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 - require HTML tidy extension.
102 - add support for HTTP Basic Auth in PHP CGI or FastCGI (e.g. GoDaddy).
103 - autofocus input to selected entry elements depending on page.
104 - updated layout for filter-by-tag form.
105 - better layout for inbox and outbox pages.
106 - fix highlighting search terms in attributes of notice list elements.
107 - Correctly handle errors in linkback plugin.
109 - Updated cloudy theme.
110 - Don't match '::' as an IPv6 address.
111 - Use the same decision logic for deciding whether to mark an
112 attachment as an enclosure in RSS or as a paperclip item in Web
114 - Fixed a bug in the Piwik plugin that hard-coded the site ID.
115 - Add a param, inreplyto, to notice/new to allow an explicit response
117 - Show username in subject of emails.
118 - Check if avatar exists before trying to delete it.
119 - Correctly add omb_version to response for request token in OMB.
120 - Add a few more SMS carriers.
121 - Add a few more notice sources.
123 - Improvements to the AutoCompletePlugin.
124 - Check for 'dl' before using it.
125 - Make it impossible to delete self-subscriptions via the API.
126 - Fix pagination of tagged user pages.
127 - Make PiwikAnalyticsPlugin work with addPlugin().
128 - Removed trailing single space in user nicknames in notice lists.
129 - Show context link if a notice starts a conversation.
130 - blacklist all files and directories in install dir.
131 - handle GoDaddy-style PATH_INFO, including script name.
132 - add home_timeline synonym for friends_timeline.
133 - Add a popup window for the realtime plugin.
134 - Add some more streams for the realtime plugin.
135 - Fix a bug that overwrote group creation timestamp on every edit.
136 - Moved HTTP error code strings to a class variable.
137 - The Twitter API now returns server errors in the correct format.
138 - Reset the doctype for HTML output.
139 - Fixed a number of notices.
140 - Don't show search suggestions for private sites.
141 - Some corrections to FBConnect nav overrides.
142 - Slightly less database-intensive session management.
143 - Updated name of software in installer script.
144 - Include long-form attachment URLs if url-shortener is disabled.
145 - Include updated localisations for Polish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic,
146 Norwegian, and Chinese.
147 - Include upstream fixes to gettext.php.
148 - Correct for regression in Facebook API for updates.
149 - Ignore "Sent from my iPhone" (and similar) in mail updates.
150 - Use the NICKNAME_FMT constant for detecting nicknames.
151 - Check for site servername config'd.
152 - Compatibility fix for empty status updates with Twitter API.
157 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
160 - PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
161 versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
163 - MySQL 5.x. The StatusNet database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
164 server. It has been primarily tested on 5.x servers, although it may
165 be possible to install on earlier (or later!) versions. The server
166 *must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
167 MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
168 - A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
169 mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
171 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
173 - Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
174 - XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
175 - MySQL. For accessing the database.
176 - GD. For scaling down avatar images.
177 - mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
178 - gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
179 - tidy. Used to clean up HTML/URLs for the URL shortener to consume.
181 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
183 - Memcache. A client for the memcached server, which caches database
184 information in volatile memory. This is important for adequate
185 performance on high-traffic sites. You will also need a memcached
186 server to store the data in.
187 - Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
188 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
189 - Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
190 to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
191 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
193 You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
194 site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
195 examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
196 is a proprietary accelerator installed on some hosting sites.
201 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
202 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
203 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
204 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
205 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
206 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
208 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
209 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
210 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
211 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
212 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
213 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
214 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
215 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
216 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
217 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
218 but won't work with OpenID.
219 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
220 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
221 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
222 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
223 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
224 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
225 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
226 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
227 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
228 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
229 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
230 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
231 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
232 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
233 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
235 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
236 - PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
237 - PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
238 - PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
239 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
240 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
242 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
243 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
244 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
245 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
246 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
247 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
252 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
253 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
255 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
256 command like this will work:
258 tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
260 ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 subdirectory in your current
261 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
262 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
263 files to the server.)
265 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
266 directory. Usually something like this will work:
268 mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
270 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
271 your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
272 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
273 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
274 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
276 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
278 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
280 On some systems, this will probably work:
282 chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
283 chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
285 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
286 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
287 a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
289 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
290 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
293 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
294 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
295 chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
297 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
298 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
300 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
303 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
305 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
306 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
309 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
310 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
311 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
313 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
314 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
317 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
318 TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
319 IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
321 You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
322 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
325 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
327 http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
329 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
330 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
331 almost-empty database.
333 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
334 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
335 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
336 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
337 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
338 URLs are stored in the database.
343 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
344 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
347 http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
349 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
352 http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
354 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
356 http://example.org/mublog/fred
358 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
359 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
360 mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
363 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
364 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
365 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
366 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
367 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
368 just leaving the .htaccess file.
370 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
371 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
372 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
374 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
376 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
378 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
381 http://example.net/mublog/main/register
383 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
389 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
390 to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
391 client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
392 "pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
393 to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
395 You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
396 search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
398 On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
399 the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
400 indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
401 every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
402 to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
407 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
408 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
409 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
410 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
411 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
412 configuration is essentially email configuration.
414 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
415 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
416 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
417 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
419 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
420 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
422 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
425 mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
427 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
428 that support email SMS gateways.
430 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
432 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
434 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
435 of a filter than a daemon.
437 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
439 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
441 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
442 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
446 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
449 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
451 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
453 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
454 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
455 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
456 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
461 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
462 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
463 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
464 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
467 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
468 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
469 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
471 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
472 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
473 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
474 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
476 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
477 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
478 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
480 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
481 configuration section.
483 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
484 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
485 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
486 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
487 a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
488 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
490 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
491 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
492 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
493 off of amd64 to another server.
498 You can send *all* messages from your microblogging site to a
499 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
500 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
502 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
503 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
505 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
507 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
508 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
509 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
510 consider setting up queues and daemons.
515 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OMB, SMS,
516 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
517 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
518 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
519 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
520 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
521 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
523 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
524 installed on whatever server you use.
526 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
527 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
528 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
529 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
531 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
532 server!), set the following variable:
534 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
536 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
537 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
538 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
539 They're not created automatically.
541 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
542 needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
543 StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
545 This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
547 * xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
548 them as notices in the database.
549 * jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
550 registered users who should receive them.
551 * publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
552 public feed listeners.
553 * ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
554 recipients on foreign servers.
555 * smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
557 * xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
560 Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
561 particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
562 regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
563 the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
564 may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
565 to check their status and keep them running.
567 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
568 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
571 Since version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
572 our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
573 config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
574 writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
579 Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
580 search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
581 and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
584 1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
585 sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
586 put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
587 clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
588 bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
589 installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
590 available through HTTP.
592 2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
594 php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
596 Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
597 like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
598 you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
599 exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
600 typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
602 You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
603 search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
604 following to your robots.txt file:
606 Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
608 This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
609 sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
610 using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
616 There are two themes shipped with this version of StatusNet: "identica",
617 which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
618 basis for other sites.
620 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
621 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
622 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
623 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
625 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
626 the config.php file. See below for details.
628 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
629 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
632 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
633 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
635 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
637 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
638 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
639 users who don't upload their own.
640 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
641 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
642 listing on profile pages.
644 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
647 NOTE: the HTML generated by StatusNet changed *radically* between
648 version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
649 modification to use the new output format.
654 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
655 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
656 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
657 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
659 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
660 you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/pootle/ to add one
661 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
662 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
667 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
668 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
669 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
670 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
675 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
676 not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
677 workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
678 management, but host it on a public server.
680 Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
681 guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
682 can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
683 Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
684 undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
685 private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
686 to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
687 "proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
689 If fancy URLs is enabled, access to file attachments can also be
690 restricted to logged-in users only. Uncomment the appropriate rewrite
691 rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf. (This most likely will
692 not work if you are using a virtual server for attachments, so consider
693 the performance/security tradeoff.)
698 IMPORTANT NOTE: StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some
699 incorrectly-stored international characters ("UTF-8"). For new
700 installations, it will now store non-ASCII characters correctly.
701 However, older installations will have the incorrect storage, and will
702 consequently show up "wrong" in browsers. See below for how to deal
705 If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
706 been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
707 want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
708 upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. Try these step-by-step
709 instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
711 0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
713 1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
714 CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
715 backup. You have been warned.
716 2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
717 server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
719 3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
720 xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
721 If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
722 daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
723 4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
724 this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
725 maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
726 5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
727 final backup of the Web directory and database.
728 6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
729 7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
730 wherever your code used to be.
731 8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
732 directory to your new directory.
733 9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
734 RewriteBase to use the correct path.
735 10. Rebuild the database. (You can safely skip this step and go to #12
736 if you're upgrading from another 0.8.x version).
738 NOTE: this step is destructive and cannot be
739 reversed. YOU CAN EASILY DESTROY YOUR SITE WITH THIS STEP. Don't
740 do it without a known-good backup!
742 If your database is at version 0.7.4, you can run a special upgrade
745 mysql -u<rootuser> -p<rootpassword> <database> db/074to080.sql
747 Otherwise, go to your StatusNet directory and AFTER YOU MAKE A
748 BACKUP run the rebuilddb.sh script like this:
750 ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/statusnet.sql
752 Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
753 user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
754 that's _not_ the user StatusNet runs as. Note that rebuilddb.sh drops
755 your database and rebuilds it; if there is an error you have no
756 database. Make sure you have a backup.
757 For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
758 which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
759 script before running it.
760 11. Use mysql or psql client to log into your database and make sure that
761 the notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
762 12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
763 13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
764 bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
766 If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
767 the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
768 precooked data in the DB. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
771 NOTE: the database definition file, laconica.ini, has been renamed to
772 statusnet.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
773 have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
779 Notice inboxes are now required. If you don't have inboxes enabled,
780 StatusNet will no longer run.
785 StatusNet 0.7.4 introduced a fix for some incorrectly-stored
786 international characters ("UTF-8"). This fix is not
787 backwards-compatible; installations from before 0.7.4 will show
788 non-ASCII characters of old notices incorrectly. This section explains
791 0. You can disable the new behaviour by setting the 'db''utf8' config
792 option to "false". You should only do this until you're ready to
793 convert your DB to the new format.
794 1. When you're ready to convert, you can run the fixup_utf8.php script
795 in the scripts/ subdirectory. If you've had the "new behaviour"
796 enabled (probably a good idea), you can give the ID of the first
797 "new" notice as a parameter, and only notices before that one will
798 be converted. Notices are converted in reverse chronological order,
799 so the most recent (and visible) ones will be converted first. The
800 script should work whether or not you have the 'db''utf8' config
802 2. When you're ready, set $config['db']['utf8'] to true, so that
803 new notices will be stored correctly.
805 Configuration options
806 =====================
808 The main configuration file for StatusNet (excepting configurations for
809 dependency software) is config.php in your StatusNet directory. If you
810 edit any other file in the directory, like lib/common.php (where most
811 of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
812 in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
814 Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
815 /etc/statusnet/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
816 will be included in this order:
818 * /etc/statusnet/statusnet.php - server-wide config
819 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
820 * /etc/statusnet/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
821 * INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
823 Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
824 associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
827 $config['section']['option'] = value;
829 For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
835 This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
837 name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
838 server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
839 path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
841 fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
842 section above). Default is false.
843 logfile: full path to a file for StatusNet to save logging
844 information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
846 logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
847 hard errors. Default false.
848 locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
849 store all your locale data in one place, you probably
850 don't need to use this.
851 language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
852 languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
853 only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
855 "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
857 theme: Theme for your site (see Theme section). Two themes are
858 provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
859 Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme
860 except as the basis for your own.
861 email: contact email address for your site. By default, it's extracted
862 from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.
863 broughtbyurl: name of an organization or individual who provides the
864 service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
865 footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki,
866 corporate portal, or whoever is making the service available.
867 broughtby: text used for the "brought by" link.
868 timezone: default timezone for message display. Users can set their
869 own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good default.
870 closed: If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your site.
871 This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
872 individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
873 the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
874 inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
875 was invited by an existing user.
876 private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
877 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
878 authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
879 off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
881 notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
882 to put introductory information about your service, or info about
883 upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
885 logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
886 the logo in the theme, if any.
887 ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
888 Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never'
889 (don't use it for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for
890 sensitive pages that include passwords like login and registration,
891 but not for regular pages). Default to 'never'.
892 sslserver: use an alternate server name for SSL URLs, like
893 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie
894 parameters correctly so that both the SSL server and the
895 "normal" server can access the session cookie and
896 preferably other cookies as well.
897 shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
898 characters will be sent to the user's chosen
900 dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
901 twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
903 textlimit: default max size for texts in the site. Defaults to 140.
904 0 means no limit. Can be fine-tuned for notices, messages,
905 profile bios and group descriptions.
910 This section is a reference to the configuration options for
911 DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
912 set are listed below for clarity.
914 database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your StatusNet database. This is
915 in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
916 where 'protocol' is 'mysql' or 'mysqli' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
917 really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
918 'password' is the password, and etc.
919 ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'statusnet', you'll need
920 to set this to point to the location of the
921 statusnet.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
922 should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
923 db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
924 type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
925 libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
926 debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
927 value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
928 just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
930 quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
931 type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
932 database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
933 mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
934 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
935 use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
936 than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
937 You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
938 and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
939 requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
940 to include it in this array, too.
941 utf8: whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is the default
942 with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
943 until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database"
945 schemacheck: when to let plugins check the database schema to add
946 tables or update them. Values can be 'runtime' (default)
947 or 'script'. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the
948 schema on every hit, adding potentially several db
949 queries, some quite long), but not everyone knows how to
950 run a script. If you can, set this to 'script' and run
951 scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
957 By default, StatusNet sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
958 (You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).
960 appname: The name that StatusNet uses to log messages. By default it's
961 "statusnet", but if you have more than one installation on the
962 server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
963 you can track log messages more easily.
964 priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
965 facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
966 reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
972 You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
973 sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
974 'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
976 enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
977 subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
978 our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
979 required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
980 stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
981 "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
982 possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
984 queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
985 something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
986 stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
988 stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
993 The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
994 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
995 choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
996 accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
998 url: URL of the license, used for links.
999 title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
1000 image: A button shown on each page for the license.
1005 This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
1006 see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
1008 backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
1009 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
1010 params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
1011 them in an associative array.
1016 This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
1018 blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
1019 registered. A default array exists for strings that are
1020 used by StatusNet (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
1021 but you may want to add others if you have other software
1022 installed in a subdirectory of StatusNet or if you just
1023 don't want certain words used as usernames.
1024 featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
1025 Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
1026 interesting people, or whatever.
1031 For configuring avatar access.
1033 dir: Directory to look for avatar files and to put them into.
1034 Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
1035 you change it, make sure to change path, too.
1036 path: Path to avatars. Defaults to path for avatar subdirectory,
1037 but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
1038 be included with the avatar server, too.
1039 server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
1040 root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
1041 writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
1042 the client to speed up page loading, either with another
1043 virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
1044 typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
1045 time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
1051 For configuring the public stream.
1053 localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
1054 service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
1055 are shown in the public stream. Default true.
1056 blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
1057 Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
1058 to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
1059 autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
1060 should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
1065 server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
1066 theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
1067 Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
1068 dir: Directory where theme files are stored. Used to determine
1069 whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the theme
1070 subdirectory of the install directory.
1071 path: Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
1072 theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
1073 (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
1074 reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
1075 which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
1080 For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
1082 enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
1083 server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
1084 port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
1085 shouldn't need to change.
1086 user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
1087 from 'user'@'server'.
1088 resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
1089 is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
1090 password: password for the user account.
1091 host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
1092 hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
1093 talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
1094 case with your server.
1095 encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between StatusNet and the
1096 XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
1097 considerably better performance turning it off if you're
1098 connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
1100 debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
1101 the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
1102 last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
1103 enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
1104 public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
1105 participating in third-party search and archiving services.
1110 For configuring invites.
1112 enabled: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.
1117 Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
1119 dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
1120 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1121 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1126 Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
1128 dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
1129 Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
1130 with it to try and get better results for your site.
1135 For daemon processes.
1137 piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
1138 (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
1139 stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
1140 user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
1141 to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
1142 you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
1144 group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
1145 to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
1150 You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
1151 database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
1153 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1154 server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
1155 be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
1156 base: memcached uses key-value pairs to store data. We build long,
1157 funny-looking keys to make sure we don't have any conflicts. The
1158 base of the key is usually a simplified version of the site name
1159 (like "Identi.ca" => "identica"), but you can overwrite this if
1160 you need to. You can safely ignore it if you only have one
1161 StatusNet site using your memcached server.
1162 port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
1167 You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
1168 instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
1169 <http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
1171 enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
1172 server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
1173 port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
1180 enabled: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
1181 also need to set up maildaemon.php.
1186 For SMS integration.
1188 enabled: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
1189 should also be enabled.
1194 A catch-all for integration with other systems.
1196 taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
1203 enabled: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
1204 StatusNet will no longer run.
1209 For notice-posting throttles.
1211 enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
1212 count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
1213 is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
1214 from a user every hour.
1215 timespan: see 'count'.
1222 banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
1223 The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
1224 not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
1225 whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
1226 biolimit: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
1227 the site text limit default.
1232 Options with new users.
1234 default: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
1235 users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
1236 service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
1237 if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.
1238 welcome: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
1239 users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
1240 busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
1241 'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.
1243 If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
1244 be created before the configuration is updated.
1249 The software will, by default, send statistical snapshots about the
1250 local installation to a stats server on the status.net Web site. This
1251 data is used by the developers to prioritize development decisions. No
1252 identifying data about users or organizations is collected. The data
1253 is available to the public for review. Participating in this survey
1254 helps StatusNet developers take your needs into account when updating
1257 run: string indicating when to run the statistics. Values can be 'web'
1258 (run occasionally at Web time), 'cron' (run from a cron script),
1259 or 'never' (don't ever run). If you set it to 'cron', remember to
1260 schedule the script to run on a regular basis.
1261 frequency: if run value is 'web', how often to report statistics.
1262 Measured in Web hits; depends on how active your site is.
1263 Default is 10000 -- that is, one report every 10000 Web hits,
1265 reporturl: URL to post statistics to. Defaults to StatusNet developers'
1266 report system, but if they go evil or disappear you may
1267 need to update this to another value. Note: if you
1268 don't want to report stats, it's much better to
1269 set 'run' to 'never' than to set this value to something
1275 The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
1276 the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
1277 per file, per user (total), per user per month.
1279 We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
1282 supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
1283 like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
1284 setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
1286 uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
1287 filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
1288 command. It tries the one in the Web server's path, but if
1289 you're having problems with uploads, try setting this to the
1290 correct value. Note: 'file' must accept '-b' and '-i' options.
1292 For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
1293 in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
1294 (if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
1295 set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).
1297 file_quota: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
1298 any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
1299 is smaller than file_quota.
1300 user_quota: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
1301 can store any number of files as long as their total size does
1302 not exceed the user_quota.
1303 monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
1304 size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
1305 dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
1306 Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
1307 should be writeable by the Web user.
1308 server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
1309 Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
1310 a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
1311 path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
1312 main path + '/file/'.
1313 filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
1314 skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
1320 Options for group functionality.
1322 maxaliases: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
1323 to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
1324 desclimit: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
1325 null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
1331 oEmbed endpoint for multimedia attachments (links in posts).
1333 endpoint: oohembed endpoint using http://oohembed.com/ software.
1338 Some stuff for search.
1340 type: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
1341 be 'fulltext' (default) or 'like'. The former is faster and more efficient
1342 but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter
1343 will work with InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large
1344 systems. We'll probably add another type sometime in the future,
1345 with our own indexing system (maybe like MediaWiki's).
1352 handle: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
1353 code (using the database and memcache if enabled). Defaults to false.
1354 Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
1355 sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.
1356 debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
1357 with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
1362 Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
1365 server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
1366 virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
1367 null; same as site server.
1368 dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
1369 subdir of install dir.
1370 path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
1371 that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
1376 Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
1377 notify third-party servers of updates.
1379 notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
1380 array (no notification).
1385 Default design (colors and background) for the site. Actual appearance
1386 depends on the theme. Null values mean to use the theme defaults.
1388 backgroundcolor: Hex color of the site background.
1389 contentcolor: Hex color of the content area background.
1390 sidebarcolor: Hex color of the sidebar background.
1391 textcolor: Hex color of all non-link text.
1392 linkcolor: Hex color of all links.
1393 backgroundimage: Image to use for the background.
1394 disposition: Flags for whether or not to tile the background image.
1399 Configuration options specific to notices.
1401 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
1402 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1408 Configuration options specific to messages.
1410 contentlimit: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
1411 Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
1417 Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but
1418 powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
1419 like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
1420 in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
1421 and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
1423 In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
1424 Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
1426 function AddGoogleLink($action)
1428 $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
1432 Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
1434 This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
1435 see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
1436 implement, in EVENTS.txt.
1438 The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
1439 complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
1440 'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
1441 matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
1442 handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
1443 class's constructor).
1445 Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
1446 can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
1448 addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
1449 'param2' => 'value2'));
1451 This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
1452 'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
1453 plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for
1454 plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
1457 Plugins are documented in their own directories.
1462 The primary output for StatusNet is syslog, unless you configured a
1463 separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
1464 getting weird behaviour from StatusNet.
1466 If you're tracking the unstable version of StatusNet in the git
1467 repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
1468 T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
1469 conflicts in your code.
1471 If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
1472 inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
1473 read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
1478 These are some myths you may see on the Web about StatusNet.
1479 Documentation from the core team about StatusNet has been pretty
1480 sparse, so some backtracking and guesswork resulted in some incorrect
1483 - "Set $config['db']['debug'] = 5 to debug the database." This is an
1484 extremely bad idea. It's a tool built into DB_DataObject that will
1485 emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
1486 Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
1487 not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
1489 - "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
1490 is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
1491 used by the running software. It was removed from the StatusNet
1492 distribution because its presence was confusing. Do not bother
1493 configuring dataobject.ini, and do not put your database username
1494 and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
1495 persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
1500 If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
1501 development version of StatusNet. To get it, use the git version
1502 control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
1504 git clone git@gitorious.org:statusnet/mainline.git
1506 This is the version of the software that runs on Identi.ca and the
1507 status.net hosted service. Using it is a mixed bag. On the positive
1508 side, it usually includes the latest security and bug fix patches. On
1509 the downside, it may also include changes that require admin
1510 intervention (like running a script or even raw SQL!) that may not be
1511 documented yet. It may be a good idea to test this version before
1512 installing it on your production machines.
1514 To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
1519 There are several ways to get more information about StatusNet.
1521 * There is a mailing list for StatusNet developers and admins at
1522 http://mail.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
1523 * The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
1524 * The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
1525 * The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
1526 * The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
1531 * Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
1532 * StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
1533 or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
1534 * e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
1535 quickly, unless the question is really hard.
1540 The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
1541 StatusNet. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@status.net know
1542 if anyone's been overlooked in error.
1544 * Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, StatusNet, Inc.
1545 * Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
1546 * Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
1547 * Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
1548 * Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
1549 * Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
1560 * Tryggvi Björgvinsson
1564 * Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
1565 * Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
1567 * Leslie Michael Orchard
1571 * Tobias Diekershoff
1581 Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
1582 thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,
1583 told their friends, and built the Open Microblogging network to what