@Friendica Support

Hi.

I am trying to find out if its a good idea to run my own #friendica server for family, relatives and friends. Motivation: #unplugtrump. Historically, the clan (still) uses iCloud and photo sharing etc.
My friendica server is blusox.de hosted by weingärtner-it (Thank you!).

I am trying to get used to be an admin for friendica. Some things are going well, others are leading to questions which it seems I cant solve by myself or by RTFM.

So if anyone should feel like introducing me to some do's and dont's or supplying some useful knowledge for a more or less closed friendica instance, please get in touch.

German welcome.

Current unsolved problems:
- Apart from an admin account I have two "regular" users who are friends with each other and who see each others posts. They can interact etc. But embedded photos are hidden for some reason. Which settings do I have to check?
- Is a group a reasonable feature to create "sub groups" in our clan? I didn't manage to get groups going.
- Is it a better idea to try a #pixelfed server for this purpose? The photo quality seems to get reduced to a tolerable minimum here on friendica.

Thanks!

The Postbox and Zen Postbox add-ons have been updated with a bunch of new styles!

* Solid Colors renamed to match HTML color names
* 24 new solid colors added
* 5 new gradient backgrounds added
* 17 new pattern backgrounds added
* 11 animated backgrounds added
* Fixed the load order so it overrides Postbox styles in Bookface if present

The previous solid color names have been mapped to the new ones, so any existing Postboxes in your feed using the old names will still look good.

The gradient backgrounds were ones that got missed from the initial release and are similar to the ones Facebook used to offer.

The pattern backgrounds all use pure CSS, no images, so they will render fast and do not incur an additional resource load from the server.

The animated backgrounds are exclusively available on servers that use either of the two add-ons. None of the animated styles are included in the Bookface scheme because some of them use SVG images. They use pure CSS animation as well, no JS code or animated GIF images.

Zen Postbox (Adds a style button to the post Composer):
https://gitlab.com/randompenguin/zen_postbox/-/releases/1.1

Postbox (Just adds the styles, you need to manually type BBcode):
https://gitlab.com/randompenguin/postbox/-/releases/1.1

#Friendica #Postboxes #add-on @Friendica Support @Friendica Admins

These are the changes and fixes in this release:

* Restyled “New Message” button to make it more obvious.
* Fixed Profile Pics and Cover Photos not working in old iOS browsers
* Moved Postbox styles to the end of the stylesheet
* Minified Postbox CSS.
* Restyled Item Responses
* Action Buttons you’ve interacted with before now adopt accent color.
* Fix for disabled Action Buttons to make it clear they are disabled.
* Fixed issue with slow-loading secondary toolbar in Safari
* Updated with Postbox version 1.1 styles
— names of solid colors now match HTML color names
— 24 new solid colors
— 5 new gradient backgrounds
— 17 new pattern backgrounds

Some of these will be fairly obvious. The big one is that the Action Buttons below posts and comments used to change to the accent color on hover and there was no indicator if you’d previously interacted with any of them. NOW they have a slight shift in darkness/lightness on hover and the accent color indicates you’ve previously clicked the Like, Dislike, Share, or Event buttons (the exceptions being Comment or Quote). If a post's scope is limited (not public) the "Share" and "Quote" buttons are now obviously disabled by being faded out.

Engagement Counts also now show an icon indicating the type of engagement, which should make it easier to see what kind of engagement a post or comment is getting. And if there are 2+ the individuals are revealed in a pop-over box rather than pushing the entire layout down.

The new Postbox pattern backgrounds are done with pure CSS, no images! So they’ll load and display fast and don’t incur additional server calls. Postboxes are just a nice looking way to dress up your text-only posts. Of course only Friendica users will see them, and only if they are using the Bookface scheme or their instance has installed one of the Postbox add-ons. The styling doesn’t transfer to other platforms (Note: there are still issues with Postbox posts shared to Diaspora and Hubzilla).

Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback, reported issues, and tested things for me to help improve Bookface for everyone. 😁

#Friendica #Bookface @Friendica Support @Friendica Admins

Server Styles:
https://gitlab.com/randompenguin/bookface/-/releases/1.7

User Styles:
https://gitlab.com/randompenguin/userstyles/-/releases/1.7

Bookface 1.6 introduces a new feature called "Postboxes" that allows you to create a post with a colorful background like a similar feature on Facebook. It's built into the Bookface scheme, but I also created TWO add-ons for Friendica if a server administrator wants to roll it out for all of their users regardless of what theme they prefer.

Postbox: simply adds a minified stylesheet to the head with the Postbox styling. It doesn’t add any interface for creating a Postbox, but users can still create them manually with BBcode.

Zen Postbox: adds the minified stylesheet to the head, but also adds a tool to the post composer to insert a Postbox or wrap selected text in one.

To manually create a Postbox just wrap your text in the Postbox class BBcode like this:

[class=postbox-redblue]Text that will be wrapped[/class]

Make sure to PREVIEW it before you post it! While Friendica's Postboxes do allow more content than just plain text, certain formatting blocks can't be placed inside them.

If everything looks good, go ahead an POST it. Anyone using Bookface or any server using either the "Postbox" or "Zen Postbox" add-ons will see it like this:

If the "Zen Postbox" add-on is enabled it adds a button for wrapping/inserting a Postbox to the post editor:

Full Documentation of the "Zen Postbox" add-on is available as a GitLab Wiki.

Keep in mind that other servers that don't implement Postbox styling, other platforms (like Mastodon), and third-party apps will not show these colored backgrounds. This feature only works in the Friendica webapp/website.

This is what that post would look like in the stock "Frio" theme without the add-ons:

#bookface #friendica @Friendica Admins @Friendica Developers

[strong]Friendica: Welchen Sinn macht die Option Öffentlichen Beiträge für anonymen Besucher zu sperren?[/strong]

Es gibt bei den Einstellungen folgende Option die es ermöglicht anonymen Besuchern der Webseite den Zugriff auf die öffentlich eingestellten Beiträge zu verweigern.

Für mich persönlich ist das durchaus sinnvoll, da ich meine Beiträge ja fürs Fediverse und nicht für Google und Co. schreibe. Nun stellt sich aber dennoch die Sinnfrage, wenn ca. 80 Prozent der eigenen Kontakte eine Plattform (Mastodon) nutzen die die Beiträge nicht korrekt darstellen und den ursprünglichen Beitrag auch nicht inline laden kann. Deren Nutzer also darauf angewiesen sind anonym über den Server auf der der Beitrag erstellt wurde darauf zuzugreifen.

[strong]Wie geht Ihr damit um? Welche Lösungen habt Ihr dafür gefunden?[/strong]

#Friendica #Beiträge #ÖffentlicheBeiträge #AnonymeZugriffe #Mastodon #Frage #2024-03-24 !Friendica Support

!Friendica Support

Friendica has a LOT of feeds. Too many really. It's confusing. Overwhelming. Oh, and they're apparently called TIMELINES here. I've been trying to figure out which ones I should be using that are similar to the ones I used on Facebook.

Over on Facebook most people probably never go beyond the very awful "News Feed" which is full of algorithm-driven, AI-generated, and advertising garbage. And the only people, groups, or pages you see there are the ones you regularly interact with. Which is why for years I've been using the other feeds on Facebook, and they're the only thing that actually makes that platform usable IMO. But it's hard to try and figure out what Friendica "Timelines" are the closest corollary to the Facebook ones?

My best guesses are:

What's Hot = News Feed: It's a fire hose of posts from accounts you don't follow that are getting a lot of engagement. However, I have no clue what kinds of interactions or how many get something into this feed. There is also a "Discover" feed that says it's supposed to show "Posts from accounts that you don't follow but might like" and I have no clue how, without an algorithm, it would determine what I might like. Apparently it doesn't or can't because that feed is empty for me.

Latest Activity = All Feed: because it's based on people you're connected to and shows all their latest interactions (Posts, Likes, Shares, and Comments) including on posts by accounts you don't follow.

For You = Friends Feed: which I think is just posts from people listed as "Mutual Friendship" in your Contacts, meaning you are following them, they are following you.

Latest Activity + Circles/Account Types > Groups = Groups Feed: there doesn't appear to a separate Groups feed in Friendica.

Latest Activity + Circles > Interests = Pages Feed: at least I think "Interests" is referring to "Pages" but I'm not sure, and there doesn't appear to be a separate "Interests" feed.

It would be nice if you could filter the "Network" feeds by more than one thing at a time. There is no way to "stack" filters or save that view. Which is too bad because that would be a killer feature akin to Bluesky's custom algorithms!

As for the other "Timelines" in Friendica:

"Latest posts" and "Latest Creation" are obviously because stuff doesn't necessarily arrive on your server at the same time it was sent from another one. Though I'm not sure anything posted to social media is so time-sensitive you'd need these feeds since I assume the same stuff will show up under "Latest Activity."

"Personal" only shows posts that @ mention you. "Sharers of Sharers" sounds like a feed of what you would call "Friends of Friends" on Facebook. It's unclear what puts someone in "Quiet Sharers" though. It sounds like "Mutual Friendships" that just don't post much, but how often is often?

I'm guessing "Starred" means posts I've LIKED? Or does it only mean posts I've actually gone to the "More..." drop-down and selected "Add Star"? Or BOTH?

"Images," "Audio," and "Video" are pretty self-explanatory, I guess if you're here for the photos, podcasts, and TikTokish content. I've also seen on servers that have a lot of add-ons enabled people might have additional feeds for other platforms they are connected to, which are self-explanatory.

"Local Community" and "Global Community" appear to be the same feeds as under the "Community" button in the main navigation. Which is redundant, but okay.

Then I've also seen instructions for new users to go into Settings > Social Networks > General Social Media Settings and change the drop-down to "Any conversation my follows interact with, including likes" or your feeds will be pretty bare.

It's little wonder this confuses people coming from other platforms. It's...a lot.

#friendica

Hi there @islieb? !
This is a post actually directed in part to the @Friendica Support forum page of our free open source software community. I guess you heard the term #friendica already, as you are quite a while in the fedi, beginning with your #diaspora presence a long time ago. Our main coder @Michael Vogel is a fan of yours (if I got that right). I asked him the other day in a FOSDEM element chat, if he considers it possible that you make some drawings for friendica, maybe even for every new version, we have like two o three releases every year.

The idea came up because on this server we decided to use the following comic on the login/welcome page:

Than we came up with this variation for the text as you can see:

It seemed to me that Michael liked the idea to have some drawing by you, so I don't want to let the idea slip away and ask you, as well as the community, what everyone thinks about such an option. There are also the 403, 404, 500 and so on error pages. Well maybe those are more a task for @isfies!, who knows ..

Sumasumarum, any ideas, comments or questions about this proposal @all ?

v.01

!Friendica Support
#friendica Q&A @Tutorial

How does the setting:
'php_path' =>, definable in the /config/local.config.php or by the console via /bin/console config work exactly?

The setting 'php_path' => '/usr/bin/php', that actually also shows up in the crontab -e file doesn't exist as an existing folder structure and/or file, at least on this standard ubuntu server installation, but was the original setting of this instance when we ported it from a friendica beta hosting service over here to a single IP VPS server with a single domain. And till now with that setting this instance ran quite well.

Where does /usr/bin/php actually point to, by whom is ist accessed (www-data?) and is there a way to change the reference it points to (if it is actually a reference inside friendica)?

On this server, in the case of the installed friendica versions 2024.xx we set this to:
'php_path' => '/etc/php/8.1/fpm/' and for now the display in the admin panel looks quite right:
PHP version 8.1.31 php.ini /**/8.1/fpm/php.ini

!Friendica Support

First of all, sorry for my English, I use a translator.

I am using Friendica version 2024.12, database version is 1576/1576 and the post update version is 1550/1550.

I have changed my storage in Friendica from “Database” to “Filesystem”.

I have selected /var/friendica_storage as the path -> drwxr-xr-x 258 www-data www-data 4096 2 Mar 15:49 /var/friendica_storage

This setting was also applied:

sudo -u www-data bin/console storage list:
Sel | Name
-----------------------
* | Filesystem
| Database

Then I execute the following:

sudo -u www-data bin/console storage move
[2025-03-02 14:49:46] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:49:50] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:49:55] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:49:59] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:04] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:08] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:13] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:18] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:22] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:27] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:33] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:38] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:43] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:49] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:54] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:50:59] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:04] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:10] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:16] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:22] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:27] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:32] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:37] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:44] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:49] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:51:54] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:52:00] Moved 5000 files
[2025-03-02 14:52:02] Moved 2180 files
[2025-03-02 14:52:03] Moved 137180 files total
[Error] Friendica\Console\Storage::doExecute(): Return value must be of type int, null returned

It ends with this error message. But the files are present in the /var/friendica_storage folder.

The query in MariaDB shows that the images are still stored in the database:

MariaDB [xxxxxxxxxxxx]> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM photo WHERE data IS NOT NULL;
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
| 137228 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0,419 sec)

MariaDB [xxxxxxxxxxxx]> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM photo WHERE data IS NOT NULL;
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
| 137246 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0,39 sec)

But probably also in /var/friendica_storage, because this is getting bigger.

So the images are now saved simultaneously in the database AND in the /var/friendica_storage folder, including new images!

I have now tried this process twice and both times the error occurred. I restored my database backup.

What have I done wrong, what can I improve or change?

#Friendica, #Help