gnu-social/DOCUMENTATION/SYSTEM_ADMINISTRATORS/CONFIGURE.md

Configuration options
================================================================================

The main configuration file for GNU social (excepting configurations for
dependency software) is config.php in your GNU social directory. If you edit any
other file in the directory, like `lib/default.php` (where most 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 0.9.0, a Web based configuration panel has been added to
GNU social. The preferred method for changing config options is to use this
panel.

A command-line script, setconfig.php, can be used to set individual
configuration options. It's in the scripts/ directory.

Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the /etc/GNU social/
directory on your server, if it exists. Config files will be included in this
order:

* `/etc/GNU social/statusnet.php` - server-wide config

* `/etc/GNU social/<servername>.php` - for a virtual host

* `/etc/GNU social/<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:

    $config['section']['option'] = value;

For brevity, the following documentation describes each section and
option.


site
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.

* `name` (string, required, default "Another GNU social Instance"): the name of
    your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.

* `server` (string, required, default null): the server part of your site's URLs,
    like 'example.net'.

* `path` (string, required, default ''): The path part of your site's URLs, like
    'statusnet' or '' (installed in root).

* `fancy` (string, default false): whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
    section above).

* `logfile` (string, default './'): full path to a file for GNU social to save
    logging information to. You may want to use this if you don't have access
    to syslog.

* `logdebug` (boolean, default false): whether to log additional debug info like
    backtraces on hard errors.

* `locale_path` (string, default null): full path to the directory for locale
    data. Unless you store all your locale data in one place, you probably
    don't need to use this.

* `language` (string, default "en_us"): 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` (array, default null): 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:

    "unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])" will disable
    support for German.

* `theme` (string, default 'default'): Theme for your site (see Theme section).
    Two themes are provided by default: 'default' and 'stoica' (the one used by
    Identi.ca). It's appreciated if you don't use the 'stoica' theme except as
    the basis for your own.

* `email` (string, required): contact email address for your site. By default,
    it's extracted from your Web server environment; you may want to customize it.

* `broughtbyurl` (string, default null): name of an organization or individual
    who provides the service. Each page will include a link to this name in the
    footer. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki, corporate portal, or
    whoever is making the service available.

* `broughtby` (string, default null): text used for the "brought by" link.

* `timezone` (string, default 'UTC'): default timezone for message display. Users
    can set their own time zone. Defaults to 'UTC', which is a pretty good
    default.

* `closed` (boolean, default false): If set to 'true', will disallow registration
    on your site.  This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
    individual or group; just register the accounts you want on the service,
    *then* set this variable to 'true'.

* `inviteonly` (boolean, default false): If set to 'true', will only allow
    registration if the user was invited by an existing user.

* `private` (boolean, default false): If set to 'true', anonymous users will be
    redirected to the 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
    authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn off
    registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the behaviour you want.

* `notice` (string, default null): A plain string that will appear on every
    page. A good place to put introductory information about your service, or
    info about upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will be
    escaped.

* `logo` (string, default null): URL of an image file to use as the logo for the
    site. Overrides the logo in the theme, if any.

* `ssllogo` (string, default null): URL of an image file to use as the logo on
    SSL pages. If unset, theme logo is used instead.

* `ssl` (enum['always','sometimes','never'], default 'never'): Whether to use SSL
    and https:// URLs for some or all pages.

    Possible values are 'always' (use it for all pages), 'never' (don't use it
    for any pages), or 'sometimes' (use it for sensitive pages that include
    passwords like login and registration, but not for regular pages).

* `sslproxy` (boolean, default false): Whether to force GNUsocial to think it
    is HTTPS when the server gives no such information. I.e. when you're using
    a reverse proxy that adds the encryption layer but the webserver that runs
    PHP isn't configured with a key and certificate.

* `sslserver` (string, default null): use an alternate server name for SSL URLs,
    like 'secure.example.org'. You should be careful to set cookie parameters
    correctly so that both the SSL server and the "normal" server can access
    the session cookie and preferably other cookies as well.

* `dupelimit` (integer, default 60): minimum time allowed for one person to say
    the same thing twice. Default 60s. Anything lower is considered a user or
    UI error.

* `textlimit` (integer, default 0): default max size for texts in the site. Can
    be fine-tuned for notices, messages, profile bios and group descriptions.
    Zero indicates no limit.

* favicon: the path to a custom favicon, eg: favicon.png

* `x-static-delivery` (string, default null): when a string, use this
    as the header with wich to serve static files. Possible values are
    'X-Sendfile' (for Apache and others) and 'X-Accel-Redirect' (for
    nginx).


db
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This section is a reference to the configuration options for
`DB_DataObject` (see
<http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.database.db-dataobject.intro-configuration.php>).
The ones that you may want to set are listed below for clarity.

* `database` (string, required, default null): a DSN (Data Source Name) for your
    GNU social database. This is in the format
    'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename', where 'protocol' is
    'mysqli' or 'pgsql' or 'mysql', 'username' is the username, 'password' is
    the password, and etc.

* `ini_yourdbname` (string, default null): if your database is not named 'statusnet',
    you'll need to set this to point to the location of the statusnet.ini file.
    Note that the real name of your database should go in there, not literally
    'yourdbname'.

* `type` (enum["mysql", "pgsql"], default 'mysql'): Used for certain
    database-specific optimization code.  Assumes mysql if not set.  "mysql"
    covers MariaDB, Oracle MySQL, mysqli or otherwise.

* `mirror` (array, default null): you can set this to an array of DSNs, in the
    format of the above 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only
    actions will use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
    than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten). You can
    offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication and adding the
    slaves to this array. Note that if you want some requests to go to the
    'database' (master) server, you'll need to include it in this array, too.

* `utf8` (boolean, true): whether to talk to the database in UTF-8 mode. This is
    the default with new installations, but older sites may want to turn it off
    until they get their databases fixed up. See "UTF-8 database" above for
    details.

* `schemacheck` (enum["runtime", "script"], default "runtime"): when
    to let plugins check the database schema to add tables or update
    them. 'runtime' can be costly (plugins check the schema on every
    hit, adding potentially several db queries, some quite long), but
    not everyone knows how to run a script or has the access in their
    hosting environment to do so. If you can, set this to 'script' and
    run scripts/checkschema.php whenever you install or upgrade a
    plugin.


syslog
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By default, GNU social sites log error messages to the syslog facility.
(You can override this using the 'logfile' parameter described above).

* `appname` (string, default `'GNU social'`): The name that GNU social uses to log
    messages. By default it's "GNU social", but if you have more than one
    installation on the server, you may want to change the name for each
    instance so you can track log messages more easily.

* `facility` (string, default `'LOG_USER'`): what syslog facility to use. Only set
    this if you know what syslog is and have a good reason to change it.


queue
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.

* `enabled` (boolean, default false): Whether to uses queues.

* `daemon` (boolean, default false): Whether to use queuedaemon. False means
    you'll use OpportunisticQM plugin.

* `subsystem` (enum["db", "stomp"], default 'db'): Which kind of queueserver to
    use. Values include "db" for our hacked-together database queuing (no
    other server required), "stomp" for a stomp server, and "redis" for a Redis
	server.

* `threads` (int): How many queue "threads" (actually processes) to run. Defaults to
    number of cpu cores in unix-like systems or 1 on other OSes.

* `items_to_handle` (int): How many items to handle before a daemon process exits.
    Default to unlimited.

* `stomp_server` (string, default null): "broker URI" for stomp server.
    Something like "tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are possible;
    see your stomp server's documentation for details.

* `queue_basename` (string, default null): a root name to use for queues (stomp
    only). Typically something like '/queue/sitename/' makes sense. If running
    multiple instances on the same server, make sure that either this setting
    or $config['site']['nickname'] are unique for each site to keep them
    separate.

* `stomp_username` (string, default null): username for connecting to the stomp
    server.

* `stomp_password` (string, default null): password for connecting to the stomp
    server.

* `stomp_persistent` (boolean, default true): Keep items across queue server
    restart, if enabled.  Note: Under ActiveMQ, the server configuration
    determines if and how persistent storage is actually saved.

    If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may
    need to disable this if it does not support persistence.

* `stomp_transactions` (boolean, default true): use transactions to aid in error
    detection. A broken transaction will be seen quickly, allowing a message to
    be redelivered immediately if a daemon crashes.

    If using a message queue server other than ActiveMQ, you may need to
    disable this if it does not support transactions.

* `stomp_acks` (boolean, default true): send acknowledgements to aid in flow
    control. An acknowledgement of successful processing tells the server we're
    ready for more and can help keep things moving smoothly.

    This should *not* be turned off when running with ActiveMQ, (it breaks if
    you do), but if using another message queue server that does not support
    acknowledgements you might need to disable this.

* `softlimit` (integer): an absolute or relative "soft memory limit"; daemons
    will restart themselves gracefully when they find they've hit this amount
    of memory usage. Defaults to 90% of PHP's global memory_limit setting.

* `inboxes` (boolean, default true): delivery of messages to receiver's inboxes
    can be delayed to queue time for best interactive performance on the
    sender. This may however be annoyingly slow when using the DB queues, so
    you can set this to false if it's causing trouble.

* `breakout` (array, default null): for stomp, individual queues are by default
    grouped up for best scalability. If some need to be run by separate daemons,
    etc they can be manually adjusted here.

        Default will share all queues for all sites within each group.
        Specify as <group>/<queue> or <group>/<queue>/<site>,
        using nickname identifier as site.

        'main/distrib' separate "distrib" queue covering all sites
        'xmpp/xmppout/mysite' separate "xmppout" queue covering just 'mysite'

* `max_retries` (integer, default 10): for stomp, drop messages after N failed
    attempts to process.

* `dead_letter_dir` (string, default null): for stomp, optional directory to dump
    data on failed queue processing events after discarding them.

* `stomp_no_transactions` (boolean, default false): for stomp, the server does
    not support transactions, so do not try to user them. This is needed for
    http://www.morbidq.com/

* `stomp_no_acks` (boolean, default false): for stomp, the server does not
    support acknowledgements so do not try to user them. This is needed for
    http://www.morbidq.com/.


license
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.

As of 2016, this is largely disregarded in the Fediverse -mb

* `type` (enum["cc", "allrightsreserved", "private"], default 'cc'): one of
    'cc' (for Creative Commons licenses), 'allrightsreserved' (default
    copyright), or 'private' (for private and confidential information).

* `owner` (string, default 'contributors'): for 'allrightsreserved' or
    'private', an assigned copyright holder (for example, an employer for a
    private site).

* `url` (string, default null): URL of the license, used for links.

* `title` (string, default null): Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons
    Attribution 3.0'.

* `image` (string, default null): URL of a button shown on each page for the
    license.


mail
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php

* `backend` (enum["mail", "sendmail", "smtp"], default 'mail'): The backend to
   use for mail.  While this defaults to PEAR mail, we recommend SMTP where your
   setup supports it as it is of the three the more difficult one for script
   exploits to abuse (relatively speaking - they all have potential problems.)

* `params` (array, default null): if the mail backend requires any parameters,
    you can provide them in an associative array.

* `templates_path` (string, default null): alias for `site->mail_path`


nickname
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is for configuring nicknames in the service.

* `blacklist` (array, default null): an array of strings for usernames that
    may not be registered. A hard-coded default array exists for strings that
    are used by GNU social (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme') but you may
    want to add others if you have other software installed in a subdirectory
    of GNU social or if you just don't want certain words used as usernames.

* `featured` (array, default null): an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of
    the site. Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
    interesting people, or whatever.


avatar
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For configuring avatar access.

* `dir` (string, default './avatar'): Directory to look for avatar files and to
    put them into. Defaults to avatar subdirectory of install directory; if
    you change it, make sure to change path, too.

* `path` (string, 'default './avatar'): Path to avatars. Defaults to path for
    avatar subdirectory, but you can change it if you wish. Note that this will
    be included with the avatar server, too.

* `server` (string, default null): If set, defines another server where avatars
    are stored in the root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has
    to be writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on 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
    <https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec8.html#sec8.1.4>,
    so this can parallelize the job.

* `ssl` (boolean, default null): Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults
    to null, meaning to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.


public
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For configuring the public stream.

* `localonly` (boolean, default true): If set to true, only messages posted by
    users of this service (rather than other services, filtered through
    OStatus) are shown in the public stream. Default true.

* `blacklist` (array, default null): An array of IDs of users to hide from the
    public stream. Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed
    posts to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.

* `autosource` (array, default null): Sources of notices that are from automatic
    posters, and thus should be kept off the public timeline.


theme
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* `server` (string, default null): Like avatars, you can speed up page loading
    by pointing the theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real).
    The default of null will use the same server as PA.

* `dir` (string, default "./themes"): Directory where theme files are stored.
    Used to determine whether to show parts of a theme file. Defaults to the
    theme subdirectory of the install directory.

* `path` (string, default null): Path part of theme URLs, before the theme name. Relative to the
    theme server. It may make sense to change this path when upgrading,
    (using version numbers as the path) to make sure that all files are
    reloaded by caching clients or proxies. Defaults to null,
    which means to use the site path + '/theme'.

* `ssl` (boolean, default null): Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default
    is null, which means guess based on site SSL settings.

* `sslserver` (string, default null): SSL server to use when page is
    HTTPS-encrypted. If unspecified, site ssl server and so on will be used.

* `sslpath` (string, default null): If sslserver if defined, path to use when
    page is HTTPS-encrypted.


javascript
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* `server` (string, default null): You can speed up page loading by pointing the
    theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real). Defaults to NULL,
    meaning to use the site server.

* `path` (string default null): Path part of Javascript URLs. Defaults to null,
    which means to use the site path + '/js/'.

* `ssl` (boolean, default null): Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files.
    Default is null, which means guess based on site SSL settings.

* `sslserver` (string, default null): SSL server to use when page is HTTPS-
    encrypted. If unspecified, site ssl server and so on will be used.

* `sslpath` (string, default null): If sslserver if defined, path to use when
    page is HTTPS-encrypted.

* `bustframes` (boolean, default true): If true, all web pages will break out of
    framesets. If false, can comfortably live in a frame or iframe... probably.


xmpp
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For configuring the XMPP sub-system.

* `enabled` (boolean, default false): Whether to accept and send messages by
    XMPP. Default false.

* `server` (string, default null): Server part of XMPP ID for update user.

* `port` (integer, default 5222): Connection port for clients.

* `user` (string, default null): Username for the client connection. Users will
    receive messages from 'user'@'server'.

* `resource`: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
    is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.

* `password`: password for the user account.

* `host`: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
    hostname. Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
    case with your server.

* `encryption`: Whether to encrypt the connection between GNU social and the
    XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
    considerably better performance turning it off if you're
    connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
    protected network.

* `debug`: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
    the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
    last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
    enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.

* `public`: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
    participating in third-party search and archiving services.


invite
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For configuring invites.

* `enabled`: Whether to allow users to send invites. Default true.


tag
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Miscellaneous tagging stuff.

* `dropoff`: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
    Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
    with it to try and get better results for your site.


popular
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Settings for the "popular" section of the site.

* `dropoff`: Decay factor for popularity listing, in seconds.
    Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
    with it to try and get better results for your site.


daemon
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For daemon processes.

* `piddir`: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
    (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
    stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.

* `user`: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
    to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
    you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
    not 1001.

* `group`: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
    to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.


emailpost
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For post-by-email.

* `enabled`: Whether to enable post-by-email. Defaults to true. You will
    also need to set up maildaemon.php.


sms
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For SMS integration.

* `enabled`: Whether to enable SMS integration. Defaults to true. Queues
    should also be enabled.


integration
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A catch-all for integration with other systems.

* `taguri`: base for tag:// URIs. Defaults to site-server + ',2009'.


inboxes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For notice inboxes.

* `enabled`: No longer used. If you set this to something other than true,
    GNU social will no longer run.


throttle
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For notice-posting throttles.

* `enabled`: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.

* `count`: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
    is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
    from a user every hour.

* `timespan`: see 'count'.


profile
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Profile management.

* `biolimit`: max character length of bio; 0 means no limit; null means to use
    the site text limit default.

* `backup`: whether users can backup their own profiles. Defaults to false.

* `restore`: whether users can restore their profiles from backup files. Defaults
	 to false.

* `delete`: whether users can delete their own accounts. Defaults to false.

* `move`: whether users can move their accounts to another server. Defaults
      to true.


newuser
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Options with new users.

* `default`: nickname of a user account to automatically subscribe new
    users to. Typically this would be system account for e.g.
    service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub
    if they want. Default is null; no auto subscribe.

* `welcome`: nickname of a user account that sends welcome messages to new
    users. Can be the same as 'default' account, although on
    busy servers it may be a good idea to keep that one just for
    'urgent' messages. Default is null; no message.

If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should
be created before the configuration is updated.


attachments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The software lets users upload files with their notices. You can configure
the types of accepted files by mime types and a trio of quota options:
per file, per user (total), per user per month.

We suggest the use of the pecl file_info extension to handle mime type
detection.

* `supported`: an array of mime types you accept to store and distribute,
    like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', etc. Make sure you
    setup your server to properly recognize the types you want to
    support. It's important to use the result of calling `image_type_to_extension`
    for the appropriate image type, in the case of images. This is so all parts of
    the code see the same extension for each image type (jpg vs jpeg).
    For example, to enable BMP uploads, add this to the config.php file:
        $config['attachments']['supported'][image_type_to_mime_type(IMAGETYPE_GIF)]
        = image_type_to_extension(IMAGETYPE_GIF);
    See https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.image-type-to-mime-type.php for a
    list of such constants. If a filetype is not listed there, it's possible to add
    the mimetype and the extension by hand, but they need to match those returned by
    the file command.

* `uploads`: false to disable uploading files with notices (true by default).

For quotas, be sure you've set the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size
in php.ini to be large enough to handle your upload. In httpd.conf
(if you're using apache), check that the LimitRequestBody directive isn't
set too low (it's optional, so it may not be there at all).

* `extblacklist`: associative array to either deny certain extensions or
    change them to a different one. For example:

        $config['attachments']['extblacklist']['php'] = 'phps';  // this turns .php into .phps
        $config['attachments']['extblacklist']['exe'] = false;   // this would deny any uploads
                                                                 // of files with the "exe" extension

* `process_links`: follow redirects and save all available file information
    (mimetype, date, size, oembed, etc.). Defaults to true.

* `file_quota`: maximum size for a single file upload in bytes. A user can send
    any amount of notices with attachments as long as each attachment
    is smaller than file_quota.

* `user_quota`: total size in bytes a user can store on this server. Each user
    can store any number of files as long as their total size does
    not exceed the user_quota.

* `monthly_quota`: total size permitted in the current month. This is the total
    size in bytes that a user can upload each month.

* `dir`: directory accessible to the Web process where uploads should go.
    Defaults to the 'file' subdirectory of the install directory, which
    should be writeable by the Web user.

* `server`: server name to use when creating URLs for uploaded files.
    Defaults to null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using
    a virtual server here can speed up Web performance.

* `path`: URL path, relative to the server, to find files. Defaults to
    main path + '/file/'.

* `ssl`: whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null, meaning to
    guess based on other SSL settings.

* `sslserver`: if specified, this server will be used when creating HTTPS
    URLs. Otherwise, the site SSL server will be used, with /file/ path.

* `sslpath`: if this and the sslserver are specified, this path will be used
    when creating HTTPS URLs. Otherwise, the attachments|path value
    will be used.

* `show_thumbs`: show thumbnails in notice lists for uploaded images, and photos
    and videos linked remotely that provide oEmbed info. Defaults to true.

* `show_html`: show (filtered) text/html attachments (and oEmbed HTML etc.).
    Doesn't affect AJAX calls. Defaults to false.

* `filename_base`: for new files, choose one: 'upload', 'hash'. Defaults to hash.


group
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Options for group functionality.

* `maxaliases`: maximum number of aliases a group can have. Default 3. Set
    to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.

* `desclimit`: maximum number of characters to allow in group descriptions.
    null (default) means to use the site-wide text limits. 0
    means no limit.

* `addtag`: Whether to add a tag for the group nickname for every group post
	(pre-1.0.x behaviour). Defaults to false.


search
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some stuff for search.

* `type`: type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL or Sphinx are enabled. Can either
    be 'like' or 'fulltext' (default). The latter is faster and more efficient
    but if your storage engine of choice does not support it, then feel free to
    choose 'like', but it could be miserably slow on large databases.


sessions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Session handling.

* `handle`: boolean. Whether we should register our own PHP session-handling
    code (using the database and cache layers if enabled). Defaults to false.
    Setting this to true makes some sense on large or multi-server
    sites, but it probably won't hurt for smaller ones, either.

* `debug`: whether to output debugging info for session storage. Can help
    with weird session bugs, sometimes. Default false.


ping
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can
notify third-party servers of updates.

* `notify`: an array of URLs for ping endpoints. Default is the empty
    array (no notification).


notice
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Configuration options specific to notices.

* `contentlimit`: max length of the plain-text content of a notice.
    Default is null, meaning to use the site-wide text limit.
    0 means no limit.

* `defaultscope`: default scope for notices. If null, the default
	scope depends on site/private. It's 1 if the site is private,
	0 otherwise. Set this value to override.


message
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Configuration options specific to messages.

* `contentlimit`: max length of the plain-text content of a message.
    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'.


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` (boolean, default true): Whether to run in "single user mode".

* `nickname` (string, default null): nickname of the single user. If no nickname is
  specified, the site owner account will be used (if present).


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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard#Crawl-delay_directive>
    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.


api
---

Options for the Twitter-like API.

* `realm`: HTTP Basic Auth realm (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2617
    for details). Some third-party tools like ping.fm want this to be
    'Identi.ca API', so set it to that if you want to. default = null,
    meaning 'something based on the site name'.


nofollow
--------

We optionally put 'rel="nofollow"' on some links in some pages. The
following configuration settings let you fine-tune how or when things
are nofollowed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow for more
information on what 'nofollow' means.

* `subscribers`: whether to nofollow links to subscribers on the profile
    and personal pages. Default is true.

* `members`: links to members on the group page. Default true.

* `peopletag`: links to people listed in the peopletag page. Default true.

* `external`: external links in notices. One of three values: 'sometimes',
    'always', 'never'. If 'sometimes', then external links are not
    nofollowed on profile, notice, and favorites page. Default is
    'sometimes'.

url
---

These are some options for fine-tuning how and when the server will
shorten URLs.

* `shortener`: URL shortening service to use by default. Users can override
           individually. 'internal' by default.

* `maxurllength`: If an URL is strictly longer than this limit, it will be
           shortened. Note that the URL shortener service may return an
           URL longer than this limit. Defaults to 100. Users can
           override. If set to 0, all URLs will be shortened.

* `maxnoticelength`: If a notice is strictly longer than this limit, all
           URLs in the notice will be shortened. Users can override.
           -1 means the text limit for notices.


router
------

We use a router class for mapping URLs to code. This section controls
how that router works.

* `cache`: whether to cache the router in cache layers. Defaults to true,
    but may be set to false for developers (who might be actively
    adding pages, so won't want the router cached) or others who see
    strange behavior. You're unlikely to need this unless developing..


http
----

Settings for the HTTP client.

* `ssl_cafile`: location of the CA file for SSL. If not set, won't verify
	    SSL peers. Default unset.

* `curl`: Use cURL <http://curl.haxx.se/> for doing HTTP calls. You must
      have the PHP curl extension installed for this to work.

* `proxy_host`: Host to use for proxying HTTP requests. If unset, doesn't
	    do any HTTP proxy stuff. Default unset.

* `proxy_port`: Port to use to connect to HTTP proxy host. Default null.

* `proxy_user`: Username to use for authenticating to the HTTP proxy. Default null.

* `proxy_password`: Password to use for authenticating to the HTTP proxy. Default null.

* `proxy_auth_scheme`: Scheme to use for authenticating to the HTTP proxy. Default null.


plugins
-------

* `default`: associative array mapping plugin name to array of arguments. To disable
	 a default plugin, unset its value in this array.

* `locale_path`: path for finding plugin locale files. In the plugin's directory
	     by default.

* `server`: Server to find static files for a plugin when the page is plain old HTTP.
	Defaults to site/server (same as pages). Use this to move plugin CSS and
	JS files to a CDN.

* `sslserver`: Server to find static files for a plugin when the page is HTTPS. Defaults
	   to site/server (same as pages). Use this to move plugin CSS and JS files
	   to a CDN.

* `path`: Path to the plugin files. defaults to site/path + '/plugins/'. Expects that
      each plugin will have a subdirectory at plugins/NameOfPlugin. Change this
      if you're using a CDN.

* `sslpath`: Path to use on the SSL server. Same as plugins/path.


performance
-----------

* `high`: if you need high performance, or if you're seeing bad
      performance, set this to true. It will turn off some high-intensity code from
      the site.


oldschool
---------

* `enabled`: enable certain old-style user settings options, like stream-only mode,
	 conversation trees, and nicknames in streams. Off by default, and
	 may not be well supported in future versions.