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).
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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).
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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 happy to announce the availability of the release candidate for the upcoming Friendica 2022.09 release, to focus on fixing existing bugs and smoothing out of rough edges..
Since June we have fixed around 30 filed tickets from the issue tracker, around 70 pull requests have been labeled as enhancements. Among these the highlights are
the Gàidhlig translation was added to the repository, thanks to the work of @gunchleoc,
the user settings about which notifications should be displayed and which not have been reworked,
the 2FA login has also 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.
In addition there has been some work on improving the performance of handling postings and completing discussion threads. The procession of the database contents to reflect the changes in the database structure might take some time and cause additional system LOAD on your servers.
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 2022.09 RC Version of Friendica
If you want to help in the release process, you can checkout the 2022.09-rc branch from the git repositories (core and addons).
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 2022.09-rc phase is meant to identify and preferable resolve quirks and bugs that should not be in the 2022.09 release, but have slipped through so far. So if you switch your node to the 2022.09-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.
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!
Gunnera manicata, photographed near the church at St Just in Roseland in Cornwall. Photo by Tom Oates, License CC-BY 3.0
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.
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.
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!
