The configuration for GNU social is stored in the database table
config
.
A Web based configuration panel exists so the site admin can configure GNU social. The preferred method for changing config options is to use this panel.
A command-line script, set_config.php
, can be used to set individual
configuration options. It's in the bin/
directory.
Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
associative array, cleverly named $config
. A typical configuration
line will be:
$config['section']['setting] = value;
The following documentation describes each section and setting.
This section is a catch-all for site-wide variables.
name
(string, required, defaults to the value provided in the configre script,
sitename): the name of your site, like 'YourCompany Microblog'.
server
(string, required, defaults to the value provided in the configre script,
sitename): the server domain, like 'example.net'.
notice
(string, default null): A plain string that will appear on every page. A good
place to put introductory information about your service, or info about upgrades and
outages, or other community info. Any HTML will be escaped.
theme
(string, default 'default'): Theme for your site (see Theme section).
logo
(string, default null): URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site.
Overrides the logo in the theme, if any.
language
(string, default "en"): default language for your site. Defaults to English.
Note that this is overridden, if enabled in the following setting, if a user is logged
in and has selected a different language or if the user is NOT logged in, but their
browser requests a different langauge. Since pretty much everybody's browser requests
a language, that means that changing this setting has little or no effect in practice.
detect_language
(boolean, default true): whether to use the most appropriate language
depending on the requester's browser preferences.
languages
(array, default null): A list of languages supported on your site. Typically
you'd only change this if you wanted to disable support for one or more languages:
unset($config['site']['languages']['de'])
will disable support for German.
email
(string, required): contact email address for your site. By default, it's
extracted from your Web server environment or the value provided in the configure
script; you may want to customize it.
recovery_disclose
(boolean, default false): whether to confirm if the email exists
when attempting to login. Recommended to keep it false, for some privacy.
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.
brought_by
(string, default null): text used for the "brought by" link.
brought_by_url
(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 or
sidebar. A good way to link to the blog, forum, wiki, corporate portal, or whoever is
making the service available.
closed
(boolean, default false): If set to 'true', will disallow registration on your
site. This is a easy 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'.
invite_only
(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
'invite_only' for that behaviour.
ssl
(enum['always', 'sometimes', 'never'], default always'): 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).
ssl_proxy
(string|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. If a string is given, it will be used as the URL of the
proxy server.
duplicate_time_limit
(integer, default 60): minimum time allowed for one person to say
the same thing twice. Default 60s. If it happens faster than this, it's considered a
user or UI error.
text_limit
(integer, default 1000): default max size for texts in the site. Can be
fine-tuned for notices, messages, profile bios and group descriptions. Zero indicates
no limit.
x-static-delivery
(string, default null): when a string, use this as the header with
which to serve static files. Possible values are 'X-Sendfile' (for Apache and others)
and 'X-Accel-Redirect' (for nginx).
hash_algos
(array, default ['sha1', 'sha256', 'sha512']): set to null for anything
that hash_hmac()
can handle; can be any combination of the result of hash_algos()
mirror
(array, default null): you can set this to an array of database connection
URIs. If it's set, load will be split among these, and replication will be enabled.fancy_urls
(boolean, default true): fix any non-facy url to the correct form, when
possible.
http
(boolean, default true): fixe any http links to https.
You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like sending out SMS, email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing.
enabled
(boolean, default true): Whether to uses queues.
daemon
(boolean, default false): Whether to use queuedaemon. False means
you'll use OpportunisticQM plugin.
threads
(int): How many queue processes to run. Defaults to number of cpu cores in
unix-like systems or 1 on other OSes.
subsystem
(enum["db", "stomp", "redis"], default 'db'): Which kind of
queueserver to use. Values include "db" for our database queuing (no other server
required), "stomp" for a stomp server amd "redis" for a Redis server.
basename
(string, default '/queue/gnusocial/'): a root name to use for queues (stomp
and redis 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.
control_channel
(string, default '/topic/gnusocial/control'): the control channel used
for different queue processes to communicate.
monitor
(string, default null): URL endpoint to monitor queue status
soft_limit
(string, default '90%'): an absolute or relative "soft memory limit";
daemons will restart themselves gracefully when they find they've hit this amount of
memory usage. Relative means a percentage of PHP's global memory_limit
setting.
spawn_delay
(integer, default 1): seconds to wait between deamon restarts.
debug_memory
(boolean, default false): log daemon's memory usage.
stomp_server
(string, default null): URI for stomp server. Something like
"tcp://hostname:61613". More complicated ones are possible; see your stomp server's
documentation for details.
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. Not all stomp servers 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. Not all stop servers 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.
stomp_manual_failover
(boolean, default true): if multiple servers are listed, treat
them as separate (enqueue on one randomly, listen on all).
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.
server
(string, default null): If set, defines another server where avatars are
stored. Note that the dir
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.
url_base
(string, 'default '/avatar/'): URL where avatars can be found.
ssl
(boolean, default null): Whether to access avatars using HTTPS. Defaults
to null, meaning to guess based on site-wide SSL settings.
dir
(string, default 'file/avatar/'): Directory to save avatar files to.
max_size_px
(integer, default 300): Maximum width or height for user avatars, in pixels
server
(string, default null): You can speed up page loading by pointing the
javascript file lookup to another server (virtual or real). Defaults to NULL, meaning
to use the site server.
url_base
(string default '/js/'): URL part for JavaScript files.
ssl
(boolean, default null): Whether to use SSL for JavaScript files. Default is null,
which means guess based on site SSL settings.
bust_frames
(boolean, default true): If true, all web pages will break out of
framesets. If false, can comfortably live in a frame or iframe... probably.
server
(string, default null): 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.
url_base
(string, default '/file/'): URL path, relative to the server, to find
files. Defaults to main path + '/file/'.
ssl
(boolean, default null): Whether to use HTTPS for file URLs. Defaults to null,
meaning to use other SSL settings.
dir
(string, default '/file/uploads/'): Directory accessible to the Web process where
uploads should go.
supported
(array): An associative array of mime types you accept to store and
distribute, like 'image/gif', 'video/mpeg', 'audio/mpeg', to the corresponding file
extension. 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 file extension for each image type (jpg vs jpeg). For example, to enable BMP
uploads, add this to the config.php file:
image_type_to_mime_type(IMAGETYPE_BMP) => image_type_to_extension(IMAGETYPE_BMP);
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.
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).
file_quota
(integer, defaults to minimum of 'post_max_size', 'upload_max_filesize',
'memory_limit'
): 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
(integer, default 200M): 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
(integer, default 20M): Total size in bytes that a user can upload each
month.
uploads
(boolean, default true): Whether to allow uploading files with notices.
show_html
(boolean, default true): Whether to show (filtered) text/html attachments
(and oEmbed HTML etc.). Doesn't affect AJAX calls.
show_thumbs
(boolean, default true): Whether to show thumbnails in notice lists for
uploaded images, and photos and videos linked remotely that provide oEmbed info.
process_links
(boolean, default true): Whether to follow redirects and save all
available file information (mimetype, date, size, oembed, etc.).
ext_blacklist
(array, default []): 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
filename
(string, default hash): Name for new files, one of: 'upload', 'hash'.
memory_limit
(string, default '1024M'): PHP memory limit to use temporarily when
handling images
server
(string, default null): Server name from which to serve thumbnails. Defaults to
null, meaning to use the default Web server. Using a virtual server here can speed up
Web performance.
url_base
(string, default '/thumb/'): URL path, relative to the server, to find
files.
ssl
(boolean, default null): Whether to use HTTPS for thumbnail URLs. Defaults to null,
meaning to use other SSL settings.
dir
(string, default '/file/thumbnails/'): Path where to store thumbnails.
crop
(boolean, default false): Whether to crop thumbnails (or scale them down)
max_size_px
(integer, default 1000): Thumbnails with an edge greater than this will
not be generated.
width
(integer, default 450): Width for generated thumbnails.
height
(integer, default 600): Heigth for generated thumbnails.
upscale
(boolean, default false): Whether to generate thumbnails bigger than the original.
animated
(boolean, default false): Whether to allow animated thumbnails.
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.
url_base
(string, default '/theme'): 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.
ssl
(boolean, default null): Whether to use SSL for theme elements. Default
is null, which means guess based on site SSL settings.
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.
server
(string, default null): Server to find static files for a plugin when the page
is plain old HTTP. Defaults to site/server (same as pages). You can use this to move
plugin CSS and JS files to a CDN.
url_base
(string, default '/plugins/'): Path to the plugin files. Expects that each
plugin will have a subdirectory at plugins/NameOfPlugin. Change this if you're using
a CDN.
ssl
(boolean, default null) Whether to use ssl for files served by plugins.
core
(associative array, default TODO): Core GNU social modules, cannot be disabled.
default
: (associative array, default TODO): Mapping from plugin name to array of
plugin arguments.
locale_path
(string, default null): Path for finding plugin locale files. In the
plugin's directory by default.
The default license to use for your users' notices. The default is the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 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.
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|boolean, default null): For 'allrightsreserved' or 'private', an
assigned copyright holder (for example, an employer for a private site). Use true to
attribute it to the poster.
url
(string, default 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/'): URL of the
license, used for links.
title
(string, default 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0'): Title for the license.
image
(string, default '/theme/licenses/cc_by_4.0.png'): URL path for the license image.
This is for configuring out-going email.
backend
(enum["mail", "sendmail", "smtp"], default 'mail'): The backend to use for
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 this array.
domain_check
(boolean, default true): Check email origin is valid.
blacklist
(array, default ['doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme']): an array of strings for
usernames that may not be registered. 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.
banned
(array, defualt []): array of users to hell-ban
bio_text_limit
(integer, default null): Max character length of bio; 0 means no
limit; null means to use the site text limit default.
allow_nick_change
(boolean, default false): Whether to allow users to change their
nickname.
allow_private_stream
(boolean, default true): Whether users can set their streams to
private, so only followers can see it.
backup
(boolean, default false): Whether users can backup their own profiles. Can
cause DoS.
restore
(boolean, default false): Whether users can restore their profiles from backup
files. Can cause DoS.
delete
(boolean, default false): Whether users can delete their own accounts.
move
(boolean, default false): Whether users can move their accounts to another
server.
jpegquality
{integer, default 85}: default quality to use when reencoding images as
jpeg.enabled
(boolean, default true): Whether to allow users to upload themes
formats
(array, default ['zip', 'tar', 'gz', 'tar.gz']): Formats to allow
mbox_sha1sum
(boolean, default false): whether to include this box in the FOAF
protocol pageFor configuring the public stream.
local_only
(boolean, default false): If set to true, only messages posted by users of
this instance (rather than remote instances) are shown in the public stream.
blacklist
(array, default []): An array of IDs of users to hide from the public
stream. Useful if you have someone making an excessive amount of posts to the site or
some kind of automated poster, testing bots, etc.
exclude_sources
(array, default []): Sources of notices that should be kept off of
the public feed (because they're from automatic posters, for instance).
For notice-posting throttles.
enabled
(boolean, default true): Whether to throttle posting.
count
(integer, default 20): 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
(integer, default 600): See 'count'.
enabled
(boolean, default true): Whether to allow users to send invites.dropoff
(integer, default 86400 * 10): Exponential decay factor for tag listing, in
seconds. You can twiddle with this to try to get better results for your site.
cutoff
(integer, default 86400 * 90): Cutoff, in seconds, before which to not look for
notices.
dropoff
(integer, default 86400 * 10): Exponential decay factor for popular notices, in
seconds. You can twiddle with this to try to get better results for your site.
cutoff
(integer, default 86400 * 90): Cutoff, in seconds, before which to not look for
notices.
piddir
(string, default sys_get_temp_dir()
): Directory that daemon processes should
write their PID file (process ID) to.
user
(string|integer, default false): 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.
group
(string|integer, default false): If set, the daemons will try to change their
effective group ID to this named group.
Using the "XML-RPC Ping" method initiated by weblogs.com, the site can notify third-party servers of updates.
notify
(array, default []): An array of URLs for ping endpoints.
timeout
(integer, default 2): Interval in seconds between notifications.
default_subscriptions
(array, default null): Nickname of user accounts to
automatically subscribe new users to. Typically this would be a system account for e.g.
service updates or announcements. Users are able to unsub if they want.
welcome_user
(string, default null): Nickname of a user account that sends welcome
messages to new users.
N.B. If either of these special user accounts are specified, the users should be created
before the configuration is updated.
bare_domain
(boolean, default false): Prepend schema to any linked domains (a href,
not display text).
linkify_ipv4
(boolean, default false): Convert IPv4 addresses into hyperlinks.
linkify_ipv6
(boolean, default false): Convert IPv6 addresses into hyperlinks.
max_aliases
(integer, default 3): Maximum number of aliases a group can have.
Set to 0 or less to prevent aliases in a group.
description_limit
(integer, default null): Maximum number of characters to allow in
group descriptions. null means to use the site-wide text limits. 0 means no limit.
max_tags
(integer, default 100): Maximum number of people tags a user can create.
max_people
(integer, default 500): Maximum number of people with the same user people tag.
allow_tagging
(associative array, default ['local' => true, 'remote' => true])>: Which
kind of user to allow tagging.
description_limit
(integer, default null): Maximum tag description lenght.
type
(enum('fulltext', 'like'), default 'like'): type of search. Ignored if PostgreSQL
is enabled. Can either be 'fulltext' or 'like'. The former is faster and more
efficient but requires the lame old MyISAM engine for MySQL. The latter will work with
InnoDB but could be miserably slow on large systems.tags
(array, default ['img', 'video', 'audio', 'script']): Remove tags from
user/remotely generated HTML.content_limit
(integer, default null): Max length of the plain-text content of a
notice. Null means to use the site-wide text limit. 0 means no limit.
allow_private
(boolean, default false): Whether to allow users to post notices visible
only to their subscribers.
hide_banned
(boolean, default true): Whether to hide hell-banned users' notices.
content_limit
(integer, default null): Max length of the plain-text content of a
message. Null means to use the site-wide text limit. 0 means no limit.share
(enum('always', 'user', 'never'), default 'user'): Whether to share user
location. 'user' means each user can choose.
panels
(array, default ['site', 'user', 'paths', 'access', 'sessions', 'sitenotice',
'license', 'plugins']): Which panels to include in the admin tab.
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 value provided in configure): 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).
crawl_delay
(integer, default 0): if non-zero, 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, default ['main', 'settings', 'admin', 'search', 'message']): Array of
paths to disallow. Ignored when site is private, in which case the entire site ('/')
is disallowed.
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
(boolean, default true): Whether to nofollow links to subscribers on the
profile and personal pages.
members
(boolean, default true): Whether to nofollow links to members on the group
page. Default true.
peopletag
(boolean, default true): Whether to nofollow links to people listed in the
peopletag page. Default true.
external
(enum('always', 'sometimes', 'never'), default 'sometimes'): External links
in notices. One of three values: 'always', 'sometimes', 'never'. If 'sometimes', then
external links are not nofollowed on profile, notice, and favorites page. Default is
'sometimes'.
service
(string, default 'internal'): URL shortening service to use by default. Users
can override individually.
max_url_length
(integer, default 100): 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. Users can override. If set to 0, all URLs will be shortened.
max_notice_length
(integer, default null): If a notice is strictly longer than this
limit, all URLs in the notice will be shortened. Users can override this.
ssl_cafile
(string, default '/docker/certbot/files/live/'): location of the CA file
for SSL connections. If not set, peers won't be able to verify our identity.
timeout
(integer, default ini_get('default_socket_timeout')
): Timeout in seconds
when to close a connection.
proxy_host
(string, default null): Host to use for proxying HTTP requests. If null,
doesn't use an HTTP proxy.
proxy_port
(integer, default null): Port to use to connect to HTTP proxy host.
proxy_user
(string, default null): Username to use for authenticating to the HTTP proxy.
proxy_password
(string, default null): Password to use for authenticating to the HTTP proxy.
proxy_auth_scheme
(TODO): Scheme to use for authenticating to the HTTP proxy.
CORS
(boolean, default false): Whether to allow Cross-Origin Resource Sharing for
service discovery (host-meta, XRD, etc.)high
(boolean, default fakse): Disables some high-performance-intensity components.enabled
(boolean, default false): Whether to enable users to send the text 'login' to
the site through any channel and receive a link to login to the site automatically in
return. Possibly useful for users who primarily use an XMPP or SMS interface. Note
that the security implications of this are pretty serious. You should enable it only
after you've convinced yourself that it is safe.