README
------
-StatusNet 0.8.2 ("Life and How to Live It")
-1 Nov 2009
+StatusNet 0.9.0 ("Stand") Release Candidate 2
+22 Dec 2009
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.
-- require HTML tidy extension.
-- 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.
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:
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.
-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
=========
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:
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
=======
* 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,
projects / quix0rs-gnu-social.git / blobdiff