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 security, bug and feature release since version 0.9.3 released on
83 For best compatibility with client software and site federation, and a lot of
84 bug fixes, it is highly recommended that all public sites upgrade to the new
87 Changes from 0.9.4beta1:
88 - fix for daemon config switching on multi-site setup
90 Notable changes this version:
92 - OpenID and OAuth libraries patched for potential timing attack
93 - OStatus feed i/o updated for Activity Streams
94 - Correctness fixes on XRD, other discovery bits
95 - Support for contacting SNI-based SSL virtual hosts when SSL
96 certificate verification is enabled (requires PHP 5.3.2+ or
97 enabling CURL backend with $config['http']['curl'] = true)
98 - Experimental SubMirror plugin
99 - Multi-site status_network table mode has been tweaked to support
101 - Many updates to user interface translation from TranslateWiki
102 - Many other bugfixes
104 A full changelog is available at http://status.net/wiki/StatusNet_0.9.4.
109 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
112 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
113 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
114 in PHP 5.2 or above. 5.2.6 or later is needed for XMPP background
115 daemons on 64-bit platforms. PHP 5.3.x should work correctly in this
116 release, but problems with some plugins are possible.
117 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
118 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
119 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
120 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
121 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
122 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
123 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
125 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
127 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
128 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
129 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
130 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
131 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
133 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
135 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
136 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
137 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
138 server to store the data in.
139 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
140 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
141 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
142 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
143 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
144 - bcmath or gmp. For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus). Needed
145 if you have OStatus configured.
146 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
147 will be emulated if not present.
149 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
150 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
151 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
152 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
157 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
158 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
159 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
160 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
161 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
162 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
164 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
165 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
166 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
167 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
168 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
169 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
170 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
171 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
172 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
173 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
174 but won't work with OpenID.
175 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
176 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
177 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
178 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
179 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
180 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
181 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
182 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
183 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
184 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
185 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
186 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
187 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
188 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
189 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
191 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
192 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
193 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
194 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
195 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
196 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
197 - libomb. a library for implementing OpenMicroBlogging 0.1, the
198 predecessor to OStatus.
199 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
201 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
202 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
203 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
204 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
205 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
206 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
211 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
212 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
214 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
215 command like this will work:
217 tar zxf statusnet-0.9.4.tar.gz
219 ...which will make a statusnet-0.9.2 subdirectory in your current
220 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
221 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
222 files to the server.)
224 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
225 directory. Usually something like this will work:
227 mv statusnet-0.9.4 /var/www/statusnet
229 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the statusnet path of
230 your server, like "http://example.net/statusnet". "microblog" or
231 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
232 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
233 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
235 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
237 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/
239 On some systems, this will probably work:
241 chgrp www-data /var/www/statusnet/
242 chmod g+w /var/www/statusnet/
244 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
245 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
246 a new group like "statusnet" and add the Web server's user to the group.
248 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
249 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
252 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/avatar
253 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/background
254 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/file
256 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
257 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
259 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
262 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
264 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
265 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
268 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
269 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
270 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
272 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
273 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
276 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
277 TO 'statusnetuser'@'localhost'
278 IDENTIFIED BY 'statusnetpassword';
280 You should change 'statusnetuser' and 'statusnetpassword' to your preferred new
281 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
284 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
286 http://yourserver.example.com/statusnet/install.php
288 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
289 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
290 almost-empty database.
292 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
293 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
294 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
295 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
296 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
297 URLs are stored in the database.
302 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
303 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
306 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php/statusnet/fred
308 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
311 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php?p=statusnet/fred
313 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
315 http://example.org/statusnet/fred
317 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
318 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
319 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
322 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
323 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
324 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
325 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
326 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
327 just leaving the .htaccess file.
329 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
330 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
331 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
333 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
335 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
337 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
340 http://example.net/statusnet/main/register
342 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
345 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
346 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
347 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
348 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
349 .htaccess files for more details:
351 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
353 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
355 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
360 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
361 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
363 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
364 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
366 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
367 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
369 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
374 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
375 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
376 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
377 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
378 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
379 configuration is essentially email configuration.
381 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
382 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
383 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
384 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
386 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
387 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
389 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
392 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
394 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
395 that support email SMS gateways.
397 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
399 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
401 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
402 of a filter than a daemon.
404 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
406 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
408 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
409 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
413 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
416 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
418 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
420 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
421 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
422 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
423 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
428 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
429 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
430 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
431 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
434 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
435 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
436 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
438 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
439 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
440 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
441 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
443 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
444 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
445 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
447 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
448 configuration section.
450 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
451 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
452 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
453 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
454 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
455 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
457 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
458 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
459 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
460 off of amd64 to another server.
465 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
466 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
467 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
469 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
470 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
472 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
474 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
475 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
476 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
477 consider setting up queues and daemons.
482 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
483 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
484 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
485 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
486 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
487 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
488 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
490 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
491 installed on whatever server you use.
493 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
494 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
495 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
496 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
498 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
499 server!), set the following variable:
501 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
503 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
504 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
505 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
506 They're not created automatically.
508 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
510 This will run the queue handlers:
512 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
513 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
514 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
515 them as notices in the database; also pulls queued XMPP output from
516 queuedaemon.php to push out to clients.
518 These two daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
519 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
520 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
522 Additional daemons may be also started by this script for certain
523 plugins, such as the Twitter bridge.
525 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
526 to check their status and keep them running.
528 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
529 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
532 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
533 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly
534 recommended for best response time, especially when using XMPP.
536 See the "queues" config section below for how to configure to use STOMP.
537 As of this writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ 5.3.
542 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
543 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
544 basis for other sites.
546 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
547 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
548 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
549 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
551 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
552 the config.php file. See below for details.
554 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
555 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
558 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
559 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
561 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
563 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
564 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
565 users who don't upload their own.
566 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
567 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
568 listing on profile pages.
570 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
573 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
574 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
575 modification to use the new output format.
580 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
581 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
582 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
583 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
585 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
586 you can use the Web interface at TranslateWiki.net to add one
587 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
588 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
590 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
595 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
596 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
597 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
598 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
603 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
604 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
605 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
606 management, but host it on a public server.
608 Total privacy is not guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is
609 all-or-nothing for a site; you can't have some accounts or notices
610 private, and others public. The interaction of private sites
611 with OStatus is undefined.
613 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
614 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
615 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
617 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
619 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
620 insecure way to do this is:
622 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
624 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
625 like this to your config.php:
627 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';
632 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
633 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
634 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
635 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
636 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
639 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
640 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
641 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
642 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.9.2. Try these step-by-step
643 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
645 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
647 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
648 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
649 backup. You have been warned.
650 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
651 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
653 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
654 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
655 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
656 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
657 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
658 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
659 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
660 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
661 final backup of the Web directory and database.
662 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "statusnet.bak".
663 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.9.2 tarball and move it to "statusnet" or
664 wherever your code used to be.
665 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
666 directory to your new directory.
667 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
668 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
669 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
670 if you're upgrading from another 0.9.x version).
672 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
673 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
674 do it without a known-good backup!
676 If your database is at version 0.8.0 or above, you can run a
677 special upgrade script:
679 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/08to09.sql
681 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
682 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
684 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
686 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
687 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
688 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
689 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
690 database. Make sure you have a backup.
691 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
692 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
693 script before running it.
694 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
695 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
696 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
697 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
698 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
700 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
701 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
702 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
705 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
706 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
707 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
713 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
714 StatusNet will no longer run.
719 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
720 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
721 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
722 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
725 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
726 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
727 convert your DB to the new format.
728 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
729 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
730 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
731 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
732 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
733 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
734 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
736 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
737 new notices will be stored correctly.
739 Configuration options
740 =====================
742 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
743 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
744 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/default.php (where most
745 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
746 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
748 Starting with version 0.9.0, a Web based configuration panel has been
749 added to StatusNet. The preferred method for changing config options is
752 A command-line script, setconfig.php, can be used to set individual
753 configuration options. It's in the scripts/ directory.
755 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
756 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
757 will be included in this order:
759 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
760 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
761 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
762 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
764 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
765 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
768 $config['section']['option'] = value;
770 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
776 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
778 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
779 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
780 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'statusnet' or ''
782 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
783 section above). Default is false.
784 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
785 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
787 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
788 hard errors. Default false.
789 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
790 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
791 don't need to use this.
792 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
793 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
794 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
795 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
796 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
797 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
798 no effect in practice.
799 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
800 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
802 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
804 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
805 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
806 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
807 except as the basis for your own.
808 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
809 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
810 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
811 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
812 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
813 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
814 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
815 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
816 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
817 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
818 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
819 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
820 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
821 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
822 was invited by an existing user.
823 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
824 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
825 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
826 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
828 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
829 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
830 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
832 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
833 the logo in the theme, if any.
834 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
835 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
836 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
837 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
838 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
839 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
840 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
841 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
842 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
843 preferably other cookies as well.
844 shorturllength: ignored. See 'url' section below.
845 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
846 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
848 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
849 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
850 profile bios and group descriptions.
855 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
856 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
857 set are listed below for clarity.
859 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
860 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
861 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
862 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
863 'password' is the password, and etc.
864 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
865 to set this to point to the location of the
866 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
867 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
868 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
869 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
870 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
871 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
872 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
873 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
875 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
876 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
877 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
878 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
879 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
880 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
881 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
882 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
883 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
884 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
885 to include it in this array, too.
886 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
887 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
888 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
890 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
891 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
892 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
893 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
894 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
895 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
896 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
902 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
903 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
905 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
906 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
907 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
908 you can track log messages more easily.
909 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
910 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
911 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
917 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
918 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
919 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
921 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
922 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
923 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
924 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
925 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
926 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
927 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
929 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
930 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense. If running
931 multiple instances on the same server, make sure that
932 either this setting or $config['site']['nickname'] are
933 unique for each site to keep them separate.
935 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
937 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
940 stomp_persistent: keep items across queue server restart, if enabled.
941 Under ActiveMQ, the server configuration determines if and how
942 persistent storage is actually saved.
944 If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
945 need to disable this if it does not support persistence.
947 stomp_transactions: use transactions to aid in error detection.
948 A broken transaction will be seen quickly, allowing a message
949 to be redelivered immediately if a daemon crashes.
951 If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
952 need to disable this if it does not support transactions.
954 stomp_acks: send acknowledgements to aid in flow control.
955 An acknowledgement of successful processing tells the server
956 we're ready for more and can help keep things moving smoothly.
958 This should *not* be turned off when running with ActiveMQ, but
959 if using another message queue server that does not support
960 acknowledgements you might need to disable this.
962 softlimit: an absolute or relative "soft memory limit"; daemons will
963 restart themselves gracefully when they find they've hit
964 this amount of memory usage. Defaults to 90% of PHP's global
965 memory_limit setting.
967 inboxes: delivery of messages to receiver's inboxes can be delayed to
968 queue time for best interactive performance on the sender.
969 This may however be annoyingly slow when using the DB queues,
970 so you can set this to false if it's causing trouble.
972 breakout: for stomp, individual queues are by default grouped up for
973 best scalability. If some need to be run by separate daemons,
974 etc they can be manually adjusted here.
976 Default will share all queues for all sites within each group.
977 Specify as <group>/<queue> or <group>/<queue>/<site>,
978 using nickname identifier as site.
980 'main/distrib' separate "distrib" queue covering all sites
981 'xmpp/xmppout/mysite' separate "xmppout" queue covering just 'mysite'
983 max_retries: for stomp, drop messages after N failed attempts to process.
986 dead_letter_dir: for stomp, optional directory to dump data on failed
987 queue processing events after discarding them.
989 stomp_no_transactions: for stomp, the server does not support transactions,
990 so do not try to user them. This is needed for http://www.morbidq.com/.
992 stomp_no_acks: for stomp, the server does not support acknowledgements.
993 so do not try to user them. This is needed for http://www.morbidq.com/.
998 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
999 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1000 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1001 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1003 type: one of 'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved'
1004 (default copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential
1006 owner: for 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an assigned copyright
1007 holder (for example, an employer for a private site). If
1008 not specified, will be attributed to 'contributors'.
1009 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1010 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1011 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1016 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1017 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1019 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1020 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1021 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1022 them in an associative array.
1027 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1029 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1030 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1031 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1032 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1033 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1034 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1035 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1036 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1037 interesting people, or whatever.
1042 For configuring avatar access.
1044 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1045 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1046 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1047 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1048 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1049 be included with the avatar server, too.
1050 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1051 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1052 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1053 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1054 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1055 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1056 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1058 ssl: Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults to null, meaning
1059 to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
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'.
1089 ssl: Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default is null, which means
1090 guess based on site SSL settings.
1095 server: You can speed up page loading by pointing the
1096 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1097 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1098 path: Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
1099 which means to use the site path + '/js/'.
1100 ssl: Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null, which means
1101 guess based on site SSL settings.
1106 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1108 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1109 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1110 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1111 shouldn't need to change.
1112 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1113 from 'user'@'server'.
1114 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1115 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1116 password: password for the user account.
1117 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1118 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1119 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1120 case with your server.
1121 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1122 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1123 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1124 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1126 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1127 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1128 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1129 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1130 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1131 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1136 For configuring invites.
1138 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1143 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1145 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1146 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1147 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1152 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1154 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1155 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1156 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1161 For daemon processes.
1163 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1164 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1165 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1166 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1167 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1168 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1170 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1171 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1176 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1177 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1179 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1180 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1181 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1182 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1183 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1184 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1185 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1186 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1187 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1188 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1195 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1196 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1201 For SMS integration.
1203 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1204 should also be enabled.
1209 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1211 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1218 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1219 StatusNet will no longer run.
1224 For notice-posting throttles.
1226 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1227 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1228 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1229 from a user every hour.
1230 timespan: see 'count'.
1237 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1238 the site text limit default.
1243 Options with new users.
1245 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1246 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1247 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1248 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1249 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1250 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1251 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1252 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1254 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1255 be created before the configuration is updated.
1260 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1261 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1262 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1263 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1264 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1265 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1268 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1269 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1270 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1271 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1272 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1273 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1274 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1276 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1277 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1278 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1279 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1280 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1286 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1287 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1288 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1290 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1293 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1294 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1295 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1297 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1298 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1299 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1300 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1301 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1303 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1304 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1305 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1306 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1308 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1309 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1310 is smaller than file_quota.
1311 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1312 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1313 not exceed the user_quota.
1314 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1315 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1316 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1317 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1318 should be writeable by the Web user.
1319 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1320 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1321 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1322 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1323 main path + '/file/'.
1324 ssl: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
1325 guess based on other SSL settings.
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.
1385 ssl: Whether or not to use HTTPS for background files. Defaults to
1386 null, meaning to guess from site-wide SSL settings.
1391 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1392 notify third-party servers of updates.
1394 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1395 array (no notification).
1400 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1401 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1403 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1404 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1405 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1406 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1407 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1408 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1409 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1414 Configuration options specific to notices.
1416 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1417 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1423 Configuration options specific to messages.
1425 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1426 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1432 Configuration options for the login command.
1434 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1435 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1436 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1437 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1438 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1439 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1440 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1441 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1442 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1447 If an installation has only one user, this can simplify a lot of the
1448 interface. It also makes the user's profile the root URL.
1450 enabled: Whether to run in "single user mode". Default false.
1451 nickname: nickname of the single user.
1456 We put out a default robots.txt file to guide the processing of
1457 Web crawlers. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for more information
1458 on the format of this file.
1460 crawldelay: if non-empty, this value is provided as the Crawl-Delay:
1461 for the robots.txt file. see http://ur1.ca/l5a0
1462 for more information. Default is zero, no explicit delay.
1463 disallow: Array of (virtual) directories to disallow. Default is 'main',
1464 'search', 'message', 'settings', 'admin'. Ignored when site
1465 is private, in which case the entire site ('/') is disallowed.
1470 Everybody loves URL shorteners. These are some options for fine-tuning
1471 how and when the server shortens URLs.
1473 shortener: URL shortening service to use by default. Users can override
1474 individually. 'ur1.ca' by default.
1475 maxlength: If an URL is strictly longer than this limit, it will be
1476 shortened. Note that the URL shortener service may return an
1477 URL longer than this limit. Defaults to 25. Users can
1478 override. If set to 0, all URLs will be shortened.
1479 maxnoticelength: If a notice is strictly longer than this limit, all
1480 URLs in the notice will be shortened. Users can override.
1481 -1 means the text limit for notices.
1486 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1487 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1488 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1489 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1490 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1492 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1493 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1495 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1497 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1501 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1503 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1504 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1505 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1507 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1508 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1509 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1510 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1511 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1512 class's constructor).
1514 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1515 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1517 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1518 'param2' => 'value2'));
1520 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1521 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1522 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1523 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1526 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1531 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1532 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1533 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1535 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1536 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1537 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1538 conflicts in your code.
1540 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.9.2 without reading the "Notice
1541 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1542 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1547 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1548 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1549 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1552 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1553 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1554 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1555 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1556 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1558 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1559 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1560 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1561 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1562 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1563 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1564 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1569 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1570 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1571 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1573 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1575 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1576 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1577 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1578 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1579 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1580 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1581 installing it on your production machines.
1583 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1588 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1590 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1591 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1592 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1593 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1594 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1595 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/> (!)
1600 * Microblogging messages to http://support.status.net/ are very welcome.
1601 * The microblogging group http://identi.ca/group/statusnet is a good
1602 place to discuss the software.
1603 * StatusNet has a bug tracker for any defects you may find, or ideas for
1604 making things better. http://status.net/bugs
1609 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1610 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1611 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1613 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1614 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1615 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1616 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1617 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1618 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1629 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1633 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1634 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1636 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1640 * Tobias Diekershoff
1652 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1653 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1654 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what