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 0.8.1,
81 released Aug 26 2009. Notable changes this version:
83 - New script for deleting user accounts. Not particularly safe or
84 community-friendly. Better for deleting abusive accounts than for
85 users who are 'retiring'.
86 - Improved detection of URLs in notices, specifically for punctuation
87 chars like ~, :, $, _, -, +, !, @, and %.
88 - Removed some extra <dl> semantic HTML code.
89 - Correct error in status-network database ini file (having multiple
90 statusnet sites with a single codebase)
91 - Fixed error output for Twitter posting failures.
92 - Fixed bug in Twitter queue handler that requeued inapplicable
94 - Improve FOAF output for remote users.
95 - new commands to join and leave groups.
96 - Fixed bug in which you cannot turn off importing friends timelines
98 - Better error handling in Twitter posting.
99 - Show oEmbed data for XHTML files as well as plain HTML.
100 - Updated bug database link in README.
101 - add support for HTTP Basic Auth in PHP CGI or FastCGI (e.g. GoDaddy).
102 - autofocus input to selected entry elements depending on page.
103 - updated layout for filter-by-tag form.
104 - better layout for inbox and outbox pages.
105 - fix highlighting search terms in attributes of notice list elements.
106 - Correctly handle errors in linkback plugin.
108 - Updated cloudy theme.
109 - Don't match '::' as an IPv6 address.
110 - Use the same decision logic for deciding whether to mark an
111 attachment as an enclosure in RSS or as a paperclip item in Web
113 - Fixed a bug in the Piwik plugin that hard-coded the site ID.
114 - Add a param, inreplyto, to notice/new to allow an explicit response
116 - Show username in subject of emails.
117 - Check if avatar exists before trying to delete it.
118 - Correctly add omb_version to response for request token in OMB.
119 - Add a few more SMS carriers.
120 - Add a few more notice sources.
122 - Improvements to the AutoCompletePlugin.
123 - Check for 'dl' before using it.
124 - Make it impossible to delete self-subscriptions via the API.
125 - Fix pagination of tagged user pages.
126 - Make PiwikAnalyticsPlugin work with addPlugin().
127 - Removed trailing single space in user nicknames in notice lists.
128 - Show context link if a notice starts a conversation.
129 - blacklist all files and directories in install dir.
130 - handle GoDaddy-style PATH_INFO, including script name.
131 - add home_timeline synonym for friends_timeline.
132 - Add a popup window for the realtime plugin.
133 - Add some more streams for the realtime plugin.
134 - Fix a bug that overwrote group creation timestamp on every edit.
135 - Moved HTTP error code strings to a class variable.
136 - The Twitter API now returns server errors in the correct format.
137 - Reset the doctype for HTML output.
138 - Fixed a number of notices.
139 - Don't show search suggestions for private sites.
140 - Some corrections to FBConnect nav overrides.
141 - Slightly less database-intensive session management.
142 - Updated name of software in installer script.
143 - Include long-form attachment URLs if url-shortener is disabled.
144 - Include updated localisations for Polish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic,
145 Norwegian, and Chinese.
146 - Include upstream fixes to gettext.php.
147 - Correct for regression in Facebook API for updates.
148 - Ignore "Sent from my iPhone" (and similar) in mail updates.
149 - Use the NICKNAME_FMT constant for detecting nicknames.
150 - Check for site servername config'd.
151 - Compatibility fix for empty status updates with Twitter API.
152 - Option to show files privately (EXPERIMENTAL! Use with caution.)
153 - a script to register a new user.
154 - a script to make a user admin of a group.
159 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
162 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
163 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
165 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
166 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
167 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
168 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
169 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
170 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
171 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
173 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
175 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
176 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
177 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
178 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
179 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
180 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
182 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
184 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
185 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
186 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
187 server to store the data in.
188 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
189 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
190 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
191 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
192 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
194 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
195 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
196 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
197 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
202 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
203 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
204 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
205 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
206 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
207 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
209 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
210 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
211 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
212 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
213 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
214 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
215 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
216 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
217 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
218 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
219 but won't work with OpenID.
220 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
221 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
222 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
223 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
224 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
225 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
226 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
227 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
228 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
229 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
230 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
231 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
232 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
233 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
234 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
236 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
237 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
238 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
239 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
240 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
241 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
243 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
244 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
245 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
246 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
247 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
248 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
253 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
254 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
256 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
257 command like this will work:
259 tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
261 ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 subdirectory in your current
262 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
263 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
264 files to the server.)
266 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
267 directory. Usually something like this will work:
269 mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
271 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
272 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
273 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
274 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
275 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
277 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
279 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
281 On some systems, this will probably work:
283 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
284 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
286 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
287 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
288 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
290 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
291 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
294 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
295 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
296 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
298 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
299 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
301 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
304 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
306 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
307 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
310 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
311 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
312 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
314 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
315 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
318 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
319 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
320 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
322 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
323 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
326 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
328 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
330 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
331 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
332 almost-empty database.
334 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
335 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
336 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
337 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
338 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
339 URLs are stored in the database.
344 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
345 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
348 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
350 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
353 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
355 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
357 http://example.org/mublog/fred
359 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
360 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
361 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
364 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
365 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
366 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
367 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
368 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
369 just leaving the .htaccess file.
371 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
372 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
373 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
375 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
377 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
379 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
382 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
384 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
387 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
388 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
389 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
390 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
391 .htaccess files for more details:
393 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
395 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
397 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
402 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
403 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
405 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
406 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
408 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
409 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
411 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
416 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
417 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
418 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
419 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
420 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
421 configuration is essentially email configuration.
423 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
424 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
425 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
426 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
428 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
429 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
431 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
434 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
436 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
437 that support email SMS gateways.
439 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
441 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
443 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
444 of a filter than a daemon.
446 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
448 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
450 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
451 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
455 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
458 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
460 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
462 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
463 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
464 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
465 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
470 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
471 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
472 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
473 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
476 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
477 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
478 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
480 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
481 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
482 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
483 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
485 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
486 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
487 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
489 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
490 configuration section.
492 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
493 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
494 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
495 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
496 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
497 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
499 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
500 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
501 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
502 off of amd64 to another server.
507 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
508 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
509 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
511 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
512 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
514 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
516 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
517 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
518 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
519 consider setting up queues and daemons.
524 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
525 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
526 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
527 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
528 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
529 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
530 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
532 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
533 installed on whatever server you use.
535 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
536 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
537 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
538 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
540 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
541 server!), set the following variable:
543 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
545 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
546 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
547 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
548 They're not created automatically.
550 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
551 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
552 StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
554 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
556 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
557 them as notices in the database.
558 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
559 registered users who should receive them.
560 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
561 public feed listeners.
562 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
563 recipients on foreign servers.
564 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
566 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
569 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
570 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
571 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
572 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
573 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
574 to check their status and keep them running.
576 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
577 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
580 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
581 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
582 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
583 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
588 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
589 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
590 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
593 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
594 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
595 put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
596 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
597 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
598 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
599 available through HTTP.
601 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
603 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
605 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
606 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
607 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
608 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
609 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
611 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
612 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
613 following to your robots.txt file:
615 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
617 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
618 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
619 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
625 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
626 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
627 basis for other sites.
629 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
630 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
631 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
632 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
634 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
635 the config.php file. See below for details.
637 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
638 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
641 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
642 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
644 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
646 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
647 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
648 users who don't upload their own.
649 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
650 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
651 listing on profile pages.
653 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
656 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
657 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
658 modification to use the new output format.
663 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
664 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
665 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
666 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
668 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
669 you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/pootle/ to add one
670 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
671 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
676 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
677 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
678 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
679 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
684 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
685 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
686 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
687 management, but host it on a public server.
689 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
690 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
691 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
692 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
693 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
694 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
695 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
696 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
698 If fancy URLs is enabled, access to file attachments can also be
699 restricted to logged-in users only. Uncomment the appropriate rewrite
700 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf. (This most likely will
701 not work if you are using a virtual server for attachments, so consider
702 the performance/security tradeoff.)
707 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
708 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
709 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
710 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
711 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
714 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
715 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
716 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
717 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. Try these step-by-step
718 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
720 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
722 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
723 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
724 backup. You have been warned.
725 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
726 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
728 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
729 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
730 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
731 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
732 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
733 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
734 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
735 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
736 final backup of the Web directory and database.
737 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
738 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
739 wherever your code used to be.
740 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
741 directory to your new directory.
742 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
743 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
744 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
745 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
747 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
748 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
749 do it without a known-good backup!
751 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
754 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
756 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
757 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
759 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
761 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
762 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
763 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
764 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
765 database. Make sure you have a backup.
766 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
767 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
768 script before running it.
769 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
770 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
771 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
772 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
773 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
775 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
776 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
777 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
780 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
781 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
782 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
788 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
789 StatusNet will no longer run.
794 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
795 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
796 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
797 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
800 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
801 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
802 convert your DB to the new format.
803 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
804 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
805 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
806 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
807 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
808 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
809 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
811 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
812 new notices will be stored correctly.
814 Configuration options
815 =====================
817 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
818 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
819 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
820 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
821 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
823 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
824 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
825 will be included in this order:
827 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
828 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
829 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
830 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
832 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
833 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
836 $config['section']['option'] = value;
838 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
844 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
846 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
847 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
848 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
850 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
851 section above). Default is false.
852 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
853 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
855 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
856 hard errors. Default false.
857 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
858 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
859 don't need to use this.
860 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
861 Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
862 selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
863 user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
864 langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
865 language, that means that changing this setting has little or
866 no effect in practice.
867 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
868 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
870 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
872 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
873 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
874 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
875 except as the basis for your own.
876 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
877 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
878 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
879 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
880 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
881 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
882 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
883 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
884 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
885 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
886 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
887 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
888 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
889 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
890 was invited by an existing user.
891 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
892 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
893 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
894 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
896 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
897 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
898 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
900 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
901 the logo in the theme, if any.
902 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
903 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
904 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
905 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
906 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
907 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
908 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
909 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
910 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
911 preferably other cookies as well.
912 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
913 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
915 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
916 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
918 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
919 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
920 profile bios and group descriptions.
925 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
926 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
927 set are listed below for clarity.
929 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
930 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
931 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
932 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
933 'password' is the password, and etc.
934 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
935 to set this to point to the location of the
936 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
937 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
938 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
939 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
940 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
941 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
942 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
943 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
945 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
946 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
947 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
948 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
949 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
950 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
951 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
952 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
953 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
954 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
955 to include it in this array, too.
956 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
957 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
958 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
960 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
961 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
962 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
963 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
964 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
965 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
966 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
972 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
973 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
975 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
976 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
977 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
978 you can track log messages more easily.
979 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
980 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
981 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
987 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
988 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
989 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
991 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
992 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
993 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
994 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
995 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
996 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
997 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
999 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
1000 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
1001 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1003 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
1008 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
1009 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
1010 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
1011 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
1013 url: URL of the license, used for links.
1014 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1015 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1020 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1021 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1023 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1024 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1025 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1026 them in an associative array.
1031 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1033 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1034 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1035 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1036 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1037 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1038 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1039 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1040 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1041 interesting people, or whatever.
1046 For configuring avatar access.
1048 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1049 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1050 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1051 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1052 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1053 be included with the avatar server, too.
1054 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1055 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1056 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1057 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1058 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1059 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1060 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1066 For configuring the public stream.
1068 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1069 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1070 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1071 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1072 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1073 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1074 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1075 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1080 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1081 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1082 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1083 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1084 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1085 subdirectory of the install directory.
1086 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1087 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1088 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1089 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1090 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1095 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1097 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1098 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1099 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1100 shouldn't need to change.
1101 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1102 from 'user'@'server'.
1103 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1104 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1105 password: password for the user account.
1106 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1107 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1108 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1109 case with your server.
1110 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1111 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1112 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1113 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1115 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1116 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1117 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1118 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1119 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1120 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1125 For configuring invites.
1127 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1132 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1134 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1135 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1136 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1141 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1143 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1144 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1145 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1150 For daemon processes.
1152 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1153 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1154 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1155 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1156 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1157 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1159 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1160 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1165 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1166 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1168 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1169 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1170 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1171 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1172 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1173 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1174 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1175 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1176 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1177 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1184 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1185 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1190 For SMS integration.
1192 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1193 should also be enabled.
1198 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1200 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1207 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1208 StatusNet will no longer run.
1213 For notice-posting throttles.
1215 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1216 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1217 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1218 from a user every hour.
1219 timespan: see 'count'.
1226 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1227 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1228 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1229 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1230 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1231 the site text limit default.
1236 Options with new users.
1238 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1239 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1240 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1241 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1242 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1243 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1244 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1245 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1247 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1248 be created before the configuration is updated.
1253 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1254 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1255 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1256 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1257 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1258 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1261 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1262 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1263 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1264 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1265 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1266 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1267 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1269 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1270 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1271 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1272 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1273 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1279 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1280 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1281 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1283 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1286 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1287 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1288 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1290 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1291 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1292 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1293 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1294 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1296 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1297 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1298 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1299 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1301 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1302 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1303 is smaller than file_quota.
1304 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1305 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1306 not exceed the user_quota.
1307 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1308 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1309 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1310 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1311 should be writeable by the Web user.
1312 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1313 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1314 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1315 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1316 main path + '/file/'.
1317 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1318 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1324 Options for group functionality.
1326 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1327 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1328 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1329 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1335 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1337 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1342 Some stuff for search.
1344 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1345 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1346 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1347 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1348 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1349 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1356 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1357 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1358 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1359 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1360 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1361 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1366 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1369 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1370 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1371 null; same as site server.
1372 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1373 subdir of install dir.
1374 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1375 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1380 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1381 notify third-party servers of updates.
1383 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1384 array (no notification).
1389 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1390 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1392 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1393 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1394 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1395 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1396 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1397 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1398 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1403 Configuration options specific to notices.
1405 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1406 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1412 Configuration options specific to messages.
1414 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1415 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1421 Configuration options for the login command.
1423 disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
1424 the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
1425 receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
1426 Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
1427 interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
1428 password. Note that the security implications of this are
1429 pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
1430 should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
1431 it is safe. Default is 'false'.
1436 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1437 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1438 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1439 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1440 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1442 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1443 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1445 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1447 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1451 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1453 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1454 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1455 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1457 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1458 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1459 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1460 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1461 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1462 class's constructor).
1464 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1465 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1467 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1468 'param2' => 'value2'));
1470 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1471 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1472 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1473 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1476 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1481 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1482 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1483 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1485 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1486 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1487 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1488 conflicts in your code.
1490 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
1491 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1492 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1497 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1498 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1499 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1502 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1503 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1504 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1505 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1506 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1508 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1509 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1510 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1511 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1512 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1513 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1514 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1519 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1520 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1521 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1523 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1525 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1526 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1527 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1528 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1529 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1530 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1531 installing it on your production machines.
1533 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1538 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1540 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1541 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1542 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1543 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1544 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1545 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1550 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1551 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1552 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1553 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1554 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1559 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1560 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1561 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1563 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1564 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1565 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1566 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1567 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1568 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1579 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1583 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1584 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1586 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1590 * Tobias Diekershoff
1600 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1601 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1602 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what