------
Laconica 0.8.0 ("Shiny Happy People")
-8 July 2009
+15 July 2009
This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
as default TOS for Laconica sites.
- Better command-line handling for scripts, including standard options
and ability to set hostname and path from the command line.
+- An experimental plugin to use Meteor (http://www.meteorserver.org/)
+ for "real-time" updates.
+- A new framework for "real-time" updates, making it easier to develop
+ plugins for different browser-based update modes.
+- RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds for groups.
+- RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds for tags.
+- Attachments can be sent by email.
+- Attachments are encoded as enclosures in RSS 2.0 and Atom.
+- Notices with attachments display in Facebook as media inline.
+
- Many, many bug fixes.
Prerequisites
The following software packages are *required* for this software to
run correctly.
-- PHP 5.2.x. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
+- PHP 5.2.3+. It may be possible to run this software on earlier
versions of PHP, but many of the functions used are only available
in PHP 5.2 or above.
- MySQL 5.x. The Laconica database is stored, by default, in a MySQL
that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
-4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
- writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
+4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
+ file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
+ this is:
chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
+ chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/background
+ chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/file
- You can also make the avatar directory writeable by the Web server
- group, as noted above.
+ You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
+ writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
should work:
default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
daemons.
+With version 0.8.0, it's now possible to use a STOMP server instead of
+our kind of hacky home-grown DB-based queue solution. See the "queues"
+config section below for how to configure to use STOMP. As of this
+writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ (
+
Twitter Friends Syncing
-----------------------
logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
access to syslog.
+logdebug: whether to log additional debug info like backtraces on
+ hard errors. Default false.
locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
store all your locale data in one place, you probably
don't need to use this.
to put introductory information about your service, or info about
upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
be escaped.
-dupelimit: Time in which it's not OK for the same person to post the
- same notice; default = 60 seconds.
logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
the logo in the theme, if any.
ssl: Whether to use SSL and https:// URLs for some or all pages.
shorturllength: Length of URL at which URLs in a message exceeding 140
characters will be sent to the user's chosen
shortening service.
+design: a default design (colors and background) for the site.
+ Sub-items are: backgroundcolor, contentcolor, sidebarcolor,
+ textcolor, linkcolor, backgroundimage, disposition.
+dupelimit: minimum time allowed for one person to say the same thing
+ twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user
+ or UI error.
db
--
"laconica", but if you have more than one installation on the
server, you may want to change the name for each instance so
you can track log messages more easily.
+priority: level to log at. Currently ignored.
+facility: what syslog facility to used. Defaults to LOG_USER, only
+ reset if you know what syslog is and have a good reason
+ to change it.
queue
-----
'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
-
+subsystem: Which kind of queueserver to use. Values include "db" for
+ our hacked-together database queuing (no other server
+ required) and "stomp" for a stomp server.
+stomp_server: "broker URI" for stomp server. Something like
+ "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are
+ possible; see your stomp server's documentation for
+ details.
+queue_basename: a root name to use for queues (stomp only). Typically
+ something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense.
+stomp_username: username for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
+ to null.
+stomp_password: password for connecting to the stomp server; defaults
+ to null.
license
-------
blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
+autosource: Sources of notices that are from automatic posters, and thus
+ should be kept off the public timeline. Default empty.
theme
-----
Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
with it to try and get better results for your site.
+popular
+-------
+
+Settings for the "popular" section of the site.
+
+dropoff: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
+ Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
+ with it to try and get better results for your site.
+
daemon
------
Twitter <http://twitter.com/help/request_source>, you can use
that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
links to your site.
+taguri: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.
inboxes
-------
supported: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
- setup your server to properly reckognize the types you want to
+ setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
support.
uploads: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).
filecommand: The required MIME_Type library may need to use the 'file'
not exceed the user_quota.
monthly_quota: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
size in bytes that a user can upload each month.
+dir: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
+ Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
+ should be writeable by the Web user.
+server: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
+ Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
+ a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
+path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
+ main path + '/file/'.
+filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
+ skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
+ '/usr/bin/file'.
group
-----
debug: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.
+background
+----------
+
+Users can upload backgrounds for their pages; this section defines
+their use.
+
+server: the server to use for background. Using a separate (even
+ virtual) server for this can speed up load times. Default is
+ null; same as site server.
+dir: directory to write backgrounds too. Default is '/background/'
+ subdir of install dir.
+path: path to backgrounds. Default is sub-path of install path; note
+ that you may need to change this if you change site-path too.
+
+twitterbridge
+-------------
+
+A bi-direction bridge to Twitter (http://twitter.com/).
+
+enabled: default false. If true, will show user's Twitter friends'
+ notices in their inbox and faves pages, only to the user. You
+ must also run the twitterstatusfetcher.php script.
+
+ping
+----
+
+Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
+notify third-party servers of updates.
+
+notify: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
+ array (no notification).
+
+Plugins
+=======
+
+Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, Laconica has supported a simple but
+powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,
+like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest
+in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called
+and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.
+
+In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the
+Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:
+
+ function AddGoogleLink($action)
+ {
+ $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));
+ return true;
+ }
+
+ Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');
+
+This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can
+see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must
+implement, in EVENTS.txt.
+
+The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more
+complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named
+'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case
+matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event
+handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own
+class's constructor).
+
+Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You
+can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:
+
+ addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',
+ 'param2' => 'value2'));
+
+This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or
+'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for
+plugins that ship with Laconica) or in the local/ directory (for
+plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or
+local/plugins/.
+
+Plugins are documented in their own directories.
+
Troubleshooting
===============
* Brenda Wallace
* Jeffery To
* Federico Marani
+* Craig Andrews
Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed Laconi.ca,
projects / quix0rs-gnu-social.git / blobdiff