martin's blog

We have a new, very ungeeky installation guide for beginners on our Resources pages. Use it to set up a personal or family Friendica site without learning Tech-nese first.  With any luck, you may not even need a text editor. Check it out here.

It's not the only way of installing Friendica. But it's one almost everyone can master.

We have a new how-to about using Friendica's forums and community pages - an increasingly popular feature and one that gives newcomers instant access to interesting content. Read more about it here: https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki/Friendica-forums-and-community-pages

We've got a new how-to explaining use of Friendica's email connector - because a lot of people were unable to find and activate this powerful feature. It lets you integrate normal email contacts in your social stream. For instance, Uncle Jack who refuses to join any social networks will then still receive your status updates from a family vacation - simply by reading his email.

Here's the guide: Using Friendica's email connector

We now have a how-to dealing with SSL use for Friendica, including specific information about free certificates from StartSSL: https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki/Running-Friendica-with-SSL

Note: This is for people running their own Friendica servers. Other users do not need to read this.

We've got a new article dealing with how to use XMPP (chat) with Friendica, even including your Facebook contacts. Getting started is very easy. Take a look here. Also a reminder: Friendica has an IRC plugin you can use, too. You'll find it in your Apps menu if your site admin has activated it.

Germany's leading computer magazine c't on Friendica: "Friendica demonstrates how decentralized social networks can become widely accepted: with a versatile set of features that (almost) everyone can install on their own server and that can connect to many existing networks."

In an article on privacy-aware social networks, the magazine emphasizes ease of (server) installation as one of Friendica's main strengths, saying that: "Friendica is currently probably closest to the principle of a distributed social network that anyone can install."