Table of Contents
- Is it possible to have different avatars per profile?
- What is the difference between blocked|ignored|archived|hidden contacts?
- What happens when an account is removed? Is it truly deleted?
- Can I follow a hashtag?
- Can I configure multiple domains with the same code instance?
- What is this cronjob (poller.php) supposed to do anyway?
Users
- Is it possible to have different avatars per profile?
- What is the difference between blocked|ignored|archived|hidden contacts?
- What happens when an account is removed? Is it truly deleted?
- Can I subscribe to a hashtag?
Admins
- Can I configure multiple domains with the same code instance?
- What is this cronjob (poller.php) supposed to do anyway?
Is it possible to have different avatars per profile?
Yes. On your Edit/Manage Profiles page, you will find a "change profile photo" link. Clicking this will take you to a page where you can upload a photograph and select which profile it will be associated with. To avoid privacy leakage, we only display the photograph associated with your default profile as the avatar in your posts.
What is the difference between blocked|ignored|archived|hidden contacts?
We prevent direct communication with blocked contacts. They are not included in delivery, and their own posts to you are not imported; however their conversations with your friends will still be visible in your stream. If you remove a contact completely, they can send you another friend request. Blocked contacts cannot do this. They cannot communicate with you directly, only through friends.
Ignored contacts are included in delivery - they will receive your posts. However we do not import their posts to you. Like blocking, you will still see this person's comments to posts made by your friends.
[A plugin called "blockem" can be installed to collapse/hide all posts from a particular person in your stream if you desire complete blocking of an individual, including his/her conversations with your other friends.]
An archived contact means that communication is not possible and will not be attempted (perhaps the person moved to a new site and removed the old profile); however unlike blocking, existing posts this person made before being archived will be visible in your stream.
A hidden contact will not be displayed in any "friend list" (except to you). However a hidden contact will appear normally in conversations and this may expose his/her hidden status to anybody who can see the conversation.
What happens when an account is removed? Is it truly deleted?
Currently the account and all of your content is completely removed from your server. Over time your contacts will notice that your account is missing and will remove it after repeated failures to connect (up to a month). Your entry remains in the global directory however this will be removed manually if somebody flags it as "dead".
This policy has been reviewed and we believe is inadequate. Changes to this are currently being implemented so that in the future (when these changes are implemented), we will immediately remove all your content on your server, and then issue requests to all your contacts to remove you. This will also remove your from the global directory. Doing this requires that your account and profile still be "partially" available for up to 24 hours in order to establish contact with all your friends. We can block it in several ways so that it appears empty and all profile information erased, but will then wait for 24 hours (or after all of your contacts have been notified) before we can physically remove it.
[This change in policy was implemented as described in November 2012. Your account and content should now be removed from the sites of all your contacts "as soon as possible", with immediate blocking of your account (rendering it invisible) and removal of all content.]
Can I follow a hashtag?
No. The act of 'following' a hashtags is an interesting technology, but presents a few issues.
1.) Posts which have to be copied to all sites on the network that are "listening" to that tag, which increases the storage demands to the detriment of small sites, and making the use of shared hosting practically impossible, and
2.) Making spam easy (tag spam is quite a serious issue on identi.ca for instance)
but mostly
3.) It creates a natural bias towards large sites which hold more tagged content - if your network uses tagging instead of other conversation federation mechanisms such as groups/forums.
Instead, we offer other mechanisms for wide-area conversations while retaining a 'level playing ground' for both large and small sites, such as forums and community pages and shared tags.
Can I configure multiple domains with the same code instance?
You can do that. What you can't do is point two different domains at the same database.
As long as .htconfig.php exists to keep it from trying to do an install, you can keep the real config in include/$hostname/.htconfig.php
All of the cache and lock stuff can be configured per instance.
Please note that you have to setup a cronjob for every domain. Add host name as last argument to poller:
cd /base/directory; /path/to/php include/poller.php "http://mydomain.com"
What is this cronjob (poller.php) supposed to do anyway?
It does all kinds of things that we don't want to do in the "foreground". It looks for anything that is sitting around in the queue and tries to deliver these things again (because maybe the site was down when we tried last time). It notifies you of upcoming birthdays. It goes out and grabs RSS feeds and email contacts (and often Facebook contacts) and checks to see if they have new material for you.
It also checks Friendica contacts - "just in case" a communication was missed due to a communication glitch, it provides a second chance.