README
------
-StatusNet 0.8.2 ("Life and How to Live It")
-1 Nov 2009
+StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand") Beta 4
+27 Jan 2010
This is the README file for StatusNet (formerly Laconica), the Open
Source microblogging platform. It includes installation instructions,
StatusNet (formerly Laconica) is a Free and Open Source microblogging
platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange
-short (140 character) 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.
+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.
With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
New this version
================
-This is a minor feature and bugfix release since version 0.8.1,
-released Aug 26 2009. Notable changes this version:
-
-- New script for deleting user accounts. Not particularly safe or
- community-friendly. Better for deleting abusive accounts than for
- users who are 'retiring'.
-- Improved detection of URLs in notices, specifically for punctuation
- chars like ~, :, $, _, -, +, !, @, and %.
-- Removed some extra <dl> semantic HTML code.
-- Correct error in status-network database ini file (having multiple
- statusnet sites with a single codebase)
-- Fixed error output for Twitter posting failures.
-- Fixed bug in Twitter queue handler that requeued inapplicable
- notices ad infinitum.
-- Improve FOAF output for remote users.
-- new commands to join and leave groups.
-- Fixed bug in which you cannot turn off importing friends timelines
- flag.
-- Better error handling in Twitter posting.
-- Show oEmbed data for XHTML files as well as plain HTML.
-- Updated bug database link in README.
-- add support for HTTP Basic Auth in PHP CGI or FastCGI (e.g. GoDaddy).
-- autofocus input to selected entry elements depending on page.
-- updated layout for filter-by-tag form.
-- better layout for inbox and outbox pages.
-- fix highlighting search terms in attributes of notice list elements.
-- Correctly handle errors in linkback plugin.
-- Updated biz theme.
-- Updated cloudy theme.
-- Don't match '::' as an IPv6 address.
-- Use the same decision logic for deciding whether to mark an
- attachment as an enclosure in RSS or as a paperclip item in Web
- output.
-- Fixed a bug in the Piwik plugin that hard-coded the site ID.
-- Add a param, inreplyto, to notice/new to allow an explicit response
- to another notice.
-- Show username in subject of emails.
-- Check if avatar exists before trying to delete it.
-- Correctly add omb_version to response for request token in OMB.
-- Add a few more SMS carriers.
-- Add a few more notice sources.
-- Vary: header.
-- Improvements to the AutoCompletePlugin.
-- Check for 'dl' before using it.
-- Make it impossible to delete self-subscriptions via the API.
-- Fix pagination of tagged user pages.
-- Make PiwikAnalyticsPlugin work with addPlugin().
-- Removed trailing single space in user nicknames in notice lists.
-- Show context link if a notice starts a conversation.
-- blacklist all files and directories in install dir.
-- handle GoDaddy-style PATH_INFO, including script name.
-- add home_timeline synonym for friends_timeline.
-- Add a popup window for the realtime plugin.
-- Add some more streams for the realtime plugin.
-- Fix a bug that overwrote group creation timestamp on every edit.
-- Moved HTTP error code strings to a class variable.
-- The Twitter API now returns server errors in the correct format.
-- Reset the doctype for HTML output.
-- Fixed a number of notices.
-- Don't show search suggestions for private sites.
-- Some corrections to FBConnect nav overrides.
-- Slightly less database-intensive session management.
-- Updated name of software in installer script.
-- Include long-form attachment URLs if url-shortener is disabled.
-- Include updated localisations for Polish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic,
- Norwegian, and Chinese.
-- Include upstream fixes to gettext.php.
-- Correct for regression in Facebook API for updates.
-- Ignore "Sent from my iPhone" (and similar) in mail updates.
-- Use the NICKNAME_FMT constant for detecting nicknames.
-- Check for site servername config'd.
-- Compatibility fix for empty status updates with Twitter API.
-- Option to show files privately (EXPERIMENTAL! Use with caution.)
-- a script to register a new user.
-- a script to make a user admin of a group.
+This is a major feature release since version 0.8.2, released Nov 1 2009.
+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.
+- New plugin to add "powered by StatusNet" to logo.
+- Returnto works for private sites.
+- Localisation updates, including new Persian translation.
+- CAS authentication plugin
+- Get rid of DB_DataObject native cache (big memory leaker)
+- setconfig.php script to set configuration variables
+- Blacklist plugin, to blacklist URLs and nicknames
+- Users can set flag whether they want to share location
+ both in notice form (for one notice) and profile settings
+ (any notice)
+- notice inboxes moved from normalized notice_inbox table to
+ denormalized inbox table
+- Automatic compression of Memcache
+- Memory caching pluginized
+- Memcache, XCache, APC and Diskcache plugins
+- A script to update user locations
+- cache empty query results
+- A sample plugin to show best plugin practices
+- CacheLog plugin to debug cache accesses
+- Require users to login to view attachments on private sites
+- Plugin to use Mollom spam detection service
+- Plugin for RSSCloud
+- Add an array of default plugins
+- A version action to give credit to contributors and plugin
+ developers
+- Daemon to read IMAP mailbox instead of using a mailbox script
+- Pass session information between SSL and non-SSL server
+ when SSL set to 'sometimes'
+- Major refactoring of queue handlers to manage very
+ large hosting site (like status.net)
+- SubscriptionThrottle plugin to prevent subscription spamming
Prerequisites
=============
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 (
+writing, the software has been tested with ActiveMQ.
Sitemaps
--------
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
-------
to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
"proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
-If fancy URLs is enabled, access to file attachments can also be
-restricted to logged-in users only. Uncomment the appropriate rewrite
-<<<<<<< HEAD:README
-rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf. (This most likely will
-not work if you are using a virtual server for attachments, so consider
-the performance/security tradeoff.)
-=======
-rule in .htaccess or your server's httpd.conf.
->>>>>>> 446de62... Revert "Added some explanatory text to README":README
+Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
+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
+
+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
+
+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';
Upgrading
=========
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.
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
=======
* Federico Marani
* Craig Andrews
* mEDI
+* Brett Taylor
+* Brigitte Schuster
Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the
thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca, installed StatusNet,