Friendica 2023.09 Release Candidate available

| 5. October 2023

We have just branched off the 2023.09-rc branches from the current development branch of Friendica, but it is Hacktober already! True at least for the RC we’ll stick to the milestone number 😉 If you want to help finding rough edges and bogus behaviour and hopefully fix them before the upcoming release, please checkout the new branch and report problems that you encounter.

The most notable changes in this release are:

  • A new Bluesky connector, that allows you to use your Bluesky account from within Friendica. Crosspost to that platform and interact with your contacts there.
  • We renamed some of our existing features in the hope to make it more easily to recognize what they are. Your contact groups are now called Circles, and the old public/private forums are now public/private Groups.
  • A new feature are the Channels that are integrated into the network view of a Friendica user and offer a filtered view on the content posted contacts. This includes thinks like postings from contacts that you mostly interacted with, or postings that got the most interactive within the last 24 hours. We plan to give the users definition control over what a Channel definition looks like.

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 use the 2023.09 RC Version of Friendica

If you want to help in the release process, you can checkout the 2023.09-rc branch from the main git repositories (because of technical problems the mirrors of the core and addons repository currently don’t work).

git fetch
git checkout 2023.09-rc
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev

Note that you only need to pull the composer dependencies in the core repository.

And yes, this means the main git repositories at git.friendi.ca/friendica/friendica-addons and github.com/friendica/friendica.

Should the upgrade process of the database 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 above.
What to do with Quirks

The 2023.09-rc phase is meant to identify and preferable resolve quirks and bugs that should not be in the 2023.10 release, but have slipped through so far. So if you switch your node to the 20232.09-rc version of Friendica, please let us know about rough edges you find, either at the issue tracker (github account required), in the support forum or in the development forum.

Thanks a lot for helping with the release 🙂

Sympossium about the Fediverse in Cologne, Germany

| 22. July 2023

Tobias Diekershoff, member of the core maintainer group of the Friendica project, will provide input at the “The world after Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. A new generation of the Internet?“ symposium organized by the Free Software Foundation Europe, the Centre for Civic Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Adult Education Centre Cologne.

The event in Cologne (Germany) will provide insight into decentralised social networks (the Fediverse) through talks and workshops on 22.09.2023. Tobias will give an input talk about What is the Fediverse? Overview and delimitation and organize a workshop together with Katharina Nocun about Using decentralised services for individuals and institutions.

This is a German-speaking event. Participation is free of charge, but online registration is required.

Edit (2023-10-25) The recordings of the symposium are now available at the Peertube instance of the FSFE at media.fsfe.org.

Friendica 2023.05 Release Candidate available

| 18. May 2023

We have just branched off the 2023.05-rc branches from the current development branch of Friendica. If you want to help finding rough edges and hopefully fix them before the upcoming release, please checkout the new branch and report problems that you encounter.

The main reason for this early RC is fixing a bug in the notification area that Tek informed us about. In addition the highlights of the next release are

  • fixing a bug that prevented the search for @-handles, and
  • an improved OWA implementation.

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 use the 2023.05 RC Version of Friendica

If you want to help in the release process, you can checkout the 2023.05-rc branch from the git repositories (core and addons).

git fetch
git checkout 2023.05-rc
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev

Note that you only need to pull the composer dependencies in the core repository.

Should the upgrade process of the database 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 above.

What to do with Quirks

The 2023.05-rc phase is meant to identify and preferable resolve quirks and bugs that should not be in the 2023.05 release, but have slipped through so far. So if you switch your node to the 20232.05-rc version of Friendica, please let us know about rough edges you find, either at the issue tracker (github account required), in the support forum or in the development forum.

Thanks a lot for helping with the release :

Friendica 2023.04-1 released

| 27. April 2023

Unfortunately, in the last release we introduced a bug that broke the web interface for direct messaging. This hotfix release 2023.04-1 of Friendica “Giant Rhubarb” fixes the problem.

Also included in this release are various updates to the mailstream addon and the reworked Tumblr connector.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

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 Tumblr. Note that node admins have to adopt the Tumblr application settings, providing the OAuth2 call-back url now, as described on the addons README.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2022.12 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 2023.04-1 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-2023.04-1.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2023.04.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-2023.04 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

During the release candidate phase of this release, we had reports that changes to the Tumblr addon combined with PHP version 7.4 might lead a WSoD situation on some pages and connection problems with Tumblr (see 12979 and 13021). These problems could be solved for this release. The Tumblr addon will receive an overhaul in the upcoming release where these issues will be addressed as well.

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 2023.04 released

| 23. April 2023

We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Giant Rhubarb” 2023.04. The highlights of this release are

  • The Mastodon compatible API of Friendica was improved,
  • Drag and Drop functionality was added to the Frio theme for image attachments, and
  • Christian Pöschl from usd AG reported a XSS fulnurability in a javascript dependency in the gallery of the Frio theme that was fixed.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

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 Tumblr.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2022.12 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 2023.04 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-2023.04.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2023.04.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-2023.04 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

During the release candidate phase of this release, we had reports that changes to the Tumblr addon combined with PHP version 7.4 might lead a WSoD situation on some pages and connection problems with Tumblr (see 12979 and 13021). These problems could be solved for this release. The Tumblr addon will receive an overhaul in the upcoming release where these issues will be addressed as well.

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 2023.01 released

| 15. January 2023

Christian Pöschl from usd AG has found another XSS vulnerability in Friendica which is closed with this hotfix release of Friendica.

In addition some other bugfixes for the distribution of forum postings and improvements to the update process of node information are included in this release.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

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 2023.01 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-2023.01.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2023.01.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-2023.01 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

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!

Friendica 2022.12 released

| 20. December 2022

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.

NOTE: The Apache2 rewrite rule in the .htaccess-dist has been changed. The change has to be applied manually to the existing .htaccess.

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!

Friendica 2022.12 Release Candidate avail-able

| 6. December 2022

We are happy to announce the availability of the release candidate for the upcoming Friendica 2022.12 release, to focus on fixing existing bugs and smoothing out of rough edges..

Since October we have fixed around 40 filed tickets from the issue tracker, around 100 pull requests have been labeled as enhancements and 11 added new features. Among these the highlights are

  • Enhancements to the Mastodon compatible API,
  • The calendar can now be made accessible to anonymous visitors of the profile,
  • The homepage listed in the profile can now be verified, and
  • The moderation tools for the nodes admin was separated from the rest of the admin panel.

Please note:

  • If you are using the Apache2 web server, you have to update your .htaccess file with the changes to the .htaccess-dist file. Basically you have to add a B at the line 54.
  • The functions from the boot.php file have been moved into better fitting classes this may break your custom addons. See the pull requests #1293 and #1294 in the addon repository about the needed changes to your addons.

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 use the 2022.12 RC Version of Friendica

If you want to help in the release process, you can checkout the 2022.12-rc branch from the git repositories (core and addons).

git fetch
git checkout 2022.12-rc
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev

Note that you only need to pull the composer dependencies in the core repository.

Should the upgrade process of the database 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 above.

What to do with Quirks

The 2022.12-rc phase is meant to identify and preferable resolve quirks and bugs that should not be in the 2022.12 release, but have slipped through so far. So if you switch your node to the 2022.12-rc version of Friendica, please let us know about rough edges you find, either at the issue tracker (github account required), in the support forum or in the development forum.

Thanks a lot for helping with the release 🙂

Friendica 2022.10 released

| 14. October 2022

It took a bit longer then expected, but we are very happy to announce the avail-ability 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 GĂ idhlig 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 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 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 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-2022.10.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.10.tar.gz (sha356)) 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!