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 * facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
530 of the built-in Facebook application.
532 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
533 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
534 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
535 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
536 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
537 to check their status and keep them running.
539 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
540 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
543 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
544 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
545 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
546 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
548 Built-in Facebook Application
549 -----------------------------
551 StatusNet's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
552 update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
553 their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
554 timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
555 is built into StatusNet and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
556 status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
557 facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
560 Quick setup instructions*:
562 Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
564 http://www.facebook.com/developers/
566 Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
567 Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
568 key and secret, e.g.:
570 # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
571 $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
572 $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
574 In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
576 - Canvas Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
577 - Post-Remove Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
578 - Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
579 - Canvas Page URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
581 (Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
582 to your StatusNet installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
583 Facebook application you created.)
585 Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
586 In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
587 "Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
588 Everything else can be left with default values.
590 *For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
593 http://status.net/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
598 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
599 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
600 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
603 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
604 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
605 put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
606 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
607 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
608 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
609 available through HTTP.
611 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
613 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
615 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
616 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
617 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
618 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
619 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
621 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
622 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
623 following to your robots.txt file:
625 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
627 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
628 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
629 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
635 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
636 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
637 basis for other sites.
639 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
640 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
641 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
642 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
644 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
645 the config.php file. See below for details.
647 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
648 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
651 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
652 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
654 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
656 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
657 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
658 users who don't upload their own.
659 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
660 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
661 listing on profile pages.
663 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
666 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
667 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
668 modification to use the new output format.
673 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
674 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
675 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
676 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
678 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
679 you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/pootle/ to add one
680 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
681 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
686 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
687 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
688 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
689 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
694 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
695 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
696 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
697 management, but host it on a public server.
699 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
700 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
701 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
702 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
703 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
704 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
705 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
706 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
711 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
712 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
713 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
714 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
715 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
718 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
719 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
720 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
721 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.1. Try these step-by-step
722 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
724 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
726 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
727 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
728 backup. You have been warned.
729 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
730 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
732 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
733 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
734 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
735 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
736 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
737 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
738 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
739 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
740 final backup of the Web directory and database.
741 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
742 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.1 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
743 wherever your code used to be.
744 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
745 directory to your new directory.
746 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
747 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
748 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
749 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
751 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
752 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
753 do it without a known-good backup!
755 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
758 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
760 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
761 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
763 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
765 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
766 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
767 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
768 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
769 database. Make sure you have a backup.
770 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
771 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
772 script before running it.
773 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
774 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
775 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
776 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
777 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
779 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
780 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
781 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
784 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
785 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
786 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
792 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
793 StatusNet will no longer run.
798 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
799 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
800 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
801 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
804 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
805 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
806 convert your DB to the new format.
807 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
808 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
809 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
810 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
811 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
812 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
813 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
815 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
816 new notices will be stored correctly.
818 Configuration options
819 =====================
821 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
822 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
823 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
824 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
825 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
827 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
828 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
829 will be included in this order:
831 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
832 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
833 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
834 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
836 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
837 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
840 $config['section']['option'] = value;
842 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
848 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
850 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
851 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
852 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
854 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
855 section above). Default is false.
856 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
857 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
859 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
860 hard errors. Default false.
861 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
862 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
863 don't need to use this.
864 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
865 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
866 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
868 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
870 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
871 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
872 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
873 except as the basis for your own.
874 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
875 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
876 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
877 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
878 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
879 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
880 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
881 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
882 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
883 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
884 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
885 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
886 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
887 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
888 was invited by an existing user.
889 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
890 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
891 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
892 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
894 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
895 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
896 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
898 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
899 the logo in the theme, if any.
900 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
901 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
902 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
903 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
904 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
905 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
906 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
907 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
908 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
909 preferably other cookies as well.
910 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
911 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
913 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
914 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
916 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
917 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
918 profile bios and group descriptions.
923 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
924 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
925 set are listed below for clarity.
927 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
928 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
929 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
930 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
931 'password' is the password, and etc.
932 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
933 to set this to point to the location of the
934 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
935 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
936 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
937 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
938 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
939 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
940 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
941 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
943 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
944 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
945 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
946 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
947 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
948 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
949 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
950 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
951 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
952 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
953 to include it in this array, too.
954 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
955 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
956 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
958 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
959 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
960 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
961 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
962 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
963 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
964 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
970 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
971 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
973 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
974 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
975 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
976 you can track log messages more easily.
977 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
978 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
979 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
985 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
986 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
987 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
989 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
990 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
991 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
992 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
993 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
994 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
995 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
997 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
998 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
999 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1001 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
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 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1012 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1013 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1018 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1019 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1021 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1022 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1023 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1024 them in an associative array.
1029 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1031 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1032 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1033 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1034 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1035 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1036 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1037 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1038 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1039 interesting people, or whatever.
1044 For configuring avatar access.
1046 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1047 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1048 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1049 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1050 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1051 be included with the avatar server, too.
1052 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1053 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1054 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1055 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1056 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1057 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1058 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1064 For configuring the public stream.
1066 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1067 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1068 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1069 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1070 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1071 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1072 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1073 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1078 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1079 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1080 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1081 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1082 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1083 subdirectory of the install directory.
1084 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1085 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1086 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1087 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1088 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1093 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1095 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1096 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1097 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1098 shouldn't need to change.
1099 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1100 from 'user'@'server'.
1101 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1102 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1103 password: password for the user account.
1104 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1105 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1106 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1107 case with your server.
1108 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1109 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1110 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1111 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1113 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1114 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1115 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1116 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1117 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1118 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1123 For configuring invites.
1125 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1130 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1132 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1133 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1134 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1139 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1141 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1142 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1143 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1148 For daemon processes.
1150 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1151 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1152 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1153 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1154 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1155 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1157 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1158 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1163 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1164 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1166 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1167 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1168 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1169 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1170 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1171 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1172 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1173 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1174 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1175 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1180 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1181 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1182 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1184 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1185 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1186 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1193 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1194 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1199 For SMS integration.
1201 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1202 should also be enabled.
1207 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1209 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1216 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1217 StatusNet will no longer run.
1222 For notice-posting throttles.
1224 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1225 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1226 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1227 from a user every hour.
1228 timespan: see 'count'.
1235 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1236 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1237 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1238 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1239 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1240 the site text limit default.
1245 Options with new users.
1247 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1248 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1249 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1250 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1251 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1252 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1253 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1254 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1256 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1257 be created before the configuration is updated.
1262 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1263 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1264 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1265 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1266 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1267 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1270 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1271 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1272 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1273 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1274 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1275 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1276 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1278 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1279 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1280 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1281 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1282 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1288 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1289 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1290 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1292 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1295 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1296 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1297 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1299 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1300 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1301 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1302 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1303 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1305 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1306 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1307 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1308 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1310 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1311 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1312 is smaller than file_quota.
1313 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1314 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1315 not exceed the user_quota.
1316 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1317 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1318 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1319 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1320 should be writeable by the Web user.
1321 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1322 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1323 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1324 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1325 main path + '/file/'.
1326 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1327 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1333 Options for group functionality.
1335 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1336 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1337 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1338 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1344 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1346 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1351 Some stuff for search.
1353 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1354 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1355 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1356 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1357 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1358 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1365 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1366 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1367 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1368 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1369 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1370 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1375 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1378 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1379 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1380 null; same as site server.
1381 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1382 subdir of install dir.
1383 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1384 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1389 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1390 notify third-party servers of updates.
1392 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1393 array (no notification).
1398 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1399 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1401 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1402 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1403 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1404 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1405 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1406 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1407 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1412 Configuration options specific to notices.
1414 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1415 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1421 Configuration options specific to messages.
1423 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1424 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1430 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1431 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1432 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1433 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1434 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1436 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1437 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1439 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1441 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1445 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1447 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1448 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1449 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1451 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1452 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1453 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1454 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1455 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1456 class's constructor).
1458 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1459 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1461 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1462 'param2' => 'value2'));
1464 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1465 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1466 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1467 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1470 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1475 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1476 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1477 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1479 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1480 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1481 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1482 conflicts in your code.
1484 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.1 without reading the "Notice
1485 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1486 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1491 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1492 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1493 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1496 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1497 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1498 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1499 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1500 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1502 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1503 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1504 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1505 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1506 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1507 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1508 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1513 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1514 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1515 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1517 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1519 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1520 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1521 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1522 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1523 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1524 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1525 installing it on your production machines.
1527 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1532 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1534 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1535 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1536 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1537 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1538 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1539 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1544 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1545 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1546 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1547 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1548 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1553 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1554 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1555 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1557 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1558 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1559 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1560 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1561 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1562 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1573 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1577 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1578 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1580 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1584 * Tobias Diekershoff
1593 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1594 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1595 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what