to exchange short (140 character) messages over the Web. Users
20 can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or
21 colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites
22 like Twitter, Jaiku and Plurk.
24 With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
25 instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
26 desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
28 Laconica supports an open standard called OpenMicroBlogging
29 <http://openmicroblogging.org/> that lets users on different Web sites
30 or in different companies subscribe to each others' notices. It
31 enables a distributed social network spread all across the Web.
33 Laconica was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
34 Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
35 too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
36 more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
38 http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
43 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
44 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
45 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
46 License, or (at your option) any later version.
48 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
49 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
50 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
51 Affero General Public License for more details.
53 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
54 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
55 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
57 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
58 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
59 you make modifications to the Laconica source code on your server,
60 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
61 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
62 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
63 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL LACONICA*.
65 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
66 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
67 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
68 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
74 This is a minor bug-fix and feature release since version 0.7.3,
75 released Apr 4 2009. Notable changes this version:
77 - Improved handling of UTF-8 characters. The new code is *not* backwards
78 compatible by default; see "Upgrading" below for instructions on
79 converting existing databases to the correct character set.
80 - Unroll joins for large queries. This greatly enhanced database
81 performance -- up to 50x for some queries -- at the expense of making
82 an extra DB hit for some queries.
83 - Added an optional plugin to use WikiHashtags
84 (http://hashtags.wikia.com/) for the sidebar on hashtag pages.
85 - Optimized Twitter friend synchronization.
86 - Better error handling for Ajax posting of notices, including
87 HTTP errors and timeouts.
88 - Experimental Comet plugin -- supports the cometd and the Bayeux
89 protocol. Using this plugin, you can show "real time" updates on the
90 public and tag pages. However, server configuration is complex.
91 - If queues are enabled, update inboxes and memcached off-line. Speeds
92 up posting considerably.
93 - Correctly shorten links posted through XMPP.
94 - <link> elements for pagination, supported by some browsers like Opera.
95 - Corrected date format in search API.
96 - Made the public XRDS file work correctly.
101 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
104 - PHP 5.2.x. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
105 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
107 - MySQL 5.x. The Laconica database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
108 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
109 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
110 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
111 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
112 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
113 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
115 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
117 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
118 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
119 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
120 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
121 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
122 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
124 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
126 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
127 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
128 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
129 server to store the data in.
130 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
131 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
132 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
133 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
134 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
136 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
137 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
138 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
139 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
144 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
145 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
146 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
147 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
148 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
149 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
151 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
152 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
153 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
154 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
155 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
156 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
157 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
158 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
159 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
160 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
161 but won't work with OpenID.
162 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
163 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
164 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
165 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
166 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
167 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
168 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
169 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
170 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
171 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
172 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
173 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
174 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
175 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
176 version may render your Laconica site unable to send or receive XMPP
178 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
179 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
180 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
181 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
182 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
184 A design goal of Laconica is that the basic Web functionality should
185 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
186 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
187 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
188 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
189 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
194 Installing the basic Laconica Web component is relatively easy,
195 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
197 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
198 command like this will work:
200 tar zxf laconica-0.7.4.tar.gz
202 ...which will make a laconica-0.7.4 subdirectory in your current
203 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
204 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
205 files to the server.)
207 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
208 directory. Usually something like this will work:
210 mv laconica-0.7.4 /var/www/mublog
212 This will make your Laconica instance available in the mublog path of
213 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
214 "laconica" might also be good path names. If you know how to
215 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
216 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
218 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
220 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
222 On some systems, this will probably work:
224 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
225 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
227 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
228 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
229 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
231 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
232 writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
234 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
236 You can also make the avatar directory writeable by the Web server
237 group, as noted above.
239 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
242 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create laconica
244 Note that Laconica must have its own database; you can't share the
245 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
248 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
249 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
250 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
252 6. Create a new database account that Laconica will use to access the
253 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
256 GRANT ALL on laconica.*
257 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
258 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
260 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
261 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
264 7. In a browser, navigate to the Laconica install script; something like:
266 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
268 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
269 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
270 almost-empty database.
272 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
273 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
274 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
275 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
276 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
277 URLs are stored in the database.
282 By default, Laconica will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
283 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
286 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
288 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
291 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
293 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
295 http://example.org/mublog/fred
297 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
298 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
299 mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
302 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your Laconica
303 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
304 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
305 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
306 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
307 just leaving the .htaccess file.
309 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
310 to your Laconica installation on your server. Typically this will
311 be the path to your Laconica directory relative to your Web root.
313 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
315 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
317 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
320 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
322 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
328 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
329 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
330 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
331 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
332 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
334 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
335 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
337 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
338 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
339 indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
340 every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
341 to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
346 Laconica supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
347 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
348 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
349 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
350 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
351 configuration is essentially email configuration.
353 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
354 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
355 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
356 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
358 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
359 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
361 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your Laconica database. This will
364 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" laconica < db/carrier.sql
366 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
367 that support email SMS gateways.
369 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
371 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
373 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
374 of a filter than a daemon.
376 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
378 *: /path/to/laconica/scripts/maildaemon.php
380 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
381 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
385 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
388 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
390 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
392 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
393 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
394 server, you'll need to have a full installation of Laconica, a working
395 config.php, and access to the Laconica database from the mail server.
400 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
401 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
402 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
403 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
406 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
407 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
408 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
410 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
411 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
412 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
413 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
415 Laconica will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
416 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
417 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
419 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
420 configuration section.
422 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
423 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
424 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
425 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
426 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
427 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
429 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
430 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
431 work around this bug in Laconica; current recommendation is to move
432 off of amd64 to another server.
437 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
438 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
439 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
441 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
442 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
444 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
446 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
447 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
448 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
449 consider setting up queues and daemons.
454 Some activities that Laconica needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
455 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
456 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
457 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
458 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
459 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
460 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
462 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
463 installed on whatever server you use.
465 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install Laconica
466 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
467 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
468 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
470 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
471 server!), set the following variable:
473 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
475 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
476 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
477 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
478 They're not created automatically.
480 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
481 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
482 Laconica dir, "." should suffice.
484 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
486 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
487 them as notices in the database.
488 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
489 registered users who should receive them.
490 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
491 public feed listeners.
492 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
493 recipients on foreign servers.
494 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
496 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
498 * twitterqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Twitter for user
499 who have opted to set up Twitter bridging.
500 * facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
501 of the built-in Facebook application.
503 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
504 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
505 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
506 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
507 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
508 to check their status and keep them running.
510 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
511 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
514 Twitter Friends Syncing
515 -----------------------
517 As of Laconica 0.6.3, users may set a flag in their settings ("Subscribe
518 to my Twitter friends here" under the Twitter tab) to have Laconica
519 attempt to locate and subscribe to "friends" (people they "follow") on
520 Twitter who also have accounts on your Laconica system, and who have
521 previously set up a link for automatically posting notices to Twitter.
523 Optionally, there is a script (./scripts/synctwitterfriends.php), meant
524 to be run periodically from a job scheduler (e.g.: cron under Unix), to
525 look for new additions to users' friends lists. Note that the friends
526 syncing only subscribes users to each other, it does not unsubscribe
527 users when they stop following each other on Twitter.
531 # Update Twitter friends subscriptions every half hour
532 0,30 * * * * /path/to/php /path/to/laconica/scripts/synctwitterfriends.php>&/dev/null
534 Built-in Facebook Application
535 -----------------------------
537 Laconica's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
538 update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
539 their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
540 timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
541 is built into Laconica and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
542 status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
543 facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
546 Quick setup instructions*:
548 Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
550 http://www.facebook.com/developers/
552 Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
553 Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
554 key and secret, e.g.:
556 # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
557 $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
558 $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
560 In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
562 - Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
563 - Post-Remove URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
564 - Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
565 - Canvas URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
567 (Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
568 to your Laconica installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
569 Facebook application you created.)
571 Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
572 In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
573 "Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
574 Everything else can be left with default values.
576 *For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
579 http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
584 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
585 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
586 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
589 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. Laconica creates a number of
590 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
591 put these in a sub-directory of your Laconica directory to avoid
592 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
593 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
594 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
595 available through HTTP.
597 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
599 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
601 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
602 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
603 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
604 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
605 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
607 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
608 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
609 following to your robots.txt file:
611 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
613 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
614 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
615 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
621 There are two themes shipped with this version of Laconica: "identica",
622 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
623 basis for other sites.
625 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
626 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
627 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
628 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
630 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
631 the config.php file. See below for details.
633 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
634 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
637 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
638 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
640 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
642 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
643 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
644 users who don't upload their own.
645 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
646 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
647 listing on profile pages.
649 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
652 NOTE: the HTML generated by Laconica changed *radically* between
653 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
654 modification to use the new output format.
659 Translations in Laconica use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
660 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
661 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
662 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
664 Contributions of translation information to Laconica are very easy:
665 you can use the Web interface at http://laconi.ca/pootle/ to add one
666 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
667 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
672 There is no built-in system for doing backups in Laconica. You can make
673 backups of a working Laconica system by backing up the database and
674 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
675 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
680 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
681 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
682 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
683 management, but host it on a public server.
685 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
686 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
687 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
688 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
689 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
690 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
691 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
692 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
697 IMPORTANT NOTE: Laconica 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
698 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
699 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
700 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
701 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
704 If you've been using Laconica 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've been
705 tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably want
706 to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated upgrade
707 procedure in Laconica 0.7.4. Try these step-by-step instructions; read
708 to the end first before trying them.
710 0. Download Laconica and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
712 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
713 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
714 backup. You have been warned.
715 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
716 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
718 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
719 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
720 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
721 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
722 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
723 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
724 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
725 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
726 final backup of the Web directory and database.
727 6. Move your Laconica directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
728 7. Unpack your Laconica 0.6 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
729 wherever your code used to be.
730 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
731 directory to your new directory.
732 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
733 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
734 10. Rebuild the database. For MySQL, go to your Laconica directory and
735 run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
737 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/laconica.sql
739 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
740 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
741 that's _not_ the user Laconica runs as.
742 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
743 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
744 script before running it.
745 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
746 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
747 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
748 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
749 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
751 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
752 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
753 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
756 NOTE: the database definition file, stoica.ini, has been renamed to
757 laconica.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
758 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
764 Before version 0.6.2, the page showing all notices from people the
765 user is subscribed to ("so-and-so with friends") was calculated at run
766 time. Starting with 0.6.2, we have a new data structure for holding a
767 user's "notice inbox". (Note: distinct from the "message inbox", which
768 is the "inbox" tab in the UI. The notice inbox appears under the
771 Notices are added to the inbox when they're created. This speeds up
772 the query considerably, and also allows us the opportunity, in the
773 future, to add different kind of notices to an inbox -- like @-replies
774 or subscriptions to search terms or hashtags.
776 Notice inboxes are enabled by default for new installations. If you
777 are upgrading an existing site, this means that your users will see
778 empty "Personal" pages. The following steps will help you fix the
781 0. $config['inboxes']['enabled'] can be set to one of three values. If
782 you set it to 'false', the site will work as before. Support for this
783 will probably be dropped in future versions.
784 1. Setting the flag to 'transitional' means that you're in transition.
785 In this mode, the code will run the "new query" or the "old query"
786 based on whether the user's inbox has been updated.
787 2. After setting the flag to "transitional", you can run the
788 fixup_inboxes.php script to create the inboxes. You may want to set
789 the memory limit high. You can re-run it without ill effect.
790 3. When fixup_inboxes is finished, you can set the enabled flag to
796 Laconica 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
797 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
798 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
799 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
802 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
803 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
804 convert your DB to the new format.
805 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
806 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
807 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
808 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
809 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
810 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
811 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
813 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
814 new notices will be stored correctly.
816 Configuration options
817 =====================
819 The sole configuration file for Laconica (excepting configurations for
820 dependency software) is config.php in your Laconica directory. If you
821 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
822 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
823 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
825 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
826 /etc/laconica/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
827 will be included in this order:
829 * /etc/laconica/laconica.php - server-wide config
830 * /etc/laconica/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
831 * /etc/laconica/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
832 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
834 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
835 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
838 $config['section']['option'] = value;
840 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
846 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
848 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
849 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
850 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
852 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
853 section above). Default is false.
854 logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
855 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
857 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
858 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
859 don't need to use this.
860 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
861 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
862 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
864 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
866 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
867 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
868 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
869 except as the basis for your own.
870 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
871 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
872 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
873 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
874 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
875 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
876 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
877 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
878 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
879 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
880 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
881 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
882 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
883 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
884 was invited by an existing user.
885 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
886 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
887 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
888 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
890 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
891 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
892 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
894 dupelimit: Time in which it's not OK for the same person to post the
895 same notice; default = 60 seconds.
896 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
897 the logo in the theme, if any.
898 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
899 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
900 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
901 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
902 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
903 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
904 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
905 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
906 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
907 preferably other cookies as well.
912 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
913 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
914 set are listed below for clarity.
916 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your Laconica database. This is
917 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
918 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
919 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
920 'password' is the password, and etc.
921 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'laconica', you'll need
922 to set this to point to the location of the
923 laconica.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
924 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
925 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
926 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
927 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
928 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
929 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
930 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
932 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
933 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
934 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
935 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
936 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
937 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
938 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
939 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
940 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
941 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
942 to include it in this array, too.
943 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
944 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
945 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
951 By default, Laconica sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
952 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
954 appname: The name that Laconica uses to log messages. By default it's
955 "laconica", but if you have more than one installation on the
956 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
957 you can track log messages more easily.
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.
971 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
972 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
973 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
974 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
976 url: URL of the license, used for links.
977 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
978 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
983 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
984 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
986 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
987 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
988 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
989 them in an associative array.
994 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
996 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
997 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
998 used by Laconica (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
999 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1000 installed in a subdirectory of Laconica or if you just
1001 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1002 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1003 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1004 interesting people, or whatever.
1009 For configuring avatar access.
1011 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1012 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1013 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1014 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1015 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1016 be included with the avatar server, too.
1017 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1018 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1019 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1020 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1021 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1022 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1023 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1029 For configuring the public stream.
1031 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1032 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1033 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1034 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1035 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1036 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1041 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1042 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1043 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1044 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1045 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1046 subdirectory of the install directory.
1047 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1048 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1049 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1050 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1051 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1056 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1058 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1059 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1060 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1061 shouldn't need to change.
1062 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1063 from 'user'@'server'.
1064 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1065 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1066 password: password for the user account.
1067 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1068 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1069 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1070 case with your server.
1071 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between Laconica and the
1072 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1073 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1074 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1076 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1077 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1078 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1079 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1080 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1081 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1086 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1088 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1089 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1090 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1095 For daemon processes.
1097 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1098 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1099 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1100 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1101 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1102 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1104 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1105 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1110 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1111 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1113 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1114 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1115 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1116 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1117 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1118 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1119 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1120 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1121 Laconica site using your memcached server.
1122 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1127 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1128 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1129 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1131 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1132 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1133 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1138 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1140 source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
1141 to 'laconica', but if you request your own source name from
1142 Twitter <http://twitter.com/help/request_source>, you can use
1143 that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
1151 enabled: A three-valued flag for whether to use notice inboxes (see
1152 upgrading info above for notes about this change). Can be
1153 'false', 'true', or '"transitional"'.
1158 For notice-posting throttles.
1160 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1161 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1162 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1163 from a user every hour.
1164 timespan: see 'count'.
1171 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1172 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1173 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1174 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1179 Options with new users.
1181 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1182 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1183 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1184 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1185 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1186 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1187 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1188 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1190 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1191 be created before the configuration is updated.
1196 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1197 local installation to a stats server on the laconi.ca Web site. This
1198 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1199 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1200 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1201 helps Laconica developers take your needs into account when updating
1204 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1205 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1206 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1207 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1208 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1209 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1210 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1212 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to Laconica developers'
1213 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1214 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1215 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1216 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1222 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1223 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1224 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1226 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1229 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1230 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1231 setup your server to properly reckognize the types you want to
1233 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1235 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1236 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1237 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1238 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1240 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1241 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1242 is smaller than file_quota.
1243 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1244 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1245 not exceed the user_quota.
1246 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1247 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1252 Options for group functionality.
1254 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1255 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1260 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1262 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1267 Some stuff for search.
1269 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1270 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1271 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1272 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1273 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1274 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1279 The primary output for Laconica is syslog, unless you configured a
1280 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1281 getting weird behaviour from Laconica.
1283 If you're tracking the unstable version of Laconica in the git
1284 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1285 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1286 conflicts in your code.
1288 If you upgraded to Laconica 0.7.4 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
1289 section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty, read the
1290 "Notice inboxes" section above.
1295 These are some myths you may see on the Web about Laconica.
1296 Documentation from the core team about Laconica has been pretty
1297 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1300 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1301 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1302 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1303 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1304 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1306 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1307 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1308 used by the running software. It was removed from the Laconica
1309 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1310 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1311 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1312 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1317 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1318 development version of Laconica. To get it, use the git version
1319 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1321 git clone http://laconi.ca/software/laconica.git
1323 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1328 There are several ways to get more information about Laconica.
1330 * There is a mailing list for Laconica developers and admins at
1331 http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
1332 * The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1333 * The Laconica wiki, http://laconi.ca/trac/
1338 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1339 * Laconica's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1340 or ideas for making things better. http://laconi.ca/trac/
1341 * e-mail to evan@identi.ca will usually be read and responded to very
1342 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1347 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1348 Laconi.ca. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@identi.ca know
1349 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1351 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1352 * Zach Copley, Control Yourself, Inc.
1353 * Earle Martin, Control Yourself, Inc.
1354 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1355 * Sarven Capadisli, Control Yourself, Inc.
1356 * Robin Millette, Control Yourself, Inc.
1367 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1371 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1372 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n managerx)
1374 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1378 * Tobias Diekershoff
1382 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1383 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed Laconi.ca,
1384 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what