Friendica/setup

How-to

Most of the setup instructions available for Friendica are either needlessly detailed or leave out important pieces. Instructions here will be based on actual installation attempts.

2019-10-05 - v2019.09

repository cloning

Some details:

• PHP will need to support cURL
• It's probably best to do these as the web server's user, but it seems to be ok to do it as root. If you do it as root, be sure to chown everything to the web server's user.
• If you have composer installed on your system, you can type just composer instead of bin/composer.phar.
• Wherever the main "friendica" repository is cloned to, it should be accessible as the web root (either directly or via named link).
• Steps:

git clone https://github.com/friendica/friendica.git -b master .
bin/composer.phar install
git clone https://github.com/friendica/friendica-addons.git -b master addon

• Rename the .htaccess-dist file to .htaccess; this somehow intercepts the <domain>/install URL request and points it at an actual install folder (I haven't yet figured out where).

At this point, the web install should be accessible and installation can proceed as described here.

Possibly Obsolete

Some necessary things they don't seem to mention:

• To make a user the admin (and thereby activate the admin panel) for them, you have to add this to the .htconfig.php file:

  $a->config['admin_email'] = 'your.admin.email@example.com';
  

  Note that this is not the same as the user's identity address; it needs to be the actual contact email address entered in the user's profile. (Also, it isn't necessary to restart the web server after making this change; just reload a Friendica web page, and an "admin" link should appear on the top right.)
• To install connectors and other plugins, you have to download the necessary files separately. Instructions are here.

Links

• Installation
  • assumes you're able to access the web install screen
• Resources: "Installation Guides" and "Getting Help"
  • does not mention the .htaccess file
• install.md
  • does not mention the .htaccess file
  • includes some steps not mentioned anywhere else