5 StatusNet 0.9.2 ("King of Birds")
8 This is the README file for StatusNet, 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 StatusNet can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 StatusNet is a Free and Open Source microblogging platform. It helps
18 people in a community, company or group to exchange short (140
19 characters, by default) messages over the Web. Users can choose which
20 people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues'
21 status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter,
22 Google Buzz, or Yammer.
24 With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
25 instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
26 desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
28 StatusNet supports an open standard called OStatus
29 <http://ostatus.org/> that lets users in different networks follow
30 each other. It enables a distributed social network spread all across
33 StatusNet was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
34 Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
35 too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
36 more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
38 http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
40 StatusNet, Inc. <http://status.net/> also offers this software as a
41 Web service, requiring no installation on your part. The software run
42 on status.net is identical to the software available for download, so
43 you can move back and forth between a hosted version or a version
44 installed on your own servers.
49 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
50 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
51 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
52 License, or (at your option) any later version.
54 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
55 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
56 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
57 Affero General Public License for more details.
59 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
60 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
61 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
63 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
64 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
65 you make modifications to the StatusNet source code on your server,
66 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
67 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
68 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
69 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL STATUSNET*.
71 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
72 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
73 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
74 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
80 This is a minor bug and feature release since version 0.9.1 released 28
83 Because of fixes to OStatus bugs, it is highly recommended that all
84 public sites upgrade to the new version immediately.
86 Notable changes this version:
88 - Installer no longer fails with a PHP fatal error when trying to set up the
89 subscription to update@status.net
90 - Fixed email notifications for @-replies that come in via OStatus
91 - OStatus related Fixes to the cloudy theme
92 - Pass geo locations over Twitter bridge (will only be used if enabled on the
94 - scripts/showplugins.php - script to dump the list of activated plugins and
96 - scripts/fixup_blocks.php - script to finds any stray subscriptions in
97 violation of blocks, and removes them
98 - Allow blocking someone who's not currently subscribed to you (prevents
99 seeing @-replies from them, or them subbing to you in future)
100 - Default 2-second timeout on Geonames web service lookups
101 - Improved localization for plugins
102 - New anti-spam measures: added nofollow rels to group members list,
104 - Shared cache key option for Geonames plugin (lets multi-instance sites
105 share their cached geoname lookups)
106 - Stability fixes to the TwitterStatusFetcher
107 - If user allows location sharing but turned off browser location use profile
109 - Improved group listing via the API
110 - Improved FOAF output
111 - Several other bugfixes
113 A full changelog is available at http://status.net/wiki/StatusNet_0.9.2.
118 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
121 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
122 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
123 in PHP 5.2 or above. 5.2.6 or later is needed for XMPP background
124 daemons on 64-bit platforms. PHP 5.3.x should work but is known
125 to cause some failures for OpenID.
126 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
127 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
128 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
129 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
130 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
131 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
132 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
134 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
136 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
137 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
138 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
139 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
140 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
141 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
143 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
145 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
146 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
147 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
148 server to store the data in.
149 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
150 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
151 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
152 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
153 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
154 - bcmath or gmp. For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus). Needed
155 if you have OStatus configured.
157 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
158 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
159 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
160 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
165 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
166 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
167 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
168 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
169 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
170 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
172 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
173 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
174 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
175 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
176 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
177 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
178 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
179 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
180 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
181 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
182 but won't work with OpenID.
183 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
184 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
185 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
186 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
187 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
188 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
189 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
190 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
191 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
192 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
193 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
194 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
195 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
196 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
197 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
199 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
200 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
201 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
202 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
203 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
204 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
205 - libomb. a library for implementing OpenMicroBlogging 0.1, the
206 predecessor to OStatus.
207 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
209 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
210 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
211 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
212 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
213 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
214 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
219 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
220 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
222 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
223 command like this will work:
225 tar zxf statusnet-0.9.2.tar.gz
227 ...which will make a statusnet-0.9.2 subdirectory in your current
228 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
229 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
230 files to the server.)
232 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
233 directory. Usually something like this will work:
235 mv statusnet-0.9.2 /var/www/statusnet
237 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the statusnet path of
238 your server, like "http://example.net/statusnet". "microblog" or
239 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
240 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
241 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
243 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
245 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/
247 On some systems, this will probably work:
249 chgrp www-data /var/www/statusnet/
250 chmod g+w /var/www/statusnet/
252 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
253 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
254 a new group like "statusnet" and add the Web server's user to the group.
256 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
257 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
260 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/avatar
261 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/background
262 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/file
264 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
265 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
267 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
270 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
272 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
273 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
276 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
277 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
278 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
280 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
281 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
284 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
285 TO 'statusnetuser'@'localhost'
286 IDENTIFIED BY 'statusnetpassword';
288 You should change 'statusnetuser' and 'statusnetpassword' to your preferred new
289 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
292 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
294 http://yourserver.example.com/statusnet/install.php
296 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
297 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
298 almost-empty database.
300 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
301 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
302 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
303 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
304 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
305 URLs are stored in the database.
310 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
311 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
314 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php/statusnet/fred
316 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
319 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php?p=statusnet/fred
321 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
323 http://example.org/statusnet/fred
325 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
326 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
327 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
330 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
331 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
332 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
333 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
334 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
335 just leaving the .htaccess file.
337 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
338 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
339 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
341 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
343 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
345 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
348 http://example.net/statusnet/main/register
350 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
353 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
354 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
355 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
356 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
357 .htaccess files for more details:
359 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
361 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
363 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
368 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
369 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
371 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
372 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
374 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
375 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
377 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
382 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
383 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
384 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
385 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
386 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
387 configuration is essentially email configuration.
389 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
390 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
391 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
392 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
394 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
395 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
397 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
400 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
402 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
403 that support email SMS gateways.
405 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
407 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
409 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
410 of a filter than a daemon.
412 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
414 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
416 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
417 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
421 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
424 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
426 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
428 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
429 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
430 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
431 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
436 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
437 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
438 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
439 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
442 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
443 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
444 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
446 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
447 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
448 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
449 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
451 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
452 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
453 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
455 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
456 configuration section.
458 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
459 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
460 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
461 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
462 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
463 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
465 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
466 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
467 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
468 off of amd64 to another server.
473 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
474 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
475 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
477 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
478 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
480 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
482 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
483 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
484 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
485 consider setting up queues and daemons.
490 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
491 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
492 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
493 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
494 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
495 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
496 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
498 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
499 installed on whatever server you use.
501 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
502 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
503 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
504 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
506 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
507 server!), set the following variable:
509 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
511 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
512 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
513 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
514 They're not created automatically.
516 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
518 This will run the queue handlers:
520 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
521 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
522 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
523 them as notices in the database; also pulls queued XMPP output from
524 queuedaemon.php to push out to clients.
526 These two daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
527 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
528 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
530 Additional daemons may be also started by this script for certain
531 plugins, such as the Twitter bridge.
533 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
534 to check their status and keep them running.
536 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
537 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
540 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
541 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly
542 recommended for best response time, especially when using XMPP.
544 See the "queues" config section below for how to configure to use STOMP.
545 As of this writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ 5.3.
550 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
551 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
552 basis for other sites.
554 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
555 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
556 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
557 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
559 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
560 the config.php file. See below for details.
562 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
563 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
566 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
567 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
569 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
571 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
572 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
573 users who don't upload their own.
574 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
575 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
576 listing on profile pages.
578 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
581 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
582 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
583 modification to use the new output format.
588 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
589 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
590 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
591 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
593 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
594 you can use the Web interface at TranslateWiki.net to add one
595 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
596 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
598 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
603 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
604 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
605 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
606 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
611 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
612 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
613 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
614 management, but host it on a public server.
616 Total privacy is not guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is
617 all-or-nothing for a site; you can't have some accounts or notices
618 private, and others public. The interaction of private sites
619 with OStatus is undefined.
621 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
622 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
623 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
625 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
627 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
628 insecure way to do this is:
630 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
632 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
633 like this to your config.php:
635 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';
640 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
641 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
642 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
643 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
644 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
647 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
648 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
649 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
650 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.9.2. Try these step-by-step
651 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
653 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
655 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
656 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
657 backup. You have been warned.
658 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
659 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
661 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
662 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
663 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
664 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
665 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
666 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
667 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
668 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
669 final backup of the Web directory and database.
670 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "statusnet.bak".
671 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.9.2 tarball and move it to "statusnet" or
672 wherever your code used to be.
673 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
674 directory to your new directory.
675 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
676 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
677 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
678 if you're upgrading from another 0.9.x version).
680 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
681 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
682 do it without a known-good backup!
684 If your database is at version 0.8.0 or above, you can run a
685 special upgrade script:
687 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/08to09.sql
689 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
690 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
692 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
694 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
695 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
696 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
697 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
698 database. Make sure you have a backup.
699 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
700 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
701 script before running it.
702 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
703 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
704 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
705 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
706 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
708 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
709 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
710 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
713 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
714 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
715 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
721 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
722 StatusNet will no longer run.
727 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
728 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
729 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
730 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
733 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
734 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
735 convert your DB to the new format.
736 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
737 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
738 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
739 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
740 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
741 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
742 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
744 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
745 new notices will be stored correctly.
747 Configuration options
748 =====================
750 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
751 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
752 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/default.php (where most
753 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
754 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
756 Starting with version 0.9.0, a Web based configuration panel has been
757 added to StatusNet. The preferred method for changing config options is
760 A command-line script, setconfig.php, can be used to set individual
761 configuration options. It's in the scripts/ directory.
763 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
764 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
765 will be included in this order:
767 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
768 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
769 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
770 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
772 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
773 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
776 $config['section']['option'] = value;
778 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
784 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
786 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
787 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
788 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'statusnet' or ''
790 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
791 section above). Default is false.
792 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
793 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
795 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
796 hard errors. Default false.
797 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
798 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
799 don't need to use this.
800 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
801 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
802 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
803 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
804 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
805 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
806 no effect in practice.
807 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
808 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
810 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
812 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
813 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
814 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
815 except as the basis for your own.
816 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
817 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
818 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
819 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
820 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
821 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
822 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
823 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
824 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
825 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
826 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
827 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
828 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
829 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
830 was invited by an existing user.
831 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
832 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
833 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
834 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
836 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
837 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
838 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
840 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
841 the logo in the theme, if any.
842 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
843 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
844 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
845 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
846 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
847 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
848 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
849 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
850 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
851 preferably other cookies as well.
852 shorturllength: ignored. See 'url' section below.
853 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
854 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
856 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
857 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
858 profile bios and group descriptions.
863 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
864 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
865 set are listed below for clarity.
867 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
868 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
869 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
870 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
871 'password' is the password, and etc.
872 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
873 to set this to point to the location of the
874 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
875 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
876 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
877 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
878 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
879 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
880 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
881 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
883 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
884 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
885 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
886 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
887 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
888 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
889 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
890 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
891 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
892 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
893 to include it in this array, too.
894 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
895 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
896 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
898 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
899 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
900 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
901 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
902 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
903 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
904 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
910 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
911 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
913 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
914 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
915 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
916 you can track log messages more easily.
917 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
918 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
919 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
925 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
926 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
927 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
929 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
930 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
931 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
932 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
933 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
934 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
935 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
937 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
938 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense. If running
939 multiple instances on the same server, make sure that
940 either this setting or $config['site']['nickname'] are
941 unique for each site to keep them separate.
943 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
945 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
948 stomp_persistent: keep items across queue server restart, if enabled.
949 Under ActiveMQ, the server configuration determines if and how
950 persistent storage is actually saved.
952 If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
953 need to disable this if it does not support persistence.
955 stomp_transactions: use transactions to aid in error detection.
956 A broken transaction will be seen quickly, allowing a message
957 to be redelivered immediately if a daemon crashes.
959 If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
960 need to disable this if it does not support transactions.
962 stomp_acks: send acknowledgements to aid in flow control.
963 An acknowledgement of successful processing tells the server
964 we're ready for more and can help keep things moving smoothly.
966 This should *not* be turned off when running with ActiveMQ, but
967 if using another message queue server that does not support
968 acknowledgements you might need to disable this.
970 softlimit: an absolute or relative "soft memory limit"; daemons will
971 restart themselves gracefully when they find they've hit
972 this amount of memory usage. Defaults to 90% of PHP's global
973 memory_limit setting.
975 inboxes: delivery of messages to receiver's inboxes can be delayed to
976 queue time for best interactive performance on the sender.
977 This may however be annoyingly slow when using the DB queues,
978 so you can set this to false if it's causing trouble.
980 breakout: for stomp, individual queues are by default grouped up for
981 best scalability. If some need to be run by separate daemons,
982 etc they can be manually adjusted here.
984 Default will share all queues for all sites within each group.
985 Specify as <group>/<queue> or <group>/<queue>/<site>,
986 using nickname identifier as site.
988 'main/distrib' separate "distrib" queue covering all sites
989 'xmpp/xmppout/mysite' separate "xmppout" queue covering just 'mysite'
991 max_retries: for stomp, drop messages after N failed attempts to process.
994 dead_letter_dir: for stomp, optional directory to dump data on failed
995 queue processing events after discarding them.
997 stomp_no_transactions: for stomp, the server does not support transactions,
998 so do not try to user them. This is needed for http://www.morbidq.com/.
1000 stomp_no_acks: for stomp, the server does not support acknowledgements.
1001 so do not try to user them. This is needed for http://www.morbidq.com/.
1006 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
1007 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1008 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1009 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1011 type: one of 'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved'
1012 (default copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential
1014 owner: for 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an assigned copyright
1015 holder (for example, an employer for a private site). If
1016 not specified, will be attributed to 'contributors'.
1017 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1018 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1019 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1024 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1025 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1027 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1028 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1029 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1030 them in an associative array.
1035 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1037 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1038 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1039 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1040 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1041 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1042 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1043 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1044 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1045 interesting people, or whatever.
1050 For configuring avatar access.
1052 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1053 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1054 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1055 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1056 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1057 be included with the avatar server, too.
1058 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1059 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1060 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1061 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1062 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1063 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1064 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1066 ssl: Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults to null, meaning
1067 to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
1072 For configuring the public stream.
1074 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1075 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1076 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1077 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1078 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1079 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1080 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1081 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1086 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1087 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1088 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1089 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1090 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1091 subdirectory of the install directory.
1092 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1093 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1094 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1095 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1096 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1097 ssl: Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default is null, which means
1098 guess based on site SSL settings.
1103 server: You can speed up page loading by pointing the
1104 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1105 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1106 path: Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
1107 which means to use the site path + '/js/'.
1108 ssl: Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null, which means
1109 guess based on site SSL settings.
1114 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1116 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1117 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1118 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1119 shouldn't need to change.
1120 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1121 from 'user'@'server'.
1122 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1123 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1124 password: password for the user account.
1125 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1126 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1127 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1128 case with your server.
1129 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1130 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1131 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1132 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1134 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1135 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1136 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1137 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1138 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1139 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1144 For configuring invites.
1146 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1151 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1153 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1154 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1155 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1160 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1162 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1163 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1164 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1169 For daemon processes.
1171 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1172 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1173 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1174 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1175 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1176 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1178 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1179 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1184 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1185 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1187 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1188 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1189 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1190 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1191 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1192 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1193 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1194 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1195 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1196 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1203 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1204 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1209 For SMS integration.
1211 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1212 should also be enabled.
1217 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1219 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1226 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1227 StatusNet will no longer run.
1232 For notice-posting throttles.
1234 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1235 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1236 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1237 from a user every hour.
1238 timespan: see 'count'.
1245 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1246 the site text limit default.
1251 Options with new users.
1253 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1254 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1255 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1256 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1257 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1258 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1259 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1260 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1262 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1263 be created before the configuration is updated.
1268 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1269 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1270 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1271 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1272 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1273 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1276 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1277 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1278 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1279 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1280 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1281 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1282 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1284 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1285 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1286 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1287 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1288 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1294 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1295 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1296 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1298 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1301 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1302 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1303 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1305 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1306 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1307 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1308 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1309 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1311 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1312 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1313 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1314 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1316 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1317 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1318 is smaller than file_quota.
1319 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1320 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1321 not exceed the user_quota.
1322 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1323 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1324 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1325 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1326 should be writeable by the Web user.
1327 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1328 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1329 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1330 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1331 main path + '/file/'.
1332 ssl: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
1333 guess based on other SSL settings.
1334 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1335 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1341 Options for group functionality.
1343 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1344 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1345 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1346 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1352 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1354 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1359 Some stuff for search.
1361 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1362 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1363 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1364 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1365 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1366 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1373 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1374 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1375 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1376 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1377 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1378 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1383 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1386 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1387 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1388 null; same as site server.
1389 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1390 subdir of install dir.
1391 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1392 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1393 ssl: Whether or not to use HTTPS for background files. Defaults to
1394 null, meaning to guess from site-wide SSL settings.
1399 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1400 notify third-party servers of updates.
1402 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1403 array (no notification).
1408 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1409 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1411 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1412 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1413 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1414 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1415 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1416 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1417 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1422 Configuration options specific to notices.
1424 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1425 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1431 Configuration options specific to messages.
1433 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1434 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1440 Configuration options for the login command.
1442 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1443 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1444 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1445 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1446 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1447 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1448 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1449 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1450 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1455 If an installation has only one user, this can simplify a lot of the
1456 interface. It also makes the user's profile the root URL.
1458 enabled: Whether to run in "single user mode". Default false.
1459 nickname: nickname of the single user.
1464 We put out a default robots.txt file to guide the processing of
1465 Web crawlers. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for more information
1466 on the format of this file.
1468 crawldelay: if non-empty, this value is provided as the Crawl-Delay:
1469 for the robots.txt file. see http://ur1.ca/l5a0
1470 for more information. Default is zero, no explicit delay.
1471 disallow: Array of (virtual) directories to disallow. Default is 'main',
1472 'search', 'message', 'settings', 'admin'. Ignored when site
1473 is private, in which case the entire site ('/') is disallowed.
1478 Everybody loves URL shorteners. These are some options for fine-tuning
1479 how and when the server shortens URLs.
1481 shortener: URL shortening service to use by default. Users can override
1482 individually. 'ur1.ca' by default.
1483 maxlength: If an URL is strictly longer than this limit, it will be
1484 shortened. Note that the URL shortener service may return an
1485 URL longer than this limit. Defaults to 25. Users can
1486 override. If set to 0, all URLs will be shortened.
1487 maxnoticelength: If a notice is strictly longer than this limit, all
1488 URLs in the notice will be shortened. Users can override.
1489 -1 means the text limit for notices.
1494 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1495 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1496 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1497 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1498 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1500 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1501 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1503 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1505 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1509 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1511 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1512 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1513 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1515 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1516 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1517 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1518 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1519 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1520 class's constructor).
1522 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1523 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1525 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1526 'param2' => 'value2'));
1528 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1529 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1530 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1531 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1534 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1539 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1540 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1541 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1543 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1544 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1545 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1546 conflicts in your code.
1548 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.9.2 without reading the "Notice
1549 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1550 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1555 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1556 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1557 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1560 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1561 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1562 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1563 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1564 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1566 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1567 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1568 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1569 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1570 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1571 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1572 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1577 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1578 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1579 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1581 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1583 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1584 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1585 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1586 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1587 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1588 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1589 installing it on your production machines.
1591 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1596 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1598 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1599 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1600 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1601 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1602 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1603 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/> (!)
1608 * Microblogging messages to http://support.status.net/ are very welcome.
1609 * The microblogging group http://identi.ca/group/statusnet is a good
1610 place to discuss the software.
1611 * StatusNet has a bug tracker for any defects you may find, or ideas for
1612 making things better. http://status.net/bugs
1617 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1618 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1619 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1621 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1622 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1623 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1624 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1625 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1626 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1637 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1641 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1642 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1644 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1648 * Tobias Diekershoff
1660 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1661 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1662 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what