README
------
-StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand") Release Candidate 2
-22 Dec 2009
+StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand")
+4 Mar 2010
-This is the README file for StatusNet (formerly Laconica), the Open
-Source microblogging platform. It includes installation instructions,
-descriptions of options you can set, warnings, tips, and general info
-for administrators. Information on using StatusNet can be found in the
+This is the README file for StatusNet, the Open Source microblogging
+platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
+options you can set, warnings, tips, and general info for
+administrators. Information on using StatusNet can be found in the
"doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line.
About
=====
-StatusNet (formerly Laconica) is a Free and Open Source microblogging
-platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange
-short (140 characters, by default) messages over the Web. Users can
-choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or
-colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites
-like Twitter, Jaiku, Yammer, and Plurk.
+StatusNet is a Free and Open Source microblogging platform. It helps
+people in a community, company or group to exchange short (140
+characters, by default) messages over the Web. Users can choose which
+people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues'
+status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter,
+Google Buzz, or Yammer.
With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
-StatusNet supports an open standard called OpenMicroBlogging
-<http://openmicroblogging.org/> that lets users on different Web sites
-or in different companies subscribe to each others' notices. It
-enables a distributed social network spread all across the Web.
+StatusNet supports an open standard called OStatus
+<http://ostatus.org/> that lets users in different networks follow
+each other. It enables a distributed social network spread all across
+the Web.
StatusNet was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
New this version
================
-This is a major feature release since version 0.8.2, released Nov 1 2009.
+This is a major feature release since version 0.8.3, released Feb 1
+2010. It is the final release version of 0.9.0.
+
Notable changes this version:
-- Records of deleted notices are stored without the notice content.
-- Much of the optional core featureset has been moved to plugins.
-- OpenID support moved from core to a plugin. Helps test the strength of
- our plugin architecture and makes it easy to disable this
- functionality for e.g. intranet sites.
-- Many additional hook events (see EVENTS.txt for details).
-- OMB 0.1 support re-implemented using libomb.
-- Re-structure database so notices, messages, bios and group
- descriptions can be over 140 characters. Limit defined by
- site administrator as configuration option; can be unlimited.
-- Configuration data now optionally stored in the database, which
- overrides any settings in config files.
-- Twitter integration re-implemented as a plugin.
-- Facebook integration re-implemented as a plugin.
-- Role-based authorization framework. Users can have named roles, and
- roles can have rights (e.g., to delete notices, change configuration
- data, or ban uncooperative users). Default roles 'admin' (for
- configuration) and 'moderator' (for community management) added.
-- Plugin for PubSubHubBub (PuSH) support.
-- Considerable code style cleanup to meet PEAR code standards.
-- Made a common library for HTTP-client access which uses available
- HTTP libraries where possible.
-- Added statuses/home_timeline method to API.
-- Hooks for plugins to handle notices offline, either by defining
- their own queue handler scripts or to use a default plugin queue
- handler script.
-- Plugins can now modify the database schema, adding their own tables
- or modifying existing ones.
-- Groups API.
-- Twitter API supports Web caching for some methods.
-- Twitter API refactored into one-action-per-method.
-- Realtime plugin supports a tear-off window.
-- FOAF for groups.
-- Moved all JavaScript tags to just before </body> by default,
- significantly speeding up apparent page load time.
-- Added a Realtime plugin for Orbited server.
-- Added a mobile plugin to give a more mobile-phone-friendly layout
- when a mobile browser is detected.
-- Use CSS sprites for most common icons.
-- Fixes for images and buttons on Web output.
-- New plugin requires that users validate their email before posting.
-- New plugin UserFlag lets users flag other profiles for review.
-- Considerably better i18n support. Use TranslateWiki to update
- translations.
-- Notices and profiles now store location information.
-- New plugin, Geonames, for turning location names and lat/long pairs
- into structured IDs and vice versa. Architecture reusable for other
- systems.
-- Better check of license compatibility between site licenses.
-- Some improvements in XMPP output.
-- Media upload in the API.
-- Replies appear in the user's inbox.
-- Improved the UI on the bookmarklet.
-- StatusNet identities can be used as OpenID identities.
-- Script to register a user.
-- Script to make someone a group admin.
-- Script to make someone a site admin or moderator.
-- 'login' command.
-- Pluggable authentication.
-- LDAP authentication plugin.
-- Script for console interaction with the site (!).
-- Users don't see group posts from people they've blocked.
-- Admin panel interface for changing site configuration.
-- Users can be sandboxed (limited contributions) or silenced
- (no contributions) by moderators.
-- Many changes to make language usage more consistent.
-- Sphinx search moved to a plugin.
-- GeoURL plugin.
-- Profile and group lists support hAtom.
-- Massive refactoring of util.js.
-- Mapstraction plugin to show maps on inbox and profile pages.
-- Play/pause buttons for realtime notices.
-- Support for geo microformat.
-- Partial support for feed subscriptions, RSSCloud, PubSubHubBub.
-- Support for geolocation in browser (Chrome, Firefox).
-- Quit trying to negotiate HTML format. Always use text/html.
- We lose, and so do Web standards. Boo.
-- Better logging of request info.
-- Better output for errors in Web interface.
-- No longer store .mo files; these need to be generated.
-- Minify plugin.
-- Events to allow pluginizing logger.
-- New framework for plugin localization.
-- Gravatar plugin.
-- Add support for "repeats" (similar to Twitter's "retweets").
-- Support for repeats in Twitter API.
-- Better notification of direct messages.
+- Support for the new distributed status update standard OStatus
+ <http://ostatus.org>, based on PubSubHubbub, Salmon, Webfinger,
+ and Activity Streams.
+- Support for location. Notices are (optionally) marked with lat-long
+ information, and can be shown on a map.
+- No fixed content size. Notice size is configurable, from 1 to
+ unlimited number of characters. Default is still 140!
+- An authorization framework, allowing different levels of users.
+- A Web-based administration panel.
+- A moderation system that lets site moderators sandbox, silence,
+ or delete uncooperative users.
+- A flag system that lets users flag profiles for moderator review.
+- Support for OAuth <http://oauth.net> authentication in the Twitter
+ API.
+- A pluggable authentication system.
+- An authentication plugin for LDAP servers.
+- Many features that were core in 0.8.x are now plugins, such
+ as OpenID, Twitter integration, Facebook integration
+- A much-improved offline processing system
+- In-browser "realtime" updates using a number of realtime
+ servers (Meteor, Orbited, Cometd)
+- A plugin to provide an interface optimized for mobile browsers
+- Support for Facebook Connect
+- Support for logging in with a Twitter account
+- Vastly improved translation with additional languages and
+ translation in plugins
+- Support for all-SSL instances
+- Core support for "repeats" (like Twitter's "retweets")
+- Pluggable caching system, with plugins for Memcached,
+ APC, XCache, and a disk-based cache
+- Plugin to support RSSCloud
+- A framework for adding advertisements to a public site,
+ and plugins for Google AdSense and OpenX server
+- Plugins to throttle excessive subscriptions and registrations.
+- A plugin to blacklist particular URLs or nicknames.
+
+There are also literally thousands of bugs fixed and minor features
+added. A full changelog is available at http://status.net/wiki/StatusNet_0.9.0.
+
+Under the covers, the software has a vastly improved plugin and
+extension mechanism that makes writing powerful and flexible additions
+to the core functionality much easier.
Prerequisites
=============
- Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
+- bcmath or gmp. For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus). Needed
+ if you have OStatus configured.
You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
- PEAR Validate is an oEmbed dependency.
- PEAR Net_URL2 is an oEmbed dependency.
- Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
+- libomb. a library for implementing OpenMicroBlogging 0.1, the
+ predecessor to OStatus.
+- HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
command like this will work:
- tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
+ tar zxf statusnet-0.9.0.tar.gz
- ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 subdirectory in your current
+ ...which will make a statusnet-0.9.0 subdirectory in your current
directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
files to the server.)
2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
directory. Usually something like this will work:
- mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
+ mv statusnet-0.9.0 /var/www/statusnet
- This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
- your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
+ This will make your StatusNet instance available in the statusnet path of
+ your server, like "http://example.net/statusnet". "microblog" or
"statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
"http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
- chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
+ chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/
On some systems, this will probably work:
- chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
- chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
+ chgrp www-data /var/www/statusnet/
+ chmod g+w /var/www/statusnet/
If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
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.
+ a new group like "statusnet" and add the Web server's user to the group.
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
+ chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/avatar
+ chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/background
+ chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/file
You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
MySQL shell:
GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
- TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
- IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
+ TO 'statusnetuser'@'localhost'
+ IDENTIFIED BY 'statusnetpassword';
- You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
+ You should change 'statusnetuser' and 'statusnetpassword' to your preferred new
username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
this new user.
7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
- http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
+ http://yourserver.example.com/statusnet/install.php
Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
install program will configure your site and install the initial,
name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
found at:
- http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
+ http://example.org/statusnet/index.php/statusnet/fred
On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
look like this:
- http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
+ http://example.org/statusnet/index.php?p=statusnet/fred
It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
- http://example.org/mublog/fred
+ http://example.org/statusnet/fred
These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
like:
- http://example.net/mublog/main/register
+ http://example.net/statusnet/main/register
If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
the server first.
1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
usually work:
- mysql -u "lacuser" --password="lacpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
+ mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
that support email SMS gateways.
needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
StatusNet dir, "." should suffice.
-This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
+This will run the queue handlers:
+* queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
+ pushing out to OMB, SMS, XMPP, etc.
* xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
- them as notices in the database.
-* jabberqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
- registered users who should receive them.
-* publicqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices in the database to
- public feed listeners.
-* ombqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to OpenMicroBlogging
- recipients on foreign servers.
-* smsqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to SMS-over-email addresses
- of registered users.
-* xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
- users.
-
-Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
-particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
-regular (daily or so) basis with a cron job. Also, if they lose
-the connection to the XMPP server for too long, they'll simply die. It
-may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
+ them as notices in the database; also pulls queued XMPP output from
+ queuedaemon.php to push out to clients.
+
+These two daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
+including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
+or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
+
+It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
to check their status and keep them running.
All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
Since 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 (
-
-Sitemaps
---------
-
-Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
-search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
-and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
-StatusNet instance.
-
-1. Choose your sitemap URL layout. StatusNet creates a number of
- sitemap XML files for different parts of your site. You may want to
- put these in a sub-directory of your StatusNet directory to avoid
- clutter. The sitemap index file tells the search engines and other
- bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
- installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
- available through HTTP.
-
-2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
-
- php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
-
- Here, index-file-path is the full path to the sitemap index file,
- like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
- you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
- exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
- typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
-
-You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
-search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
-following to your robots.txt file:
-
- Sitemap: /mublog/sitemapindex.xml
-
-This is a good idea for letting *all* Web spiders know about your
-sitemap. You can also submit sitemap files to major search engines
-using their respective "Webmaster centres"; see sitemaps.org for links
-to these resources.
+writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ.
Themes
------
compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
-you can use the Web interface at http://status.net/pootle/ to add one
+you can use the Web interface at TranslateWiki.net to add one
or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
+For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
+
Backups
-------
Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
-Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
+Finally, the interaction of private sites with OStatus is
undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
stored. Usually a command like this will work:
- mkdir /var/www/mublog-files
+ mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
insecure way to do this is:
- chmod a+x /var/www/mublog-files
+ chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
like this to your config.php:
- $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/mublog-files';
+ $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';
Upgrading
=========
If you've been using StatusNet 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've
been tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably
want to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated
-upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. Try these step-by-step
+upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.9.0. Try these step-by-step
instructions; read to the end first before trying them.
0. Download StatusNet and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
final backup of the Web directory and database.
-6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
-7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
+6. Move your StatusNet directory to a backup spot, like "statusnet.bak".
+7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.9.0 tarball and move it to "statusnet" or
wherever your code used to be.
8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
directory to your new directory.
name: the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
server: the server part of your site's URLs, like 'example.net'.
-path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'mublog' or ''
+path: The path part of your site's URLs, like 'statusnet' or ''
(installed in root).
fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
section above). Default is false.
choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
+type: one of 'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved'
+ (default copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential
+ information).
+owner: for 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an assigned copyright
+ holder (for example, an employer for a private site). If
+ not specified, will be attributed to 'contributors'.
url: URL of the license, used for links.
title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
image: A button shown on each page for the license.
typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
Defaults to null.
+ssl: Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults to null, meaning
+ to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
public
------
(using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
which means to use the site path + '/theme'.
+ssl: Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default is null, which means
+ guess based on site SSL settings.
+
+javascript
+----------
+
+server: You can speed up page loading by pointing the
+ theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
+ Defaults to NULL, meaning to use the site server.
+path: Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
+ which means to use the site path + '/js/'.
+ssl: Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null, which means
+ guess based on site SSL settings.
xmpp
----
a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.
path: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
main path + '/file/'.
+ssl: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
+ guess based on other SSL settings.
filecommand: command to use for determining the type of a file. May be
skipped if fileinfo extension is installed. Defaults to
'/usr/bin/file'.
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.
+ssl: Whether or not to use HTTPS for background files. Defaults to
+ null, meaning to guess from site-wide SSL settings.
ping
----
should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
it is safe. Default is 'false'.
+singleuser
+----------
+
+If an installation has only one user, this can simplify a lot of the
+interface. It also makes the user's profile the root URL.
+
+enabled: Whether to run in "single user mode". Default false.
+nickname: nickname of the single user.
+
+robotstxt
+---------
+
+We put out a default robots.txt file to guide the processing of
+Web crawlers. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for more information
+on the format of this file.
+
+crawldelay: if non-empty, this value is provided as the Crawl-Delay:
+ for the robots.txt file. see http://ur1.ca/l5a0
+ for more information. Default is zero, no explicit delay.
+disallow: Array of (virtual) directories to disallow. Default is 'main',
+ 'search', 'message', 'settings', 'admin'. Ignored when site
+ is private, in which case the entire site ('/') is disallowed.
+
Plugins
=======
T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
conflicts in your code.
-If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
+If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.9.0 without reading the "Notice
inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
* The #statusnet IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
* The StatusNet wiki, http://status.net/wiki/
* The StatusNet blog, http://status.net/blog/
-* The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/status> (!)
+* The StatusNet status update, <http://status.status.net/> (!)
Feedback
========
-* Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
+* Microblogging messages to http://support.status.net/ are very welcome.
+* The microblogging group http://identi.ca/group/statusnet is a good
+ place to discuss the software.
* StatusNet's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
or ideas for making things better. http://status.net/trac/
-* e-mail to evan@status.net will usually be read and responded to very
- quickly, unless the question is really hard.
Credits
=======
projects / quix0rs-gnu-social.git / blobdiff