README
------
-StatusNet 0.8.2 ("Life and How to Live It")
-26 Aug 2009
+StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand") Beta 3
+20 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 0.8.0,
-released Jul 15 2009. Notable changes this version:
-
-- Laconica has been renamed StatusNet. With a few minor compatibility
- exceptions, all references to "Laconica" in code, documentation
- and comments were changed to "StatusNet".
-- A new plugin to support "infinite scroll".
-- A new plugin to support reCaptcha <http://recaptcha.net>.
-- Better logging of server errors.
-- Add an Openid-only mode for authentication.
-- 'lite' parameter for some Twitter API methods.
-- A new plugin to auto-complete nicknames for @-replies.
-- Configuration options to disable OpenID, SMS, Twitter, post-by-email, and IM.
-- Support for lighttpd <http://lighttpd.org/> using 404-based
- rewrites.
-- Support for using Twitter's OAuth authentication as a client.
-- First version of the groups API.
-- Can configure a site-wide design, including background image and
- colors.
-- Improved algorithm for replies and conversations, making
- conversation trees more accurate and useful.
-- Add a script to create a simulation database for testing/debugging.
-- Sanitize HTML for OEmbed.
-- Improved queue management for DB-based queuing.
-- More complete URL detection.
-- Hashtags now support full Unicode character set.
-- Notice inboxes are now garbage-collected on a regular basis
- at notice-write time.
-- PiwikAnalyticsPlugin updated for latest Piwik interface.
-- Attachment and notice pages can be embedded with OEmbed
- <http://www.oembed.com>.
-- Failed authentication is logged.
-- PostgreSQL schema and support brought up-to-date with 0.8.x features.
-- The installer works with PostgreSQL as well as MySQL.
-- RSS 1.0 feeds use HTTP Basic authentication in private mode.
-- Many, many bug fixes, particularly with performance.
-- Better (=working) garbage collection for old sessions.
-- Better (=working) search queries.
-- Some cleanup of HTML output.
-- Better error handling when updating Facebook.
-- Considerably better performance when using replication for API
- calls.
-- Initial unit tests.
+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
=============
- GD. For scaling down avatar images.
- mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
- gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
-- tidy. Used to clean up HTML/URLs for the URL shortener to consume.
For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
command like this will work:
- tar zxf statusnet-0.8.1.tar.gz
+ tar zxf statusnet-0.8.2.tar.gz
- ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.1 subdirectory in your current
+ ...which will make a statusnet-0.8.2 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-0.8.1 /var/www/mublog
+ mv statusnet-0.8.2 /var/www/mublog
This will make your StatusNet instance available in the mublog path of
your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
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
-mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
+mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
your server.
1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
the server first.
+If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
+directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
+/etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
+/etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
+.htaccess files for more details:
+
+ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
+
+Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
+
+ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
+
Sphinx
------
-To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
-to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
-client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
-"pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
-to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
+To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
+enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
+
+ addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
+ $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
-You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
-search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
+You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
+php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
-On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
-the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
-indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
-every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
-to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
+See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
SMS
---
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.
+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
=========
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 0.8.1. Try these step-by-step
+upgrade procedure in StatusNet 0.8.2. 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
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 0.8.1 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
+7. Unpack your StatusNet 0.8.2 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
wherever your code used to be.
8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
directory to your new directory.
store all your locale data in one place, you probably
don't need to use this.
language: default language for your site. Defaults to US English.
+ Note that this is overridden if a user is logged in and has
+ selected a different language. It is also overridden if the
+ user is NOT logged in, but their browser requests a different
+ langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests a
+ language, that means that changing this setting has little or
+ no effect in practice.
languages: A list of languages supported on your site. Typically you'd
only change this if you wanted to disable support for one
or another language:
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.
StatusNet site using your memcached server.
port: Port to connect to; defaults to 11211.
-sphinx
-------
-
-You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
-instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
-<http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
-
-enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
-server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
-port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx server.
-
emailpost
---------
Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
0 means no limit.
+logincommand
+------------
+
+Configuration options for the login command.
+
+disabled: whether to enable this command. If enabled, users who send
+ the text 'login' to the site through any channel will
+ receive a link to login to the site automatically in return.
+ Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS
+ interface and can't be bothered to remember their site
+ password. Note that the security implications of this are
+ pretty serious and have not been thoroughly tested. You
+ should enable it only after you've convinced yourself that
+ it is safe. Default is 'false'.
+
Plugins
=======
T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
conflicts in your code.
-If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.1 without reading the "Notice
+If you upgraded to StatusNet 0.8.2 without reading the "Notice
inboxes" section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty,
read the "Notice inboxes" section above.
* Jeffery To
* 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,