5 StatusNet 0.8.2 ("Life and How to Live It")
8 This is the README file for StatusNet (formerly Laconica), the Open
9 Source microblogging platform. It includes installation instructions,
10 descriptions of options you can set, warnings, tips, and general info
11 for administrators. Information on using StatusNet can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 StatusNet (formerly Laconica) is a Free and Open Source microblogging
18 platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange
19 short (140 character) messages over the Web. Users can choose which
20 people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues'
21 status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter,
22 Jaiku, Yammer, and Plurk.
24 With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
25 instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
26 desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
28 StatusNet supports an open standard called OpenMicroBlogging
29 <http://openmicroblogging.org/> that lets users on different Web sites
30 or in different companies subscribe to each others' notices. It
31 enables a distributed social network spread all across the Web.
33 StatusNet was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
34 Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
35 too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
36 more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
38 http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
40 StatusNet, Inc. <http://status.net/> also offers this software as a
41 Web service, requiring no installation on your part. The software run
42 on status.net is identical to the software available for download, so
43 you can move back and forth between a hosted version or a version
44 installed on your own servers.
49 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
50 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
51 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
52 License, or (at your option) any later version.
54 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
55 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
56 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
57 Affero General Public License for more details.
59 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
60 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
61 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
63 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
64 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
65 you make modifications to the StatusNet source code on your server,
66 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
67 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
68 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
69 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL STATUSNET*.
71 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
72 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
73 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
74 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
80 This is a minor feature and bugfix release since version 0.8.0,
81 released Jul 15 2009. Notable changes this version:
83 - Laconica has been renamed StatusNet. With a few minor compatibility
84 exceptions, all references to "Laconica" in code, documentation
85 and comments were changed to "StatusNet".
86 - A new plugin to support "infinite scroll".
87 - A new plugin to support reCaptcha <http://recaptcha.net>.
88 - Better logging of server errors.
89 - Add an Openid-only mode for authentication.
90 - 'lite' parameter for some Twitter API methods.
91 - A new plugin to auto-complete nicknames for @-replies.
92 - Configuration options to disable OpenID, SMS, Twitter, post-by-email, and IM.
93 - Support for lighttpd <http://lighttpd.org/> using 404-based
95 - Support for using Twitter's OAuth authentication as a client.
96 - First version of the groups API.
97 - Can configure a site-wide design, including background image and
99 - Improved algorithm for replies and conversations, making
100 conversation trees more accurate and useful.
101 - Add a script to create a simulation database for testing/debugging.
102 - Sanitize HTML for OEmbed.
103 - Improved queue management for DB-based queuing.
104 - More complete URL detection.
105 - Hashtags now support full Unicode character set.
106 - Notice inboxes are now garbage-collected on a regular basis
107 at notice-write time.
108 - PiwikAnalyticsPlugin updated for latest Piwik interface.
109 - Attachment and notice pages can be embedded with OEmbed
110 <http://www.oembed.com>.
111 - Failed authentication is logged.
112 - PostgreSQL schema and support brought up-to-date with 0.8.x features.
113 - The installer works with PostgreSQL as well as MySQL.
114 - RSS 1.0 feeds use HTTP Basic authentication in private mode.
115 - Many, many bug fixes, particularly with performance.
116 - Better (=working) garbage collection for old sessions.
117 - Better (=working) search queries.
118 - Some cleanup of HTML output.
119 - Better error handling when updating Facebook.
120 - Considerably better performance when using replication for API
122 - Initial unit tests.
127 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
130 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
131 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
133 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
134 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
135 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
136 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
137 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
138 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
139 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
141 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
143 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
144 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
145 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
146 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
147 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
148 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
149 - tidy. Used to clean up HTML/URLs for the URL shortener to consume.
151 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
153 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
154 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
155 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
156 server to store the data in.
157 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
158 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
159 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
160 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
161 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
163 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
164 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
165 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
166 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
171 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
172 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
173 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
174 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
175 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
176 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
178 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
179 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
180 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
181 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
182 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
183 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
184 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
185 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
186 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
187 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
188 but won't work with OpenID.
189 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
190 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
191 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
192 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
193 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
194 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
195 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
196 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
197 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
198 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
199 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
200 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
201 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
202 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
203 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
205 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
206 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
207 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
208 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
209 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
210 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
212 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
213 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
214 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
215 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
216 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
217 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
222 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
223 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
225 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
226 command like this will work:
228 tar zxf statusnet-0.8.1.tar.gz
230 ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.1 subdirectory in your current
231 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
232 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
233 files to the server.)
235 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
236 directory. Usually something like this will work:
238 mv statusnet-0.8.1 /var/www/mublog
240 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
241 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
242 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
243 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
244 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
246 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
248 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
250 On some systems, this will probably work:
252 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
253 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
255 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
256 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
257 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
259 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
260 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
263 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
264 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
265 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
267 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
268 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
270 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
273 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
275 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
276 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
279 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
280 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
281 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
283 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
284 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
287 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
288 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
289 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
291 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
292 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
295 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
297 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
299 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
300 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
301 almost-empty database.
303 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
304 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
305 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
306 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
307 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
308 URLs are stored in the database.
313 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
314 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
317 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
319 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
322 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
324 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
326 http://example.org/mublog/fred
328 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
329 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
330 mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
333 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
334 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
335 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
336 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
337 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
338 just leaving the .htaccess file.
340 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
341 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
342 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
344 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
346 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
348 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
351 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
353 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
359 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
360 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
361 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
362 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
363 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
365 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
366 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
368 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
369 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
370 indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
371 every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
372 to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
377 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
378 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
379 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
380 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
381 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
382 configuration is essentially email configuration.
384 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
385 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
386 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
387 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
389 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
390 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
392 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
395 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
397 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
398 that support email SMS gateways.
400 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
402 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
404 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
405 of a filter than a daemon.
407 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
409 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
411 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
412 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
416 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
419 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
421 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
423 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
424 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
425 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
426 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
431 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
432 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
433 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
434 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
437 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
438 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
439 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
441 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
442 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
443 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
444 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
446 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
447 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
448 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
450 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
451 configuration section.
453 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
454 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
455 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
456 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
457 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
458 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
460 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
461 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
462 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
463 off of amd64 to another server.
468 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
469 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
470 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
472 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
473 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
475 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
477 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
478 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
479 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
480 consider setting up queues and daemons.
485 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
486 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
487 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
488 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
489 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
490 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
491 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
493 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
494 installed on whatever server you use.
496 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
497 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
498 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
499 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
501 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
502 server!), set the following variable:
504 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
506 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
507 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
508 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
509 They're not created automatically.
511 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
512 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
513 StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
515 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
517 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
518 them as notices in the database.
519 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
520 registered users who should receive them.
521 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
522 public feed listeners.
523 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
524 recipients on foreign servers.
525 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
527 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
529 * twitterqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Twitter for user
530 who have opted to set up Twitter bridging.
531 * facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
532 of the built-in Facebook application.
534 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
535 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
536 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
537 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
538 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
539 to check their status and keep them running.
541 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
542 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
545 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
546 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
547 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
548 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
555 As of 0.8.1, OAuth is used to to access protected resources on Twitter
556 instead of HTTP Basic Auth. To use Twitter bridging you will need
557 to register your instance of StatusNet as an application on Twitter
558 (http://twitter.com/apps), and update the following variables in your
559 config.php with the consumer key and secret Twitter generates for you:
561 $config['twitter']['consumer_key'] = 'YOURKEY';
562 $config['twitter']['consumer_secret'] = 'YOURSECRET';
564 When registering your application with Twitter set the type to "Browser"
565 and your Callback URL to:
567 http://example.org/mublog/twitter/authorization
569 The default access type should be, "Read & Write".
571 * Importing statuses from Twitter
573 To allow your users to import their friends' Twitter statuses, you will
574 need to enable the bidirectional Twitter bridge in config.php:
576 $config['twitterbridge']['enabled'] = true;
578 and run the TwitterStatusFetcher daemon (scripts/twitterstatusfetcher.php).
579 Additionally, you will want to set the integration source variable,
580 which will keep notices posted to Twitter via StatusNet from looping
581 back. The integration source should be set to the name of your
582 application, exactly as you specified it on the settings page for your
583 StatusNet application on Twitter, e.g.:
585 $config['integration']['source'] = 'YourApp';
587 * Twitter Friends Syncing
589 Users may set a flag in their settings ("Subscribe to my Twitter friends
590 here" under the Twitter tab) to have StatusNet attempt to locate and
591 subscribe to "friends" (people they "follow") on Twitter who also have
592 accounts on your StatusNet system, and who have previously set up a link
593 for automatically posting notices to Twitter.
595 As of 0.8.0, this is no longer accomplished via a cron job. Instead you
596 must run the SyncTwitterFriends daemon (scripts/synctwitterfreinds.php).
598 Built-in Facebook Application
599 -----------------------------
601 StatusNet's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
602 update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
603 their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
604 timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
605 is built into StatusNet and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
606 status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
607 facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
610 Quick setup instructions*:
612 Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
614 http://www.facebook.com/developers/
616 Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
617 Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
618 key and secret, e.g.:
620 # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
621 $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
622 $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
624 In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
626 - Canvas Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
627 - Post-Remove Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
628 - Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
629 - Canvas Page URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
631 (Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
632 to your StatusNet installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
633 Facebook application you created.)
635 Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
636 In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
637 "Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
638 Everything else can be left with default values.
640 *For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
643 http://status.net/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
648 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
649 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
650 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
653 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
654 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
655 put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
656 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
657 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
658 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
659 available through HTTP.
661 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
663 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
665 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
666 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
667 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
668 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
669 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
671 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
672 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
673 following to your robots.txt file:
675 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
677 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
678 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
679 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
685 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
686 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
687 basis for other sites.
689 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
690 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
691 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
692 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
694 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
695 the config.php file. See below for details.
697 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
698 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
701 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
702 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
704 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
706 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
707 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
708 users who don't upload their own.
709 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
710 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
711 listing on profile pages.
713 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
716 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
717 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
718 modification to use the new output format.
723 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
724 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
725 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
726 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
728 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
729 you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/pootle/ to add one
730 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
731 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
736 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
737 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
738 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
739 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
744 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
745 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
746 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
747 management, but host it on a public server.
749 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
750 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
751 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
752 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
753 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
754 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
755 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
756 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
758 If fancy URLs is enabled, access to file attachments can also be
759 restricted to logged-in users only. Uncomment the appropriate rewrite
760 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf. (This most likely will
761 not work if you are using a virtual server for attachments, so consider
762 the performance/security tradeoff.)
767 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
768 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
769 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
770 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
771 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
774 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
775 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
776 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
777 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.1. Try these step-by-step
778 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
780 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
782 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
783 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
784 backup. You have been warned.
785 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
786 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
788 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
789 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
790 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
791 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
792 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
793 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
794 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
795 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
796 final backup of the Web directory and database.
797 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
798 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.1 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
799 wherever your code used to be.
800 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
801 directory to your new directory.
802 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
803 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
804 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
805 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
807 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
808 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
809 do it without a known-good backup!
811 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
814 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
816 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
817 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
819 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
821 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
822 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
823 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
824 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
825 database. Make sure you have a backup.
826 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
827 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
828 script before running it.
829 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
830 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
831 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
832 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
833 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
835 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
836 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
837 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
840 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
841 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
842 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
848 Before version 0.6.2, the page showing all notices from people the
849 user is subscribed to ("so-and-so with friends") was calculated at run
850 time. Starting with 0.6.2, we have a new data structure for holding a
851 user's "notice inbox". (Note: distinct from the "message inbox", which
852 is the "inbox" tab in the UI. The notice inbox appears under the
855 Notices are added to the inbox when they're created. This speeds up
856 the query considerably, and also allows us the opportunity, in the
857 future, to add different kind of notices to an inbox -- like @-replies
858 or subscriptions to search terms or hashtags.
860 Notice inboxes are enabled by default for new installations. If you
861 are upgrading an existing site, this means that your users will see
862 empty "Personal" pages. The following steps will help you fix the
865 0. $config['inboxes']['enabled'] can be set to one of three values. If
866 you set it to 'false', the site will work as before. Support for this
867 will probably be dropped in future versions.
868 1. Setting the flag to 'transitional' means that you're in transition.
869 In this mode, the code will run the "new query" or the "old query"
870 based on whether the user's inbox has been updated.
871 2. After setting the flag to "transitional", you can run the
872 fixup_inboxes.php script to create the inboxes. You may want to set
873 the memory limit high. You can re-run it without ill effect.
874 3. When fixup_inboxes is finished, you can set the enabled flag to
877 NOTE: As of version 0.8.1 notice inboxes are automatically trimmed back
878 to ~1000 notices every once in a while.
880 NOTE: we will drop support for non-inboxed sites in the 0.9.x version
881 of StatusNet. It's time to switch now!
886 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
887 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
888 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
889 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
892 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
893 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
894 convert your DB to the new format.
895 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
896 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
897 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
898 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
899 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
900 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
901 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
903 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
904 new notices will be stored correctly.
906 Configuration options
907 =====================
909 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
910 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
911 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
912 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
913 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
915 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
916 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
917 will be included in this order:
919 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
920 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
921 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
922 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
924 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
925 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
928 $config['section']['option'] = value;
930 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
936 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
938 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
939 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
940 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
942 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
943 section above). Default is false.
944 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
945 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
947 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
948 hard errors. Default false.
949 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
950 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
951 don't need to use this.
952 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
953 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
954 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
956 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
958 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
959 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
960 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
961 except as the basis for your own.
962 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
963 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
964 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
965 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
966 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
967 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
968 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
969 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
970 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
971 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
972 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
973 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
974 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
975 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
976 was invited by an existing user.
977 openidonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registrations and logins
979 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
980 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
981 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
982 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
984 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
985 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
986 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
988 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
989 the logo in the theme, if any.
990 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
991 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
992 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
993 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
994 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
995 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
996 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
997 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
998 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
999 preferably other cookies as well.
1000 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
1001 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
1003 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
1004 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
1010 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
1011 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
1012 set are listed below for clarity.
1014 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
1015 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
1016 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
1017 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
1018 'password' is the password, and etc.
1019 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
1020 to set this to point to the location of the
1021 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
1022 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
1023 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
1024 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
1025 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
1026 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
1027 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
1028 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
1030 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
1031 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
1032 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
1033 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
1034 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
1035 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
1036 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
1037 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
1038 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
1039 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
1040 to include it in this array, too.
1041 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
1042 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
1043 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
1049 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
1050 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
1052 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
1053 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
1054 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
1055 you can track log messages more easily.
1056 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
1057 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
1058 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
1064 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
1065 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
1066 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
1068 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
1069 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
1070 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
1071 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
1072 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
1073 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
1074 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
1076 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
1077 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
1078 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1080 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1085 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
1086 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1087 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1088 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1090 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1091 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1092 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1097 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1098 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1100 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1101 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1102 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1103 them in an associative array.
1108 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1110 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1111 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1112 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1113 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1114 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1115 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1116 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1117 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1118 interesting people, or whatever.
1123 For configuring avatar access.
1125 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1126 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1127 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1128 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1129 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1130 be included with the avatar server, too.
1131 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1132 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1133 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1134 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1135 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1136 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1137 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1143 For configuring the public stream.
1145 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1146 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1147 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1148 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1149 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1150 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1151 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1152 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1157 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1158 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1159 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1160 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1161 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1162 subdirectory of the install directory.
1163 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1164 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1165 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1166 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1167 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1172 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1174 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1175 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1176 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1177 shouldn't need to change.
1178 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1179 from 'user'@'server'.
1180 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1181 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1182 password: password for the user account.
1183 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1184 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1185 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1186 case with your server.
1187 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1188 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1189 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1190 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1192 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1193 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1194 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1195 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1196 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1197 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1202 For configuring invites.
1204 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1209 For configuring OpenID.
1211 enabled: Whether to allow users to register and login using OpenID. Default
1217 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1219 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1220 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1221 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1226 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1228 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1229 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1230 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1235 For daemon processes.
1237 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1238 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1239 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1240 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1241 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1242 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1244 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1245 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1250 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1251 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1253 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1254 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1255 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1256 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1257 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1258 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1259 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1260 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1261 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1262 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1267 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1268 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1269 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1271 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1272 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1273 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1280 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1281 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1286 For SMS integration.
1288 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1289 should also be enabled.
1294 For Twitter integration
1296 enabled: Whether to enable Twitter integration. Defaults to true.
1297 Queues should also be enabled.
1302 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1304 source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
1305 to 'statusnet', but if you request your own source name from
1306 Twitter <http://twitter.com/help/request_source>, you can use
1307 that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
1309 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1316 enabled: A three-valued flag for whether to use notice inboxes (see
1317 upgrading info above for notes about this change). Can be
1318 'false', 'true', or '"transitional"'.
1323 For notice-posting throttles.
1325 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1326 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1327 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1328 from a user every hour.
1329 timespan: see 'count'.
1336 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1337 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1338 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1339 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1344 Options with new users.
1346 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1347 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1348 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1349 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1350 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1351 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1352 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1353 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1355 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1356 be created before the configuration is updated.
1361 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1362 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1363 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1364 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1365 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1366 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1369 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1370 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1371 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1372 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1373 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1374 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1375 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1377 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1378 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1379 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1380 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1381 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1387 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1388 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1389 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1391 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1394 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1395 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1396 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1398 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1399 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1400 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1401 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1402 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1404 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1405 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1406 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1407 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1409 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1410 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1411 is smaller than file_quota.
1412 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1413 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1414 not exceed the user_quota.
1415 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1416 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1417 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1418 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1419 should be writeable by the Web user.
1420 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1421 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1422 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1423 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1424 main path + '/file/'.
1425 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1426 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1432 Options for group functionality.
1434 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1435 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1440 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1442 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1447 Some stuff for search.
1449 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1450 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1451 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1452 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1453 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1454 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1461 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1462 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1463 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1464 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1465 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1466 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1471 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1474 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1475 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1476 null; same as site server.
1477 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1478 subdir of install dir.
1479 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1480 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1485 A bi-direction bridge to Twitter (http://twitter.com/).
1487 enabled: default false. If true, will show user's Twitter friends'
1488 notices in their inbox and faves pages, only to the user. You
1489 must also run the twitterstatusfetcher.php script.
1494 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1495 notify third-party servers of updates.
1497 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1498 array (no notification).
1503 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1504 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1506 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1507 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1508 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1509 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1510 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1511 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1512 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1517 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1518 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1519 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1520 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1521 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1523 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1524 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1526 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1528 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1532 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1534 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1535 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1536 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1538 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1539 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1540 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1541 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1542 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1543 class's constructor).
1545 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1546 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1548 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1549 'param2' => 'value2'));
1551 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1552 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1553 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1554 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1557 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1562 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1563 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1564 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1566 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1567 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1568 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1569 conflicts in your code.
1571 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.1 without reading the "Notice
1572 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1573 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1578 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1579 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1580 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1583 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1584 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1585 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1586 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1587 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1589 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1590 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1591 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1592 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1593 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1594 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1595 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1600 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1601 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1602 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1604 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1606 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1607 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1608 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1609 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1610 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1611 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1612 installing it on your production machines.
1614 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1619 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1621 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1622 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1623 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1624 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1625 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1626 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1631 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1632 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1633 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1634 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1635 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1640 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1641 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1642 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1644 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1645 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1646 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1647 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1648 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1649 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1660 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1664 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1665 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1667 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1671 * Tobias Diekershoff
1680 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1681 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1682 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what