We are very happy to announce the avail-ability of the new stable version of Friendica. Wrapping up the sprint from the 2022.10 release of Friendica we closed 73 filed issues and had almost 300 pull requests by 19 contributors.

A special thanks goes out to Christian Pöschl from usd AG and Matthias Moritz who have found a CSRF- and XSS-attack, that is fixed with this release.

In addition to fixing this bug, the highlights of the changes since the 2022.10 release are

• The default theme of Friendica (frio) got many improvements and some old themes got deprecated.
• The calendar saw some improvements and can now be made visible to anonymous visitors.
• The homepage mentioned on the user profile is now automatically verified via the rel-me backlink.
• Images attached to a posting are now shown in a grid at the bottom of the posting.
• A moderation corner was established from the admin panel where a future release will add more moderation tool and bundle them with the current once.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

Since version 2022.06 the lowest required PHP version Friendica needed on the server was raised to PHP 7.3 and PHP 8.0 is supported.

What is Friendica

Friendica is a decentralized communications platform, you can use to host your own social media server that integrates with independent social networking platforms (like the Fediverse or Diaspora*) but also some commercial ones like Twitter.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2022.06 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as it contained some breaking changes.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2022.12 release would be

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git pull

If you want to use a different branch than the stable one, you need to fetch and checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2022.12.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.12.tar.gz (sha256)) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2022.12 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Regarding the update process none as of writing.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

It took a bit longer then expected, but we are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable version of Friendica the "Giant Rhubarb" 2022.10.

Kudos to everyone who made this release possible by their contributions!

In addition to fixing bugs and improving the performance of Friendica, the highlights of the changes since the 2022.06 release are

• the Gàidhlig translation was added to the repository, thanks to the work of @gunchleoc,
• node admins using relays can now configure languages of postings arriving over the relay that should be discarded automatically,
• the 2FA login has been reworked, and
• it was discovered that using the Blowfish algorithm is implying a password length limit of 72 characters. Should you use a longer password, this will be transparently dealt with upon your next login.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

Since version 2022.06 the lowest required PHP version Friendica needs on the server was raised to PHP 7.3 and PHP 8.0 is supported.

What is Friendica

Friendica is a decentralized communications platform, you can use to host your own social media server that integrates with independent social networking platforms (like the Fediverse or Diaspora*) but also some commercial ones like Twitter.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2022.06 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as it contained some breaking changes.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2022.10 release would be

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git pull

If you want to use a different branch than the stable one, you need to fetch and checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2022.10.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.10.tar.gz (sha256)) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2022.10 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Regarding the update process none as of writing.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are very happy to announce the avail-ability of the new stable version of Friendica. With this release the "Siberian Iris" cycle is closed and we start a new one, the "Giant Rhubarb". 20 people have contributed directly to the code of Friendica "Giant Rhubarb" over the last year, committing over 2500 pull requests fixing nearly 200 numbered issues and adding new features.

Kudos to everyone who made this release possible by their contributions!

In addition to fixing bugs and improving the performance of Friendica, the highlights of the changes of the last year since the first release of the "Siberian Iris" are

• The UI translations for Arabic and Dansk was added and Friendica supports now left-to-right languages generally better then before.
• We have two new addons (S3 and WebDAV) to use additional storage back-ends for storing the media files.
• The Mastodon compatible API was improved, you now should be able to use most Mastodon clients with your Friendica account.
• The federation with Diaspora*, Mastodon, PeerTube, Pleroma and Lemmy was enhanced.
• The themes (Frio and vier) got some touch ups, and the screen-reader support of Frio was improved.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

The lowest required PHP version Friendica needs on the server was raised to PHP 7.3 and PHP 8.0 is supported.

Breaking Change If you are running a custom addon, please note that the 2022.06 release does a breaking change removing the hooks settings_form and settings_post. Your addon should use the addon_settings hook instead.

What is Friendica

Friendica is a decentralised communications platform, you can use to host your own social media server that integrates with independent social networking platforms (like the Fediverse or Diaspora*) but also some commercial ones like Twitter.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2021.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2022.06 release would be

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git pull

If you want to use a different branch then the stable one, you need to fetch and checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2022.06.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.06.tar.gz (sha256) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2022.06 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Regarding the update process none as of writing.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Siberian Iris” 2022.03. This release is mainly a bug fixing release with breaking changes. Notably these are:

• The closing of a bug in the recipient selector for private messages. The bug could result in direct messages being send to the wrong person from the contact list of the user.
• The rework of how messages in private forums are delivered. Those are now as well distributed using the ActivityPub protocol. After a node is updated, communication in private forums is not longer possible with older versions of Friendica.
• The StatusNet compatible API now uses the same ID as the Mastodon compatible API. Users of clients using the StatusNet compatible API (such as Friendiqa) need to remove the account from the client and re-register it.

For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2021.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2022.03 release would be

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git pull

If you want to use a different branch then the stable one, you need to checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2022.03.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.03.tar.gz (sha256) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2022.03 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Regarding the update process none as of writing.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Siberian Iris” 2022.02. This is the first release containing the work of the Arabic translation team - thanks a lot for your work! Other highlights of the release are

• The video tab was removed from the profile, in exchange Friendica profiles now have a media tab, showing postings that contain more then just text.
• An addon to allow usage of WebDAV for the storage back-end has been added.

For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG.

How to Update

Please note: With this release the minimal PHP version that Friendica requires is PHP 7.3 and later. Known issues with PHP 8 are collected in the issue tracker at github, though Friendica seems to work fine with PHP 8 now.

Deprecation Warning: Some old and unmaintained addons have been removed from the core addon repository. These addons are: blogger, buffer, jappixmini, notimeline, xmpp.

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2021.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2021.09 to the 2021.12 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2022.02 release would be

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git pull

If you want to use a different branch then the stable one, you need to checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2022.02.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.02.tar.gz (sha256) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2022.02 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

• After the update please make sure that the directory vendor/ezyang/htmlpurifier/library/HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer is write-able by your web server.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

The summer sprint is over and we are happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica "Siberian Iris" 2021.09. It contains more then 160 pull requests from seven contributors and updates to several language packages from the translation teams.

For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG. The highlights of the release are

• scheduled postings (scheduling is done in the permissions of a posting),
• the notification system got an overhaul, and
• admins can now browse the logs more comfortable in the admin panel.

How to Update

Please note: With the release of 2021.09 Friendica does require at least PHP version 7.2 or above. Known issues with PHP 8 are collected in the issue tracker at github.

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2021.07 to the 2021.09 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2021.09 release would be

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git pull

If you want to use a different branch then the stable one, you need to checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2021.09.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2021.09.tar.gz (sha256) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2021.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

None at the time of writing.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica "Siberian Iris" 2021.07. This release contains 219 pull requests from ten contributors and the work of the translation teams. While fixing some problems identified, we have added some nice features

• support for right-to-left languages was added,
• the API was expanded to have Mastodon compatible endpoints and
• an addon was added to support SAML services like keycloak for login.

For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

In that version we introduced views to the database and some node admins reported that they had to adjust their MariaDB configuration (table_definition_cache). Also setting pdo_emulate_prepares to true in the Friendica configuration might be nessessary.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2021.04 to the 2021.06 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH
git fetch
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH
git pull

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2021.07.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2021.07.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2021.07 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Please note, that one of the dependencies of Friendica is currently incompatible with PHP 7.0. If you are still running that version of PHP, please have a look at this forum thread for a workaround.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

with a slight delay, we are happy to announce the availability of the new stable version of the Friendica communications server: Friendica Siberian Iris 2021.04.

This is mostly a bug fixing release, stabilizing the new features we introduced over the Red Hot Poker cycle, but also finishing some long time restructuring work on the database structure, which results in a greatly improved performance of Friendica. This release bundles 196 pull requests fixing 53 filed issues. For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG, some of the highlights

• The reworking of how items are stored in the database was finished, which results in a great improvement of Friendicas performance. Please note that the needed upgrade might take hours depending of your database size.
• Admins can now block tags from the trending tag widget.
• We removed the Flash based addons from the addon repository.

And a heads up for developers, we moved some endpoints in the API to normalize the endpoints.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

In that version we introduced views to the database and some node admins reported that they had to adjust their MariaDB configuration (table_definition_cache). Also setting pdo_emulate_prepares to true in the Friendica configuration might be necessary.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. Despite the long duration of the database upgrade we had no reports of unaddressed problems during the RC phase.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Important: We removed the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout stable
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git fetch
git checkout stable
git pull

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2021.04.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2021.04.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2021.01 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Please note, that one of the dependencies of Friendica is currently incompatible with PHP 7.0. If you are still running that version of PHP, please have a look at this forum thread for a workaround.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

and a happy new year dear reader. Not quiet in time for the holidays, but we are very happy to announce the availability of the latest stable version of the Friendica communications server which bundles up some 270 pull requests closing 86 numbered issues. For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG, some of the highlights

• Thanks to Balázs Úr Friendica is now available in Hungarian. The German, Italian and Russian translation was updated as well.
• hansw-nlo made us aware of some places where user input was not properly escaped. For security reasons we urge you to upgrade to the new release. See Issue 9538 for details.
• The performance of the background process was further improved. For nodes running on very limited hardware, this might cause some problems. If you are running Friendica on such hardware please be aware that you might need to adjust settings like the worker_cooldown in your configuration file.
• Friendica is now able to directly re-share a posting in addition to the manual cite and re-share we are used to. Additionally the native re-sharing mechanisms of the different protocols supported by Friendica got improved and re-shared postings are now displayed on the users profile page.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

In that version we introduced views to the database and some node admins reported that they had to adjust their MariaDB configuration (table_definition_cache). Also setting pdo_emulate_prepares to true in the Friendica configuration might be nessessary.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2020.09 to the 2020.12 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Important: We removed the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2021.01.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2021.01.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2021.01 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

Please note, that one of the dependencies of Friendica is currently incompatible with PHP 7.0. If you are still running that version of PHP, please have a look at this forum thread for a workaround.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

During the RC phase of the 2020.09 release of Friendica a problem during sending out notification mails was not observed by the testers, but only reported after the release. Therefore we release now the 2020.09-1 hotfix release which will re-enable those mails.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2020.07 to the 2020.09 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Important: We are removing the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.09-1.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2020.09-1.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2020.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

If you are using lighttpd to serve your Friendica node the boolean AND operator for the full text search seems not to be working at the moment.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are happy to announce the availability of Friendica 2020.09, wrapping up the work over the summer. It bundles some exciting new features and enhancements with numerous fixes along the way.

This release is composed of 230 pull requests to the development branch, that closed 65 numbered tickets and enhanced several aspects of Friendica and the communication with other projects within the Fediverse. For a full reference, please have a look at the CHANGELOG file, some important things are worth highlighting here:

• The speed of the full text search was enhanced significantly. If you had disabled it before, please check it out now and let us know if it works for you as we are considering to remove the option to disable it in a future release.
• The themes got some updates. Among other things the way how a re-share is displayed. If you like the old display style better you'll find an option in the user settings to switch back.
• Some time ago we did a user voting about which additional features should be handled in a unified way on all Friendica instances. The last of these items are now reworked. One of these is that all public calendar entries are now available as iCAL file from your profile.
• Friendica is now supporting Activity Pub relay server. For more information please have a look at this forum thread

Additionally this release contains a fix for a problem that Roger Meyer discovered in the processing of Activity Pub messages. We encourage all Friendica admins to update their nodes to the 2020.09 release to prevent problems arising from this. Thanks to Roger to report the issue!

If you are using PHP version 7.0 there is currently a problem with one of the dependencies of Friendica. Please see this forum thread for more information.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2020.07 to the 2020.09 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Important: We are removing the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
cd addon
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH

Where BRANCH is either the new stable branch or the develop branch, depending which version of Friendica you want to use. The old master branch will not receive any updates and will be removed soon.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.09.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2020.09.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2020.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

If you are using lighttpd to serve your Friendica node the boolean AND operator for the full text search seems not to be working at the moment.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

Thanks to Roger Meyer who reported a flaw in the administration module of Friendica, we could fix a security vulnerability that could leak sensitive information from the server environment. The hotfix release 2020.07-1 includes the patch for the stable release branch of Friendica. The development and RC branches have been updated as well.

Affected versions of Friendica

All versions of Friendica since April 2019 (develop branch) and June 2019 (stable) are affected.

Through the admin module environment variables of the server system can be read by anyone on the internet. Among other things this may include database passwords for Docker installs and the memcached SASL password. Therefore we recommend all node admins to change their potentially affected passwords after the upgrade to 2020.07-1. Furthermore this fix also prevents anonymous users to update node-wide addon settings.

How to Upgrade.

This information only applies to the stable release 2020.07 of Friendica. The patch has separately been added to the develop and 2020.09-rc branch of the repository.

Using Git

Important: We are removing the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

Updating from the git repositories of Friendica will be a bit more complicated as you might be used to as we decided to rename the branch for the stable releases to stable. Hence you need to switch the branch you want to use, after pulling the current version of the code from the repositories. As usual, please remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout stable
git pull

Pulling in the dependencies with composer is not necessary for this hotfix release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.07-1) file and unpack it on your local computer. Compared to the 2020.07 release only a few files were updated and none of the config files are affected. So you can just upload the changed files onto your server.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks again Roger Meyer to make us aware of this problem!

We are pleased to announce the slightly delayed release of Friendica 2020.07.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to make this release! The 2020.07 release is composed from 280 tickets, closing 66 numbered issues and enhanced several aspects of Friendica and the communication with other projects within the Fediverse and the Federation. For a full reference, please have a look at the CHANGELOG file, some important things are worth highlighting them here:

• Friendica is now using table views for the database which can cause errors from the MySQL database (Prepared statement needs to be re-prepared). If you encounter such, please have a look at this issue in the Friendica tracker and this article at stackoverflow if you are encountering problems in that aspect,
• In the frio theme we introduced a more... menu at the bottom of postings which contains the not so often used actions (editing, pinning, etc.), Additionally it is now save to hit the ESC key while composing a new posting.
• You will now find allow lists, deny lists and block lists instead of their old labels.
• We found some places where we could enhance the performance of Friendica.

Not directly linked to this release but worth mentioning is the cleanup-friendica script by ingoj to assist Friendica node admins and help with forgotten or dead accounts.

If you are using PHP version 7.0 there is currently a problem with one of the dependencies of Friendica. Please see this forum thread for more information.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2020.03 to the 2020.06 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Important: We are removing the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

Updating from the git repositories of Friendica will be a bit more complicated as you might be used to as we decided to rename the branch for the stable releases to stable. Hence you need to switch the branch you want to use, after pulling the current version of the code from the repositories. As usual, please remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git fetch
git checkout BRANCH

Where BRANCH is either the new stable branch or the develop branch, depending which version of Friendica you want to use. The old master branch will not receive any updates and will be removed soon.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.07.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2020.07.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2020.03 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time (days)) to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

After the release it was reported, that one of the dependencies of Friendica is currently not compatible to PHP 7.0, although claiming otherwise. If you are using this version of PHP and want to install Friendica 2020.07 you have to edit the source code slight.y. For more information, see the forum thread about the problem.

If you are using MySQL there is an issue under investigation you should be aware of. This issue affects only users of MySQL, users of MariaDB have not reported this issue.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are happy to announce the avail-ability of Friendica "Red Hot Poker" 2020.03!

Thanks to all the helpers during the RC phase to polish some corners of the release. Almost 400 tickets went into this release according to the milestone, closing something around 90 numbered issues and some unnumbered as well. But along all these fixes we also introduced some new features and revamped some aspects of your daily life with Friendica. For a complete list of changes, please have a look into the CHANGELOG, here are some of the highlights:

• We adopted the "audio" type for ActivityPub postings and are now federating with Funkwhale.
• The multiple profile feature was removed and replaced by free form profile fields that you can present different audiences (unverified visitors of your profile and selected Friendica contact/-groups). The old (additional) profiles are converted automatically for the new format.
• The hide-wall profile option was replaced by a hopefully more clear option to have your public postings unlisted on the community page of your node.
• The creation of delegated accounts was made more easy.
• The accessibility of the web-interface was improved.
• Admins can now manage the users of their node from the command line.
• An addon to use Markdown instead of BBCode while composing new postings and comments was added.

Thanks to all the people who have made this release possible!

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2018.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as there were several important changes in that version.

Please note, that we moved the shipped .htaccess file to .htaccess-dist in the 2019.01 version. Make sure that you have saved a copy of the file if you made any changes to it, so that you can copy the file from the backup after the upgrade.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use Composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Furthermore, we raised the minimal requirements with the 2019.06 version to PHP 7. Before updating please ensure that you are using a supported PHP version on your server. We suggest PHP 7.2 or later.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we had some reports about problems with the profile field migration. All of these should be fixed, but better safe than sorry.

Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped to test the release candidate) please do so after the pull using git checkout master (or develop).

Be aware that the .htaccess file was removed from the git repository in the 2019.01 version. You might have to restore yours from a backup (if you have done local changes) or from the .htaccess-dist if you had not done it before.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.03.tar.gz and friendica-addons-2020.03.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2020.03 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format in the 2019.03 version. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time (hours)) to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

Wrapping up for the end-of-the-year? We too; and therefore we are happy to announce the release of Friendica "Dalmatian Bellflower" 2019.12.

This release bundles up some bug fixes, but mostly enhancements to existing features and adds some new ones as well. For a full list of changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG file in the repository. For a short summery, the highlights are:

• The ACL dialogue introduced in the 2019.09 release on the new compose page for the frio theme was now adopted to all themes.
• The handling of reshares was made more native for the federated platforms and federation with Diaspora*, Mastodon, Pixelfed and Peertube was improved.
• The API was improved and got some new endpoints to improve the experience of using Friendica with mobile apps like Fedilab.
• Postings can now be pinned to your profile wall and
• if you like, you can connect to Discourse forums via email.

Thanks to all the people who have made this release possible!

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2018.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as there were several important changes in that version.

Please note, that we moved the shipped .htaccess file to .htaccess-dist in the 2019.01 version. Make sure that you have saved a copy of the file if you made any changes to it, so that you can copy the file from the backup after the upgrade.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use Composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Furthermore, we raised the minimal requirements with the 2019.06 version to PHP 7. Before updating please ensure that you are using a supported PHP version on your server. We suggest PHP 7.2 or later.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems, but better safe than sorry.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped to test the release candidate) please do so after the pull using git checkout master (or develop).

Be aware that the .htaccess file was removed from the git repository in the 2019.01 version. You might have to restore yours from a backup (if you have done local changes) or from the .htaccess-dist if you had not done it before.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2019.12.tar.gz and friendica-addons-2019.12.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2019.12 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format in the 2019.03 version. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

Friendica 2019.09 released

We are proud to release the new version of Friendica 'Dalmatian Bellflower' 2019.09. As usual this release contains many bug fixes (we closed some 60 issues from the list) and code enhancements alongside of some new features. Some highlights are:

• A Japanese translation was added to the Friendica core and some addons.
• The two factor authorisation got improved. If you are using client apps, those now need a separate password set in the user configuration.
• One can now search for the URL of any public ActivityPub posting to interact with the posting. You need to copy the postings address and paste it into the search field.
• Users of the frio theme can now choose to use a separate compose page instead of the modal dialog.
• Admins can now block servers based on URL patterns and enable a trending tags widget for the community page.

for a complete overview please see the CANGELOG file.

Many thanks to everyone who made this release possible. <3

Known Issues

One of the bug fixes that was applied in this release will cause old contact requests that were discarded initially to reappear. Users will have to reevaluate the request. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause to you and your users.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2018.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as there were several important changes in that version.

Please note, that we moved the shipped .htaccess file to .htaccess-dist in the 2019.01 version. Make sure that you have saved a copy of the file if you made any changes to it, so that you can copy the file from the backup after the upgrade.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use Composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Furthermore we raised the minimal requirements with the 2019.06 version to PHP 7. Before updating please ensure that you are using a supported PHP version on your server. We suggest PHP 7.2 or later.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems, but better safe than sorry.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to also update the dependencies with composer.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped testing the RC code) please do so after the pull using git checkout master (or develop).

Be aware that the .htaccess file was removed from the git repository in the 2019.01 version. You might have to restore yours from a backup (if you have done local changes) or from the .htaccess-dist if you had not done it before.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2019.09.tar.gz and friendica-addons-2019.09.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2019.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format in the 2019.03 version. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

Friendica 2019.06 Released

Thanks everyone who contributed, be it directly by committing patches or new features, doing translations or reporting issues.

And now, we happily announce the availability of Friendica 2019.06. It contains many bug fixes, enhancements of existing functionality and some new features. The most noteworthy changes since the last release in March are:

• Added native two-factor authentication
• Added reshare counts
• Added mascot to error pages (thanks to @lostinlight)
• Moved Friendica private message and contact request to ActivityPub

You can find a complete overview of the changes in the CHANGELOG file.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2018.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as there were several important changes in that version.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use Composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems, but better safe than sorry.

With this release we raised the hard requirements to PHP 7. If you are still using PHP 5.6+, this version won't work anymore on your system and we urge you to upgrade to PHP 7.1 at least.

Using Git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to also update the dependencies with composer.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped testing the RC code) please do so after the pull using git checkout master (or develop).

Be aware that the .htaccess file was removed from the git repository in the 2019.01 version. You might have to restore yours from a backup (if you have done local changes) or from the .htaccess-dist if you had not done it before.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2019.06.zip and friendica-addons-2019.06.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2019.06 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format in the 2019.03 version. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

This release fixes a bug allowing unauthorised access to private postings under certain circumstances.

How to update

For this release notes we assume, that you are running Friendica 2019.03 if not, please update to that release before proceeding.

Using git

If you have used git for installation, update your system simply by doing a git pull in the core repository of Friendica. The fix is applied to the master and the devel branch of the repository.

An update of the addons repository is not needed.

Using the archive files

Before uploading the extracted files from the archive please make sure that you have a backup copy of your configuration file (config/local.config.php).

Please download the archive file frientica-full-2019.04.tar.gz which contains the needed 3rd party dependencies.

Compared to the 2019.03 release only four files have changed: CHANGELOG, VERSION, boot.php and mod/display.php.

Extract the archive and upload the contained files (all or only the four mentioned above) to your server.

Post upgrade procedure

There should be no action necessary after the files are exchanged if you were updating from the 2019.03 release of Friendica.

Friendica 2019.03 "Dalmatian Bellflower" Released

A year of Friendica with The Tazmans Flax-lily. Thanks everyone who contributed, be it directly by commiting patches or new features, doing translations or reporting issues.

And now, we happily announce the availability of Friendica 2019.03 "Dalmatian Bellflower". It contains many bug fixes, enhancements of existing functionality and some new features. The most noteworthy changes since the last release in January are:

• The storage backend for photos and attachments was made plug-able and an experimental file system backend was added.
• ActivityPub support was added to the forum functionality, and got some general improvements to smooth out quirks discovered since the initial implementation.
• The performance of the background process was enhanced.

You can find a complete overview of the changes in the CHANGELOG file.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version then the 2018.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as there were several important changes in that version.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems, but better save than sorry.

With this release we raised the requirements to PHP and MySQL to PHP 7.1+, MySQL 5.6+ (or compatible alternatives e.g. MariaDB 10.0.5+). If you are still using PHP 5.6.1 we don't expect problems, but encourage you to upgrade your PHP installation. Please make sure, that your systems meets this new requirement.

Known Problems

The performance of the background process (workers) was improved by removing a bottleneck, As a consequence the worker will consume more system resources. On the plus side, you will most likely not need aas many workers as you needed before to perform the pending jobs.

During the RC phase several admin reported high system LOADs. As a rule of thumb, you should set the Maximum number of parallel workers (plus an additional fastlane worker) and set the Maximum Load Average to the number of threads your servers CPU cores can perform. These values are not carved into stone, you can most likely further adjust the settings to increase the performance of the system.

Using GIT

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to also update the dependencies with composer.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped testing the RC code) please do so after the pull using git checkout master (or develop).

Be aware that the .htaccess file was removed from the git repository in the last version. You might have to restore yours from a backup (if you have done local changes) or from the .htaccess-dist if you had not done it before.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2019.03.tar.gz and friendica-addons-2019.03.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2019.03 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

We are pleased to announce the availability of Friendica The Tazmans Flax-lily 2019.01, which bundles up our work since September 2018. This includes over 130 fixed issues and some exciting new features. If you are interested in all of them, please have a look at the CHANGELOG file.

Most noteworthy of these changes are:

• Friendica does now natively support ActivityPub (AP) in addition to the DFRN, diaspora* and OStatus protocols. The AP functionality was tested with Hubzilla, Mastodon, Nextcloud Social, Osada, PeerTube, Pixelfed and Pleroma.
• The configuration structure has changed again! Your old .htconfig.php and config/local.ini.php file will still work, but you will get a notification in the admin panel with some hopefully explaining text on how to convert your settings to the new config/local.config.php config file.
• The manual and automatic installation process was enhanced.

Thanks everyone who has made this release possible. Your work is much appreciated!

Please note, that this will be the last version of Friendica supporting PHP 5.6.

How to Update

If you are updating from an older version then the 2018.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as there were several important changes in that version.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems, but better save than sorry.

Please note that Friendica now requires MySQL version 5.6+ or compatible (e.g. MariaDB 10.0.5). Please make sure, that your systems meets this new requirement.

Using the Archive files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from GitHub (friendica-full-2019.01.tar.bz2 [or tar.gz] and friendica-addons-2019.01.tar.gz and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2019.01 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Using git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to also update the dependencies with composer.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped testing the RC code) please do so after the pull using git checkout.

Known Problems

Update 2019-01-22: Some of the early adopters have discovered the following issues, that went unnoticed during the RC phase.

• Sometimes the update process of the database seems to get stuck. If you notice high LOAD on your system and MySQL active processes in the process list that seem to cause the LOAD, please issue the following command from the base of your Friendica installation on the CLI.

    bin/console.php dbstructure update
  

• The config update guide seems not to be shown in the admin panel. As mentioned above, both old config formats are still supported, so no need to hurry. But if you are looking for the guide to migrate your config file format to the new one, please see here: help/Config.

How to Contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks again everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

Dear everybody in the Federation, the Fediverse and anywhere else, the Friendica team is pleased to announce the release of Friendica The Tazmans Flax-lily 2018.09.

This release brings the long awaited restructuring of the item table in the database, alongside some 100 closed issues from the tracker. Please see the CHANGELOG file for the complete overview of the changes. Here just a short list of the noteworthy changes since the 2018.05 release of Friendica.

• The long awaited restructuring of the item table of the database will finally be included in this release. The needed changes and alterations of the database structure and content will take some time. Depending on the resources available on your system this can take hours or even days. The maintenance mode will inform you about the progress.
• The configuration structure is changed. Your old .htconfig.php file will still work, but you will get a notification in the admin panel with some hopefully explaining text on how to convert your settings to the config file. In some cases the encoding of the displayed text got mangled up, if you are suffering from such garbage you need to switch to the new config style and set the correct encoding for the database.
• The .htaccess file is no part of the git repository anymore. Instead we now ship the .htaccess-dist file that you have to copy to the .htaccess location. This has the advantage that you can now customise the .htaccess file to meet your requirements. Please make a copy of your old .htaccess file should you have made any changes and restore the file after the update from the backup or the distributed file. Without a working .htaccess file your node will probably not work!
• We removed the old syntax highlighting mechanism from [code] blocks due to problems federating the highlighted syntax to other platforms. There will be an addon for this in the next release.
• The libravatar service will be continued, so contrary to the note with the last release, you can keep using the libravatar addon to automatically generate avatar pictures for your users.

Thanks everyone who has made this release possible. Your work is much appreciated!

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from a version older then Friendica 3.5.4) you have to make the update process in two steps due to a change in the updating procedure. First update to the 3.5.4 release and then update to the current release.

Please further note, that since Friendica 3.6 we use composer for dependency management. If you are updating via git, you have to remember to update the dependencies as well.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems (except those listed below), but better save than sorry.

This is especially true during this update for your .htaccess file which we removed from the repository so you can make local adjustments to the files without further conflicts. Please make a copy of the file before you start the update and restore it afterwards. If you have not made any changes to the file, you can use the new .htaccess-dist file and copy that to the .htaccess file.

Using the Archive files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from GitHub (friendica-full-2018.09.tar.gz and friendica-addons-2018.09.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing .htconfig.php and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2018.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Please be aware of the changes in the configuration format. You should follow the instructions linked from your admin panel as soon as possible to move your configuration to the new location.

Using git

Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to also update the dependencies with composer.

cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install
cd addons
git pull

If you want to switch the branch (e.g. if you helped testing the RC code) please do so after the pull using git checkout.

Be aware that the .htaccess file was removed from the git repository. You have to restore yours from a backup (if you have done local changes) or from the .htaccess-dist file (copy the file to .htaccess if you had not done any changes to the old .htaccess file).

Post-Update Procedures

The conversion process of the items stored in the database can take a long time. Reports indicate some hours to days or even weeks depending on the number of stored items and the available resources on the server.

If you can start the process directly from the command line interface, this will speed up the process significantly. To do so run the following command (use screen or a similar tool so you can detach from the session while the process is running):

bin/console postupdate

from the base of your Friendica installation.

The conversation of the stored items to the new structure of the database will cause some load on the server. It will not interfere with the daily usage of your Friendica node. Once it is finished the needed storage for the database should be lowered significantly, especially on large nodes.

Known Problems

Should the DB update process get stuck

If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

bin/console dbstructure update

from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Problem with InnoDB on MySQL 5.7

One user reported problems during the update of the database using MySQL 5.7 getting the error message Creating index 'PRIMARY' required more than 'innodb_online_alter_log_max_size' bytes of modification log. Please try again. from MySQL. If you encounter this problem, please try the following:

• increase the config value mentioned in the error message above,
• execute this command in your mysql console: update config set v=1278 where k="post_update_version";
• after this execute the command bin/console postupdate.

How to Contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

If you don't want to clone the repository but use an archive file to download Friendica, please use the friendica-full-2018.05.tar.gz file and not the automatically generated archives. The full archive does also include the dependencies. If you downloaded one of the other archives, either download the full archive or run bin/composer.phar install --no-dev at the CLI from the base of your Friendica directory.

Dear Federation, the Friendica team is pleased to announce the release of Friendica The Tazmans Flax-lily 2018.05.

Back on track with scheduled releases, after 3.6 took such a long time. In this release we have packed some bug fixes and enhancements. After an incompatibility glitch with the last release, Friendica 2018.05 is now again compatible with PHP 5.6. However we recommend using a more recent PHP version to further enhance the performance gain from the ongoing overhaul of the Friendica code and processes. Obviously GDPR was one thing we concentrated on for this release. Identifying problems in existing features (e.g. account and node mobility), adding new features (see below) and making things more transparent. To make a long story short, here a list of the noteworthy changes since the last release:

• Finnish translation was added to the repository from Transifex. With it, Friendica now has 20 localizations from which 11 have more then 80% of the core plattform translated (DE, EN, EN-GB, EN-US, ES, FI, FR, IT, PL, RU, ZH-CN).
• New module for Terms of Services for your node that can be activated from the admin panel. If the module is activated links from the general information page and the user registration will be added. Additionally a basic privacy statement can be shown in both, the TOS page and the registration page.
• Many utility scripts are now bundled in a console that can be found in the bin directory. Please see bin/console --help for all available commands.
• When entering a new password, the choosen one will be checked locally against a database of exposed passwords.
• As libravatar is closing their service we have added a new alternative to the gravatar service based on David Revoy's cat-avatar-generator: the catavatar.
• The long deprecated themes frost( and frost-mobile have been removed from the Friendica repository. If you need them, you can find them in the deprecated-themes repository.

For a list of further changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG file.

Thanks to everyone who made this release possible, by writing code, translating the user interface and reporting issues!

How to update?

Pre-Update procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica database was done recently. While testing, we did not encounter problems, but better save than sorry.

From the archive files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from GitHub (friendica-full-2018.05.tar.gz and friendica-addons-2018.05.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing .htconfig.php file. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2018.05 archive), so you don't have to worry about them.

From git

Regardless of the branch you are on (master, develop or 2018.05-rc) all you have to do to get the new code is to run

git pull

on your server in the base and the addon directory. Remember to update the dependencies via composer as well.

If you helped testing the release candidate, you should also switch to either the master or the develop branch. Thanks for testing!

If you are updating from an older version then the 3.6 release, please be aware that Friendica is now using composer to manage the dependencies. After you pulled the latest code, you have to check the dependencies for updates as well. To do so run

bin/composer.phar install

from the base directory of your Friendica installation. To be able to extract the downloaded archives, you need to have the php-zip module installed on your server. If you don't want to remember this every time you pull, you can also use a so called git-hook to do it automatically. Please have a look at the docs for further information about this.

If you are updating from a version older then 3.5.4 you have to make the update process in two steps due to a change in the updating procedure. First update to the 3.5.4 release and then update to the current release.

Post-Update procedures

If you are updating from the 3.6 release (or older versions) of Friendica please remember to change the path to the worker in the cron job to adopt the changed location.

It should now be something along these lines:

/usr/bin/php bin/worker.php

Among other things the worker will detect changes to the database structure. The changes will be applied automatically and may, depending on the size of your table (especially the item table) and the available resources on the server, take some time. On larger systems this can be hours.

How to Contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

The year started with sad news that Tony Baldwin passed away January 6th. Tony was an early member of the Friendica/RedMatrix/Hubzilla community who contributed ideas, addons, themes and utility tools. He was a great spirit among the FLOSS people, an artist, a translator, an interpreter and a great friend who is deeply missed.

This release is dedicated to the memory of Tony "tazman" Baldwin.

With no further ado, we'd like to present to you Friendica 3.6 The Tazmans Flax-​lily.

Noteworthy Changes

It took a long while this time for the developers find the opportunity to say now is the right time. Initially we wanted to have the release after last years hackathon, but then the big adventure of reorganising the code was started and that took some time. But the long wait was worth it, the code got cleaner and faster.

Some things we want to highlight are:

• You can now interact with postings on the community page, even if you are not connected with the author.
• Forums can now be addressed with an !, e.g. !helpers. The ACL dialog does this automatically when you select a forum as recipient and has the forums listed separately from user groups and regular contacts. Addressing a forum with an ! will make the posting exclusively for the subscribers to the forum (public or private depends on the forum settings).
• Dependency management is now done using composer (see below).
• The API was improved, letting the native clients provide a nicer mobile user experience.

Additionally we fixed numerous bugs that the community had found and we polished some quirks and added some more features. For the complete list of changes, please see the CHANGELOG file.

How to Update?

We started to use composer for dependency management. This means, that if you are using git to manage the Friendica sources on your server, there is now an additional step in the update process. If you used the archives provided, you don't need to care about it, as the archives contain the dependencies as well.

Should you encounter any problems while testing the RC code, please let us know about in the Friendica support forum, at github or over any other of the support channels.

Independent of the update path you are choosing, please be aware that there are some changes to the database structure to enhance the performance of Friendica that will be applied automatically to your database. Depending on the size of your database, especially the item table, these changes can take several hours.

If you are updating from a very old version of Friendica, you have to first update to version 3.5.4 before you can update to the 3.6 release.

Updating with git from the stable (master) branch

As mentioned above, Friendica is now using composer for dependency management. This means that you have to do one further step when updating your git repository. This can be either an additional command every time you update, or adding a shell script to a git hook.

Composer needs to be able to unpack the downloaded archives, hence you need to have the PHP zip module available on your server.

If you want to do it all manually, then use the following sequence of commands: starting in the base directory of your Friendica installation.

git pull
php util/composer.phar install
cd addon
git pull

This will download the updated sources from github, call composer to get the dependencies and then change into the addon repository to fetch the new code there as well.

If you don't want to remember this every time you pull, you can also use a so called git-hook to do it automatically. Please have a look at the docs for further information about this.

Updating with git from the RC or the development branches

As the changes regarding the dependency management are likely already in place on your system, a git pull in your Friendica core repository and the addon repository should bring you on the latest code as usual.

If you helped testing the release candidate--thanks a lot for helping!--you need to decide either to checkout the master or develop branch after the pull.

If you are using the develop branch, please be reminded about the recent path changes for many scripts.

Updating using the source archives

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from GitHub (friendica-full-3.6.zip or tar.gz and friendica-addons-3.6.zip or tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing .htconfig.php file. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica. 

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-3.6 archives), so you don't have to worry about them.

After you performed the update, you need to touch your cron job for the background process. The script handling the worker has been moved to scripts directory. So your cron job must now contain: something like

/usr/bin/php scripts/worker.php

instead of the old location in the include directory.

How to contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

This is a hotfix release for a bug we introduced with 3.5.3 for saving searches. It also contains some minor fixes for moving your account to another node and support for the Diaspora account moving.

Dear Federation, the Friendica DevTeam is pleased to announce the release of Friendica Asparagus 3.5.3.

Aside of the ongoing performance enhancements and code refractoring, some note worthy changes in this release:

• We ironed out some problems with the federation towards Mastodon and enhanced Diaspora and OStatus federation, as well as the bridges to other systems.
• We marked several old addons as unsupported. This includes the retrieveraddon due to unwanted side effects, as well as old "frontend" cron addons as their functionality is in core for some time now.

Additionally we fixed numerous bugs that the community had found and we polished some quirks. For the complete list of changes, please see the CHANGELOG file.

How to Update?

Make sure to have MySQL 5.5.3+ or a compatible version (e.g. MariaDB) installed on your server.

If you used git to install your copy of Friendica and use the master or develop branch, a git pull is enough to upgrade.

If you have helped to iron out quirks for this release and used the 3.5.3rc branch of the repository you just need to pull from the repository and switch to either the master or develop branch.

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from GitHub (friendica-3.5.3.zip and friendica-addons-3.5.3.zip) and unpack it on your local computer. As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing .htconfig.php file. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

Please note that there are some changes to the database structure that will take some time to be applied.

How to contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at Github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun :-)

Dear Federation, we are pleased to announce the immedeate availability of Friendica "Asparagus" 3.5.2.

The main focus of the last few months' work was spent on internal code restructuring and performance enhancements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the CHANGELOG file. The highlights are:

• Enhanced compatibility with MySQL 5.7+.
• New support for 4 bytes unicode characters (mostly used for emojis). MySQL version 5.5.3 is now a hard minimum requirement.
• Enhanced federation with Mastodon and preparation for upcoming changes in the Diaspora protocol.
• The switch to the worker process introduced in the 3.5.1 version as the background process mechanism as it has a better performance. If you are using poorman's cron, external cron or proc runner for the background process, you have to adopt to the frontend worker (see docs) as it makes these addons obsolete.
• The most visible change is the long time project lead by Rabuzarus, the "frio" theme, which finally removed the "experimental" flag. It still is not 100 percent complete, but it is ready for daily usage.

Addtionally we fixed numerous bugs that the community had found and we polished some quirks.

How to Update?

Make sure to have MySQL 5.5.3+ or a compatible version (e.g. MariaDB) installed on your server.

If you used git to install your copy of Friendica and use the master or develop branch, a git pull is enough to upgrade.

If you have helped to iron out quirks for this release and used the 3.5.2rc branch of the repository, please switch to either the master or develop branch after the git pull.

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (zip or tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from GitHub (friendica-3.5.2.zip and friendica-addons-3.5.2.zip) and unpack it on your local computer. As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing .htconfig.php file. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

Please note theat there are some changes to the database structure that will take some time to be applied.

How to contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at Github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Have fun 🙂

This release is mainly a bug fix release for the Asparagus release of Friendica. It closes some 50 issues from the github tracker and various others the com­mu­nity has found. It also includes some work on the performance of the system, thanks to the bad performance of one of the developers hosting providers. Among other things, these changes also include some work on the database structure. These changes will be applied automatically, but may take some time depending on your system resources and database size.

Many thanks to everybody who reported a bug, fixed an issue or implemented a new feature!

You can find the complete list of changes in the CHANGELOG.

Notable changes

• The new worker background progress can now also be called from external cron jobs. If you are using one of the extcron, procrunner or poormancron addons you can now replace this now with the worker process. (Disable the addon when switching to the worker process.)
• The TinyMCE rich text editor was removed If you start typing a BBCode tag, a list of fitting BBCode elements will popup you can choose from.
• Initial native federation with Mastodon nodes is working. More work for the federation with OStatus using projects is planned for the upcoming 3.5.2 release.
• We deprecated the frost themes, as the default theme (vier) supports mobile devices with small screens since version 3.5. We have also deleted the files of themes deprecated with the 3.5 release last year.

How to update?

If you are using git to keep track of the Friendica code, you can use

git pull

and it will fetch the current code. Don't forget to also fetch the new code from the addon repository.

If you have installed Friendica and the addons from the zip file, you can download the corresponding files friendica-3.5.1.zip and friendica-addons.zip. Just download these files to your computer, unzip them and transfer the files with an FTP client to your server into a new directory. Copy the .htconfig.php file into the new directory. Rename the old direcoty and afterwards change the name of the new directory to the initial name of your friendica directory.

How to contribute?

If you want to contribute to the project you do not need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue traker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem(even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with git(hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Have fun :-)

Friendica Dev Team is proud to present Friendica Social Communications Server version 3.5, codename "Asparagus"

For a complete list of changes, see the CHANGELOG

See the CHANGELOG for more info about this release.

Bugfixing release. Many improvements in communication with foreign protocols, updated docs and more!

See the CHANGELOG for more info about this release.