A Local and Private Microblog using StatusNet

This is a continuation/additional post for my previous entry "A Local and Private Microblog using Laconica". Please see the previous post as well. Laconica has changed it's name to StatusNet and has been constantly active in improving their open source code.

I just found out that HTTPS is not supported in the free version of Abyss Web Server and you have to pay for the professional version to support HTTPS. To make StatusNet 0.9.6 work with Abyss Web Server, I need to edit lib/statusnet.php:

static function isHTTPS()

{

return false;

//return !empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']);

}

This forces StatusNet never to use HTTPS, and the problem lies actually with the $_SERVER variable I think for Abyss and other servers. I based it from the Issue 2857. Also, to avoid some redirection loop issue, I have to edit index.php under getPath($req) method:

else if (array_key_exists('PATH_INFO', $_SERVER)) {

return ltrim(substr($_SERVER['URL'],strpos($_SERVER['URL'],".php")+4),"/");

}

This has to do with the string being returned for that variable by Abyss which may be different from other servers. You may comment out the codes under the if block. StatusNet is quite mature already, and their support is also good. I managed to talk to Evan Prodromou, the founder and CEO, through email last October 2009 about some features that I want. Here are some of my requests:

1. Ability to edit my 'tweets' or 'notices' or 'posts'. This is ideal for private and local setting but not for public or those that involves multiple users.


2. Removing the 140-character limit. Note: 0.9.x now supports this feature or even providing the limit value for the max number of characters.


3. Calendar view to browse for a certain month or date since I'm using it for some journaling purposes too. Evan told me that he has started working on it, and the hard part was on the time zones.


4. Timeline or page navigation instead of just the 'before' and 'after' buttons. Although this can be compensated by editing the query part of the URL.