Playing with Laconi.ca Federation
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 07/12/2008 - 08:21Over the past week, I’ve been spending a lot of time playing with Laconi.ca, an open source microblogging platform.
One of the things most interesting about Laconi.ca is the ability of servers to share content with one another. The mothership laconi.ca server is identi.ca. I’ve set up my account there to subscribe to accounts on other servers. In addition, I’ve set up my own laconi.ca server and subscribe to identi.ca from that server.
Word of warning. The ability to subscribe to and from different servers is still fairly unreliable. Many of my attempts to do remote subscriptions failed. In fact, the only way I managed to subscribe to my server was to turn on debug mode in hopes of figuring out why subscriptions were failing. It figures that subscriptions worked when I had debug on.
Anyway, here is the quick way of subscribing to a remote server. When you find a person on a server that you want to follow, make sure you are not logged into that server. If you are logged in, it will subscribe your local id to the user you want to subscribe to. When you are logged out, click on the name of the person you wish to subscribe to, and click on the subscribe button. You will be asked to enter a profile URL. Enter your profile from the server you want to subscribe from. As an example, my profile on identi.ca is http://identi.ca/ahynes1 on Orient Lodge it is http://micro.orient-lodge.com/ahynes1 If you aren’t currently logged in on the remote server, it will ask you to login. Then, you will be asked to confirm the subscription request.
If this works properly, you should be subscribed to the remote user. As I noted, too often, it doesn’t work properly, but that is how you can test it.
To get a further sense of where things are, you can look at a person’s subscriptions and subscribers. If your browser displays link addresses, mouse over each avatar in the subscribers or subscriptions to see if any of them point to remote servers. Check out mine on identi.ca and you’ll see several remote subscriptions and subscribers.
Why is this important? There are a lot of nice things that remote subscriptions can do. One person is creating a sports oriented laconi.ca site. I could subscribe to his sports oriented messages there, from identi.ca On my own site, I could subscribe to a particular subset of people on the identi.ca server so, when I view my identi.ca feed, I see everyone I’ve subscribed to on identi.ca, but when I’m on my development site, I see only those messages related to development. I’m sure that many of you can come up with other interesting use cases for federate servers.
Well, that’s it for now, I’m about to hit the road for a week, and expect to have very limited access. I’ll be working more on this when I get back.
EntreCard Highwater mark
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 07/12/2008 - 07:33Okay, I did it. I dropped 300 EntreCards each day for 30 days.
Quick Laconi.ca update
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 14:51dewaldp came up with a fix to the .htaccess files for Laconi.ca that looks like it fixes a problem that I, and others, have been having.
@evan The (\d+) and (\w+) in htaccess didn't work on my Apache server. Had to change both to ([^/.]+)
I’ve changed that in the .htaccess and htaccess.sample files in the tarball. If you want to give it a try, feel free to download the tarball and copy the new .htaccess file into your production directory.
Upgrading to Laconi.ca 0.4.3
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 22:37The software for Laconi.ca continues to evolve quickly. I’ve proposed assorted updates, such as those documented here, but they seem to have been ignored. My tarballs and updates are focused on people who want to quickly and easily set up and customize their own installations of Laconi.ca, though this seems to be a low priority for some of the others.
First, take a copy of your current Laconi.ca directory. Then, download this tarball and unpack it.
If this is a first time install, follow the instructions here for setting up your database and configuring your config.php file, and you should be fine.
If this is an upgrade, copy any customized theme you have, any avatars that you have in your avatar directory, and your config.php If you had to rename or copy the stoica.ini file in the classes directory to get it to work with your database, you will need to do this again.
Next, you need to update the database. On the Laconi.ca developers mailing list, Mike Cochrane listed several SQL changes that need to be applied to upgrade from 0.4.1 to 0.4.3 I have taken them and created an SQL file, upgrade_4_1_to_4_3.sql which is in the root directory. When you do your upgrade, you need to execute these SQL commands.
There are also two scripts, which you should run, fixup_notices_rendered.php and
fixup_replies.php. I’ve had mixed results with them, but it seems like my system is now upgraded to 0.4.3
The other upgrade that I’ve added this time, is following on with my enhanced theming. I’ve added a 'header.tpl.php' file to the default directory, with instructions on how to add header information, such as might be used for Google Analytics.
This required adding a few lines to util.php.
Near the top, I added,
require_once(INSTALLDIR.'/lib/theme.php');
require_once( theme_file('header.tpl.php'));
And then, around line 199, right before
common_element_end('head');
I added
theme_header();
So, that is about it for tonight. I may be online a little this evening, or tomorrow to help people, but then, I’m going on vacation for a week, and won’t have much for upgrades until later.
Where do we go from here?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 09:22As I reflect on my birthday yesterday, the lyrics from one of the songs in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical comes to mind, “Where do we go from here?” Fiona loves that musical.
Yesterday was a wonderful day. I really appreciate the great messages I received from friends on so many social networks. Some people found it was my birthday from notices that these social networks sent out. Others saw from my post sent from ping.fm to many different networks that I’m part of. Ping.fm has really helped me stay up to date on many of these networks.
But, back to Buffy. Where do we go from here? Today, I’m going to Hartford to hear Sen. Edwards speak about his Half in Ten effort. The goal of Half in Ten is to cut poverty in the United States in half in ten years.
Hartford Press Conference with Senator John Edwards
Thursday 7/10, 11:45 AM
Boys and Girls Club
1 Nahum Drive, Hartford
Later, Sen. Edwards will be speaking in Bridgeport. However, I’ll probably not make it to that event.
Bridgeport Rally with Senator John Edwards
Thursday 7/10, 2:00 PM
Steel Point
East Main Street and Stratford Ave, Bridgeport
Friday, hopefully, will be a day of recuperation, catching up and then packing for vacation. On Saturday, we will drive up to Springfield in a circuitous route to our vacation on Cape Cod. Our first stop will be Memorial Service for Lori.
Because of this, we will not be able to make it to the Open House at www.alpacahillfarm.com. This is the Alpaca farm in Seymour, CT that I’ve written about in the past. They have two, by now, probably three new baby alpacas. The open house will be from 10 AM until 4 PM, 8 Willow Street, Seymour, CT 06483. We will find some other opportunity to see the alpacas. However, if you are anywhere near Seymour, I would encourage you to attend.
Another event that I’ll have to miss, but wanted to comment on is the Mark Warner fundraiser in Old Saybrook on Sunday. Mark Warner is former Governor of Virginia and is currently running for U.S. Senate. The fundraising luncheon will take place on a yacht in Old Saybrook. The honorary chairs of the event are Sen. Dodd, Sen. Lieberman, and Rep. Courtney. Guests are asked to contribute $1,000.
While I have a lot of respect for Gov. Warner, I don’t have that sort of money, nor do I have any interest in contributing it at a fundraiser where Sen. Lieberman is one of the honorary chairs. Oh well. I wish Gov. Warner luck anyway.
As we camp on the Cape, I will have limited Internet access. We’ll see how often I get on during the week. However, I should note that on Wednesday, July 16th, we will be going to a concert by Stage Door Canteen. It will take place at the Eastham Windmill Green, Rte 6A, Eastham MA. It is part of the Cape Cod Arts Foundation Music in The Parks Concert Series. My online social media friend, Beth Dunn works for the Cape Cod Arts Foundation and I hope to run into her at the concert.
I would love to write more about all of this, detailed thank you letters to everyone who wished me well on my birthday, and so on, but I need to hit the road to get up and see Sen. Edwards.
