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 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.

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!

Friendica 2022.09 Release Candidate available

| 4. September 2022

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).

git fetch
git checkout 2022.09-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 2022.09-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.

Thanks a lot for helping with the release 🙂

Friendica 2022.06 released

| 11. June 2022

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!

Photograph of a Giant Rhubarb, which is a large, clump-forming herbaceous perennial growing to 2.5 m tall by 4 m or more. Picture taken by Tom Oates CC-BY 3.0
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.

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!

Friendica 2022.05 Release Candidate Available

| 3. May 2022

We are happy to announce the availability of the release candidate for the upcoming Friendica 2022.05 release, to focus on fixing existing bugs and smoothing out of rough edges..

Since the release in March

  • a regression was fixed that could lead to mentioning all accounts that received a non-public posting;
  • the Dansk (da_DK) translation was added to the repository;
  • the API was enhanced;
  • there is an experimental setting to allow postings in the past (#11411);
  • an addon was added which allows the usage of S3 services for the file storage back-end.

If you are running a custom addon, please note that the 2022.05 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 use the 2022.05 RC Version of Friendica

If you want to help in the relase process, you can checkout the 2022.05-rc branch from the git repositories (core and addons).

git fetch
git checkout 2022.05-rc
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev

Note that you only need to pull the composer dependencies in the core repository. Alternatively you may download the tar archives from files.friendi.ca.

Wordcloud generated from the commit messages of the 2022.05-rc
This cloud show the words mostly used in the commit messages for the 2022.05 release of 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 2022.05-rc phase is meant to identify and preferable resolve quirks and bugs that should not be in the 2022.05 release. So if you switch your node to the 2022.05-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 2022.03 released

| 7. March 2022

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

There is a problem with the automatic build of the archive for the addons. We will be fixing this as soon as possible. solved

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 2022.02 released

| 6. February 2022

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!

Friendica 2021.12 Release Candidate available

| 28. November 2021

We are happy to announce the availability of the release candidate branch of Friendica 2021.12, which was just branched off the current development branch, to focus on fixing existing bugs and smoothing out of rough edges. If you want to help in this process, you can checkout the 2021.21-rc branch from the git repositories (core and addons).

git fetch
git checkout 2021.12-rc
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev

Note that you only need to pull the composer dependencies in the core repository. Alternatively you may download the tar archives from files.friendi.ca

Most work has been spend to the internal code of Friendica, so there may be problems lurking underneath the surface. We have deprecated a number of unsupported addons, added Arabic translation and a new WebDAV storage backend. For a full list of changes, please have a look into the CHANGELOG for this release.

Thanks for testing the new release! If you find any problems, please report them either at the issue tracker on github or in the support forum.

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.

Friendica 2021.09 released

| 25. September 2021

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

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

Update Mon Sept 27th: If you are using MySQL (not MariaDB) the automatic DB structure updates may fail see issue 10768.

Update Mon Oct 4th / 7th: Solved for the full archive downloadable from files.friendi.ca. A node-specific config/local.config.php file has been inadvertently included in the full archive. Please make sure you either remove it or overwrite it with your own when you perform the update as described above.

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!