SMOB - a framework for open, distributed and semantic microblog
===============================================================

SMOB client enables you to share microblogging messages. 
It consists in SMOB Client(s) and SMOB Server(s):
- The client provides a web interface for entering new postings, stores 
the postings, and lets the aggregators of your choice know of each new 
posting.
- The server receives notifications of new postings from microblog 
publishing services, keeps an up-to-date collection of the postings, and
allows readers to browse the postings

The code is accessible via Subversion using the following command:

  svn co http://smob.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/


Requirements
------------

1. You need to have a server on the internet to set up the service on - this
   is like a blog.

2. The server needs to have 
  - a WWW server with PHP5 or PHP4.3 or higher.
  - MySQL 4.0.4 or higher.

3. PHP needs to have the CURL functions.
  - For example, in Debian the package is called php5-curl or php4-curl
  - Or, you can download libcurl from http://curl.haxx.se/dlwiz/?type=lib


Installation
------------

1. Checkout or download the SMOB source code and put it in a web server 
   directory that can be accessed by you as well as by the SMOB servers 
   on which you want to publish your data / SMOB clients you want to 
   aggregate, e.g. at http://example.org/smob

2. Go to http://example.org/smob and follow the instructions
  - You can install both a client and a server at this stage
  - If you don't have a FOAF profile yet:
    - You can create one eg. here: http://www.ldodds.com/foaf/foaf-a-matic
  - Tailor the list of SMOB servers to which you want to be able to push data.
  - If you want to be able to relay your messages to Twitter,
    just fill in 'twitter_user' and 'twitter_pass'.

4. If you setup a client, allow the client to create files in the 'data' 
   directory.
   - Eg. the command: chmod 1777 data

5. If you setup a server, you can restrict write access to the SMOB server using 
   the following methods:

  a) You can set a global API key which the clients then need to match to be 
     able to get their posts aggregated.
    - Edit config.php and set $auth_key to something hard to guess.

  b) Add access control rules (password, IP address) to a .htaccess file.
    - Access to the 'load' directory controls aggregation of new posts.
    - Access to the main directory controls read access to aggregated data.

6. You can add access control rules (password, IP address) to a .htaccess file.
  - Access to the 'publish' directory controls publishing new posts.
  - Access to the 'data' directory controls read access to existing posts.
  - For the fist one, you can use FOAF-SSL, simply edit the .htacess file in 'publish'

7. That's all! You can now access the client and the server with a web browser.

Example .htaccess file for the client
-------------------------------------

To stop others from publishing as you using your publisher, you can put 
the following lines (please adjust accordinly) into publish/.htaccess:

Require valid-user
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Satisfy any

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Tuukka's SMOB publisher"
AuthUserFile /home/tuukka/.auth-me

# You can list IP addresses where the password shouldn't be required
Allow from 123.456.0.789

Then, create the authentication file and an account with the command:
htpasswd -c /home/tuukka/.auth-me tuukka


Example .htaccess file for controlling new posts (server)
---------------------------------------------------------

To restrict whose posts can show up in the aggregator, you can put 
the following lines (please adjust accordinly) into load/.htaccess:

Order deny,allow
Deny from all

# List IP addresses of the publishing services that should be allowed 
Allow from 127.0.0.1 # localhost, ie. a publishing service on the local server
Allow from 194.187.213.68 # tuukka.iki.fi