8 This is the README file for Laconica, 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 Laconica can be found in the
12 "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
17 Laconica (pronounced "luh-KAWN-ih-kuh") is a Free and Open Source
18 microblogging platform. It helps people in a community, company or
19 group to exchange short (140 character) messages over the Web. Users
20 can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or
21 colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites
22 like Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce 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 Laconica 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 Laconica 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 1.0:
38 http://www.openknowledge.org/ossd
43 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
44 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
45 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
46 License, or (at your option) any later version.
48 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
49 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
50 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
51 Affero General Public License for more details.
53 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public
54 License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
55 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
57 IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
58 *different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
59 you make modifications to the Laconica source code on your server,
60 you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
61 to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
62 of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
63 modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL LACONICA*.
65 Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
66 directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
67 liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
68 particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
74 This is a minor feature and security improvement version from version
75 0.6.2 (release 13 Nov 2008). Notable features of version 0.6.3 include:
77 - 'nudge' functionality to tell a user that they're missed.
78 - Links to related RSS/Atom feeds on all pages.
79 - Favor/disfavor icons changed to images.
80 - Better checks to prevent remote subscribing to a local user, causing
81 "ghost profiles" (dupes in people search or subscriptions lists).
82 - Twitter friend sync. Users who set up their Twitter accounts will
83 be automatically connected to other local users who have Twitter
84 accounts and who they're subscribed to on Twitter.
85 - List view of subscriptions/subscribers.
86 - Subscribe/unsubscribe button on subscriptions/subscribers list.
87 - Optionally hide certain users from the public stream.
88 - Give public area a few more tabs.
89 - Add Featured users tab to public area.
90 - Add Most favorited notices tab to public area.
91 - Users can give themselves tags.
92 - Users can tag their subscribers or subscriptions.
93 - Users can send @-replies to tagged subsets of their contact list
95 - Subscribe/unsubscribe with Ajax form.
96 - Post notice with Ajax form.
97 - Script to optionally add notice inboxes for only some users.
98 - Incremental caching of notice streams using memcached.
99 - Use cached favorites info to avoid excess DB hits for faves.
100 - Optionally use Sphinx Search for notice search.
101 - Optionally use Sphinx Search for people search.
103 Because of the CSRF fixes in particular, this upgrade is recommended
104 for all Laconica sites.
109 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
112 - PHP 5.2.x. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
113 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
115 - MySQL 5.x. The Laconica database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
116 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
117 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
118 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
119 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
120 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
121 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
123 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
125 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
126 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
127 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
128 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
129 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
131 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
133 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
134 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
135 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
136 server to store the data in.
137 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
138 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
139 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
140 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
141 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
143 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
144 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
145 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
146 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
151 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
152 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
153 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
154 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
155 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
156 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
158 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
159 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
160 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
161 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
162 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
163 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
164 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
165 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
166 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
167 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
168 but won't work with OpenID.
169 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
170 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
171 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
172 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
173 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
174 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
175 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
176 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
177 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
178 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
179 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
180 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
181 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
182 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
183 version may render your Laconica site unable to send or receive XMPP
186 A design goal of Laconica is that the basic Web functionality should
187 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
188 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
189 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
190 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
191 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
196 Installing the basic Laconica Web component is relatively easy,
197 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
199 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
200 command like this will work:
202 tar zxf laconica-0.6.2.tar.gz
204 ...which will make a laconica-0.6.2 subdirectory in your current
205 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
206 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
207 files to the server.)
209 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
210 directory. Usually something like this will work:
212 mv laconica-0.6.2 /var/www/mublog
214 This will make your Laconica instance available in the mublog path of
215 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
216 "laconica" might also be good path names. If you know how to
217 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
218 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
220 3. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
221 writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
223 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
225 On some systems, this will probably work:
227 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/avatar
228 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
230 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
231 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
232 a new group like "avatar" and add the Web server's user to the group.
234 4. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
237 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create laconica
239 Note that Laconica must have its own database; you can't share the
240 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
243 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
244 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
245 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
247 5. Run the laconica.sql SQL script in the db subdirectory to create
248 the database tables in the database. A typical system would work
251 mysql -u "username" --password="password" laconica < /var/www/mublog/db/laconica.sql
253 You may want to test by logging into the database and checking that
254 the tables were created. Here's an example:
258 6. Create a new database account that Laconica will use to access the
259 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
262 GRANT SELECT,INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE on laconica.*
263 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
264 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
266 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
267 username and password. You may want to test logging in as this new
268 user and testing that you can SELECT from some of the tables in the
269 DB (use SHOW TABLES to see which ones are there).
271 7. Copy the config.php.sample in the Laconica directory to config.php.
273 8. Edit config.php to set the basic configuration for your system.
274 (See descriptions below for basic config options.) Note that there
275 are lots of options and if you try to do them all at once, you will
276 have a hard time making sure what's working and what's not. So,
277 stick with the basics at first. In particular, customizing the
278 'site' and 'db' settings will almost definitely be needed.
280 9. At this point, you should be able to navigate in a browser to your
281 microblog's main directory and see the "Public Timeline", which
282 will be empty. If not, magic has happened! You can now register a
283 new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc. However, you
284 may want to wait to do that stuff if you think you can set up
285 "fancy URLs" (see below), since some URLs are stored in the database.
290 By default, Laconica will have big long sloppy URLs that are hard for
291 people to remember or use. For example, a user's home profile might be
294 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?action=showstream&nickname=fred
296 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
298 http://example.org/mublog/fred
300 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
301 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.2.x with .htaccess enabled
302 and mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection"
305 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your Laconica
306 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
307 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
308 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
309 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
310 just leaving the .htaccess file.
312 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
313 to your Laconica installation on your server. Typically this will
314 be the path to your Laconica directory relative to your Web root.
316 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
318 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
320 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
323 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
325 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
328 If you have problems with the .htaccess file on versions of Apache
329 earlier than 2.2.x, try changing the regular expressions in the
330 htaccess.sample file that use "\w" to just use ".".
335 Laconica supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
336 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
337 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
338 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
339 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
340 configuration is essentially email configuration.
342 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
343 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
344 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
345 converted to a message and stored in the DB.
347 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
348 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
350 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your Laconica database. This will
353 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" laconica < db/carrier.sql
355 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
356 that support email SMS gateways.
358 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
360 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
362 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
363 of a filter than a daemon.
365 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
367 *: /path/to/laconica/scripts/maildaemon.php
369 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
370 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
374 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
377 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
379 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
381 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
382 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
383 server, you'll need to have a full installation of Laconica, a working
384 config.php, and access to the Laconica database from the mail server.
389 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, http://xmpp.org/) is the
390 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
391 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
392 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
395 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
396 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
397 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
399 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
400 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
401 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
402 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
404 Laconica will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
405 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
406 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
408 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
409 configuration section.
411 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
412 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
413 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
414 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
415 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
416 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
418 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
419 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
420 work around this bug in Laconica; current recommendation is to move
421 off of amd64 to another server.
426 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
427 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
428 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
430 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
431 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
433 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
435 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
436 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
437 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
438 consider setting up queues and daemons.
443 Some activities that Laconica needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
444 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
445 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
446 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
447 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
448 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
449 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
451 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
452 installed on whatever server you use.
454 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install Laconica
455 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
456 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
457 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
459 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
460 server!), set the following variable:
462 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
464 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
465 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
466 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
467 They're not created automatically.
469 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
470 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
471 Laconica dir, "." should suffice.
473 This will run six (for now) queue handlers:
475 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
476 them as notices in the database.
477 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
478 registered users who should receive them.
479 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
480 public feed listeners.
481 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
482 recipients on foreign servers.
483 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
485 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
488 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
489 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
490 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
491 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
492 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
493 to check their status and keep them running.
495 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
496 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
499 Twitter Friends Syncing
500 -----------------------
502 As of Laconica 0.6.3, users may set a flag in their settings ("Subscribe
503 to my Twitter friends here" under the Twitter tab) to have Laconica
504 attempt to locate and subscribe to "friends" (people they "follow") on
505 Twitter who also have accounts on your Laconica system, and who have
506 previously set up a link for automatically posting notices to Twitter.
508 Optionally, there is a script (./scripts/synctwitterfriends.php), meant
509 to be run periodically from a job scheduler (e.g.: cron under Unix), to
510 look for new additions to users' friends lists. Note that the friends
511 syncing only subscribes users to each other, it does not unsubscribe
512 users when they stop following each other on Twitter.
516 # Update Twitter friends subscriptions every half hour
517 0,30 * * * * /path/to/php /path/to/laconica/scripts/synctwitterfriends.php>&/dev/null
522 Sitemap files (http://sitemaps.org/) are a very nice way of telling
523 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
524 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
527 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. Laconica creates a number of
528 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
529 put these in a sub-directory of your Laconica directory to avoid
530 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
531 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
532 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
533 available through HTTP.
535 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
537 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
539 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
540 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
541 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
542 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
543 typically something like 'http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/'.
545 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
546 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
547 following to your robots.txt file:
549 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
551 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
552 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
553 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
559 There are two themes shipped with this version of Laconica: "stoica",
560 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
561 basis for other sites.
563 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
564 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
565 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
566 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
568 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
569 the config.php file. See below for details.
571 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
572 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
575 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
576 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
578 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
580 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
581 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
582 users who don't upload their own.
583 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
584 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
585 listing on profile pages.
587 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
593 Translations in Laconica use the gettext system (http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/).
594 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
595 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
596 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
598 Contributions of translation information to Laconica are very easy:
599 you can use the Web interface at http://laconi.ca/entrans/ to add one
600 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
601 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
606 There is no built-in system for doing backups in Laconica. You can make
607 backups of a working Laconica system by backing up the database and
608 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump (http://ur1.ca/7xo)
609 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
614 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
615 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
616 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
617 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
618 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
620 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
621 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
623 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
624 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
630 If you've been using Laconica 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've been
631 tracking the "darcs" version of the software, you will probably want
632 to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated upgrade
633 procedure in Laconica 0.6.2. Try these step-by-step instructions; read
634 to the end first before trying them.
636 0. Download Laconica and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
638 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
639 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
640 backup. You have been warned.
641 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
642 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
644 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
645 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
646 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
647 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
648 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
649 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
650 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
651 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
652 final backup of the Web directory and database.
653 6. Move your Laconica directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
654 7. Unpack your Laconica 0.6 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
655 wherever your code used to be.
656 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
657 directory to your new directory.
658 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
659 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
660 10. Rebuild the database. Go to your Laconica directory and run the
661 rebuilddb.sh script like this:
663 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/laconica.sql
665 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
666 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
667 that's _not_ the user Laconica runs as.
668 11. Use mysql client to log into your database and make sure that the
669 notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
670 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
671 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
672 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
674 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
675 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
676 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
679 NOTE: the database definition file, stoica.ini, has been renamed to
680 laconica.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
681 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
687 Before version 0.6.2, the page showing all notices from people the
688 user is subscribed to ("so-and-so with friends") was calculated at run
689 time. Starting with 0.6.2, we have a new data structure for holding a
690 user's "notice inbox". (Note: distinct from the "message inbox", which
691 is the "inbox" tab in the UI. The notice inbox appears under the
694 Notices are added to the inbox when they're created. This speeds up
695 the query considerably, and also allows us the opportunity, in the
696 future, to add different kind of notices to an inbox -- like @-replies
697 or subscriptions to search terms or hashtags.
699 Notice inboxes are enabled by default for new installations. If you
700 are upgrading an existing site, this means that your users will see
701 empty "Personal" pages. The following steps will help you fix the
704 0. $config['inboxes']['enabled'] can be set to one of three values. If
705 you set it to 'false', the site will work as before. Support for this
706 will probably be dropped in future versions.
707 1. Setting the flag to 'transitional' means that you're in transition.
708 In this mode, the code will run the "new query" or the "old query"
709 based on whether the user's inbox has been updated.
710 2. After setting the flag to "transitional", you can run the
711 fixup_inboxes.php script to create the inboxes. You may want to set
712 the memory limit high. You can re-run it without ill effect.
713 3. When fixup_inboxes is finished, you can set the enabled flag to
716 Configuration options
717 =====================
719 The sole configuration file for Laconica (excepting configurations for
720 dependency software) is config.php in your Laconica directory. If you
721 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
722 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
723 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
725 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
726 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
729 $config['section']['option'] = value;
731 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
737 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
739 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
740 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
741 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or '/'
743 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
744 section above). Default is false.
745 logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
746 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
748 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
749 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
750 don't need to use this.
751 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
752 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
753 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
755 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
757 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
758 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
759 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
760 except as the basis for your own.
761 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
762 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
763 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
764 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
765 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
766 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
767 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
768 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
769 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
770 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
771 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
772 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
773 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
774 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
775 was invited by an existing user.
780 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
781 DB_DataObject (see http://ur1.ca/7xp). The ones that you may want to
782 set are listed below for clarity.
784 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your Laconica database. This is
785 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
786 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
787 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
788 'password' is the password, and etc.
789 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'laconica', you'll need
790 to set this to point to the location of the
791 laconica.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
792 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
793 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
794 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
795 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
796 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
797 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
798 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
800 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
801 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
802 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
803 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
804 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
805 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
806 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
807 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
808 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
809 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
810 to include it in this array, too.
815 By default, Laconica sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
816 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
818 appname: The name that Laconica uses to log messages. By default it's
819 "laconica", but if you have more than one installation on the
820 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
821 you can track log messages more easily.
826 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
827 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
828 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
830 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
835 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
836 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
837 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
838 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
840 url: URL of the license, used for links.
841 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
842 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
847 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
848 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
850 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
851 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
852 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
853 them in an associative array.
858 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
860 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
861 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
862 used by Laconica (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
863 but you may want to add others if you have other software
864 installed in a subdirectory of Laconica or if you just
865 don't want certain words used as usernames.
866 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
867 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
868 interesting people, or whatever.
873 For configuring avatar access.
875 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
876 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
877 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
878 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
879 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
880 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
881 time (http://ur1.ca/6ih), so this can parallelize the job.
887 For configuring the public stream.
889 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
890 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
891 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
892 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
893 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
894 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
899 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
900 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real). The
901 theme server's root path should map to the Laconica "theme"
902 subdirectory. Defaults to NULL.
907 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
909 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
910 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
911 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
912 shouldn't need to change.
913 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
914 from 'user'@'server'.
915 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
916 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
917 password: password for the user account.
918 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
919 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
920 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
921 case with your server.
922 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between Laconica and the
923 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
924 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
925 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
927 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
928 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
929 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
930 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
931 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
932 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
937 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
939 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
940 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
941 with it to try and get better results for your site.
946 For daemon processes.
948 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
949 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
950 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
951 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
952 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
953 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
955 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
956 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
961 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
962 database data in memcached (http://www.danga.com/memcached/).
964 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
965 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
966 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
971 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
972 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
973 (http://sphinxsearch.com/).
975 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
976 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
977 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
982 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
984 source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
985 to 'laconica', but if you request your own source name from
986 Twitter (http://twitter.com/help/request_source), you can use
987 that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
995 enabled: A three-valued flag for whether to use notice inboxes (see
996 upgrading info above for notes about this change). Can be
997 'false', 'true', or '"transitional"'.
1002 The primary output for Laconica is syslog, unless you configured a
1003 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1004 getting weird behaviour from Laconica.
1006 If you're tracking the unstable version of Laconica in the darcs
1007 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1008 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1009 conflicts in your code.
1011 If you upgraded to Laconica 0.6.2 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
1012 section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty, read the
1013 "Notice inboxes" section above.
1018 These are some myths you may see on the Web about Laconica.
1019 Documentation from the core team about Laconica has been pretty
1020 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1023 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1024 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1025 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1026 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1027 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1029 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1030 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1031 used by the running software. It was removed from the Laconica
1032 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1033 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1034 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1035 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1040 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1041 development version of Laconica. To get it, use the darcs version
1042 control tool (http://darcs.net/) like so:
1044 darcs get http://laconi.ca/darcs/ mublog
1046 To keep it up-to-date, use 'darcs pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1051 There are several ways to get more information about Laconica.
1053 * There is a mailing list for Laconica developers and admins at
1054 http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
1055 * The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net (http://www.freenode.net/).
1056 * The Laconica wiki, http://laconi.ca/trac/
1061 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1062 * Laconica's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1063 or ideas for making things better. http://laconi.ca/trac/
1064 * e-mail to evan@identi.ca will usually be read and responded to very
1065 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1070 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1071 Laconi.ca. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@identi.ca know
1072 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1074 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1075 * Zach Copley, Control Yourself, Inc.
1076 * Earle Martin, Control Yourself, Inc.
1077 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, Control Yourself, Inc.
1078 * Sarven Capadisli, Control Yourself, Inc.
1079 * Robin Millette, Control Yourself, Inc.
1090 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1091 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (entrans)
1092 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1094 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1095 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed Laconi.ca,
1096 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what