README
------
-Laconica 0.7.0 ("Rockville")
-30 January 2009
+Laconica 0.7.1 ("West of the Fields")
+6 February 2009
This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
Laconica supports an open standard called OpenMicroBlogging
-(http://openmicroblogging.org/) that lets users on different Web sites
+<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.
Laconica was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
-Identi.ca (http://identi.ca/). It is shared with you in hope that you
+Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
-more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.0:
+more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
- http://www.openknowledge.org/ossd
+ http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
License
=======
New this version
================
-This is a major feature release, and includes some bug fixes from the
-previous version (0.6.4, released December 14 2008.)
+This is a minor bug-fix release since version 0.7.0, released Jan 29
+2009. Notable changes this version:
+
+- Vast improvement in auto-linking to URLs.
+- Link to group search from user's group page
+- Improved interface in Facebook application
+- Fix bad redirects in delete notice
+- Updated PostgreSQL database creation script
+- Show filesize in avatar/logo upload
+- Vastly improved avatar/logo upload
+- Allow re-authentication with OpenID
+- Correctly link hashtabs inside parens and brackets
+- Group and avatar image transparency works
+- Better handling of commands through the Web and Ajax channels
+- Fix links for profile page feeds
+- Fixed destroy method in API
+- Fix endpoint of Connect menu when XMPP disabled
+- Show number of group members
+- Enable configuration files in /etc/laconica/
+
+Changes in version 0.7.0:
- Support for groups. Users can join groups and send themed notices
to those groups. All other members of the group receive the notices.
version may render your Laconica site unable to send or receive XMPP
messages.
- Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
+- PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
+- PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
+- PEAR Validat is an oEmbed dependency.e
+- PEAR Net_URL is an oEmbed dependency.2
A design goal of Laconica 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 laconica-0.7.0.tar.gz
+ tar zxf laconica-0.7.1.tar.gz
- ...which will make a laconica-0.7.0 subdirectory in your current
+ ...which will make a laconica-0.7.1 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 laconica-0.7.0 /var/www/mublog
+ mv laconica-0.7.1 /var/www/mublog
This will make your Laconica instance available in the mublog path of
your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
XMPP
----
-XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, http://xmpp.org/) is the
+XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
Laconica dir, "." should suffice.
-This will run six (for now) queue handlers:
+This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
* xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
them as notices in the database.
of registered users.
* xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
users.
+* twitterqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Twitter for user
+ who have opted to set up Twitter bridging.
+* facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
+ of the built-in Facebook application.
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
# Update Twitter friends subscriptions every half hour
0,30 * * * * /path/to/php /path/to/laconica/scripts/synctwitterfriends.php>&/dev/null
+Built-in Facebook Application
+-----------------------------
+
+Laconica's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
+update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
+their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
+timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
+is built into Laconica and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
+status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
+facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
+above).
+
+Quick setup instructions*:
+
+Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
+
+ http://www.facebook.com/developers/
+
+Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
+Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
+key and secret, e.g.:
+
+ # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
+ $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
+ $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
+
+In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
+
+- Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
+- Post-Remove URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
+- Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
+- Canvas URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
+
+(Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
+to your Laconica installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
+Facebook application you created.)
+
+Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
+In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
+"Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
+Everything else can be left with default values.
+
+*For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
+Laconica wiki:
+
+ http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
+
Sitemaps
--------
-Sitemap files (http://sitemaps.org/) are a very nice way of telling
+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
Laconica instance.
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/'.
+ 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
Translation
-----------
-Translations in Laconica use the gettext system (http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/).
+Translations in Laconica use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
There is no built-in system for doing backups in Laconica. You can make
backups of a working Laconica system by backing up the database and
-the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump (http://ur1.ca/7xo)
+the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
Private
If you've been using Laconica 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 Laconica 0.7.0. Try these step-by-step instructions; read
+procedure in Laconica 0.7.1. Try these step-by-step instructions; read
to the end first before trying them.
0. Download Laconica and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
+Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
+/etc/laconica/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
+will be included in this order:
+
+* /etc/laconica/laconica.php - server-wide config
+* /etc/laconica/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
+* /etc/laconica/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
+* INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
+
Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
line will be:
--
This section is a reference to the configuration options for
-DB_DataObject (see http://ur1.ca/7xp). The ones that you may want to
+DB_DataObject (see <http://ur1.ca/7xp>). The ones that you may want to
set are listed below for clarity.
database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your Laconica database. This is
the client to speed up page loading, either with another
virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
- time (http://ur1.ca/6ih), so this can parallelize the job.
+ time <http://ur1.ca/6ih>, so this can parallelize the job.
Defaults to null.
public
---------
You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
-database data in memcached (http://www.danga.com/memcached/).
+database data in memcached <http://www.danga.com/memcached/>.
enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
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/).
+<http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
to 'laconica', but if you request your own source name from
- Twitter (http://twitter.com/help/request_source), you can use
+ Twitter <http://twitter.com/help/request_source>, you can use
that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
links to your site.
T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
conflicts in your code.
-If you upgraded to Laconica 0.7.0 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
+If you upgraded to Laconica 0.7.1 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty, read the
"Notice inboxes" section above.
If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
development version of Laconica. To get it, use the git version
-control tool (http://git-scm.com/) like so:
+control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
git clone http://laconi.ca/software/laconica.git
* There is a mailing list for Laconica developers and admins at
http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
-* The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net (http://www.freenode.net/).
+* The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net <http://www.freenode.net/>.
* The Laconica wiki, http://laconi.ca/trac/
Feedback
* Meitar Moscovitz
* Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
* Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n managerx)
+* Sean Murphy
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,