We are using the recent XMPP standard XEP-0367: Message Attaching to provide this #feature in the project. You can already try it out on the official pod nl.movim.eu.

This feature is available for the one to one conversations but also the chatrooms 😊 Have fun!

To continue to build #Movim and introduce awesome new features such as message reactions we need your help. Please visit our Patreon page to help cover our expenses and fund new ideas and projects around Movim.

Following our previous post. The owner of the French #server that was hosting the jappix.com XMPP server and fr.movim.eu pod is turning of his server at the end of the month.

The jappix.com server has just been merged with the movim.eu XMPP server (they are handled by the same ejabberd instance) and the fr.movim.eu pod will be turned off and redirected to nl.movim.eu for now.

#migration #movim #jappix #xmpp

Having a question, an idea or do you simply want to talk about the project? You can meet us and the #XMPP folks at the #35c3 in #Leipzig.

Feel free to also join our official chatroom to know where to find us :)

Tumblr has decided to ban all NSFW content from its network. Although we understand the reasons why this decision has been made, it's a strong reminder that handling your content - NSFW or not - from a centralized and private platform can always lead to such censorship.

Movim has been built to prevent this kind of restriction. Here's a few reasons why.

Movim is a Free Software

Movim has been and will always be a Free Software. This provides you with the freedom to adapt it, redistribute it and use it in any way you would like to. You are then free to add new features, change some behaviors or customize as you wish, for yourself or your community.

Movim is based on an Open Standard : XMPP

All the content that you are publishing on Movim: articles, private messages or chatroom messages, pictures… are published using your #XMPP account that is separate from Movim itself (like your emails are separated from your email client).

The XMPP standard is the official IETF Instant Messaging solution and is used accross the world by millions of people daily. Since 2008 Movim is pushing social features on top of it to provide to everyone a simple and modern way of publishing content, subscribing and reacting to it.

Movim is then just a way to access your content on the XMPP network (like your browser is accessing content on the Web). If you don't like Movim, you are also free to use one of the many other solutions to access your content and communicate with others… while keeping the same account!

Movim is easy to deploy

Movim is lightweight (only a few megabytes) and can be deployed on any server. We are providing a Docker image, a Debian package or a simple installation tutorial if you want to deploy it yourself.

The project only relies on widely used technologies like PHP, HTML5 and is fully compatible with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

One instance can handle several hundreds of simultaneous sessions in real time.

We are also providing apps for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android that can easily be used for your own personnalized instance.

You can then build your own instance in a few clicks and host your own content while still being connected and explore the rest of the network.

Movim provides similar features to Tumblr's

Like Tumblr, it is possible to publish content in a few clicks, write articles (like this one), attach pictures or files. You can publish content on your own profile but also in Communities where you can collaborate with others and create a stream of articles around a topic and bring followers in.

It is possible to apply CSS stylesheets to fully customize your public blog.

It is also possible to share a content that you found on your own account, but also like and comment other people's content!

You can easily #tag content by putting #hashtags in your article or title. The other users will then be able to discover it while browsing tags on their own instance.

Movim has NSFW features built in. If you publish NSFW content, just add the nsfw tag and Movim will filter the content for the users who chose not to view it from their account. A spoiler overlay is also added in your news feed to prevent explicit content to be displayed on your screen while scrolling.

… but also provides more than Tumblr!

All the content published on Movim is broadcasted to your subscribers in real time! You will also be notified instantly for the likes and comments on your publications. A simple toggle will also allow you to publish your articles privately (restrict the publication to your subscribers) or publicly (share with the whole network).

Movim also provides a full, and modern Instant Messaging system, with chatrooms, message edition, stickers, video-conferencing and many more features… In a few clicks you'll be able to invite contacts and chat with them!

Movim is available on all the devices. Its fully responsive and the real-time UI allows you to access your content from your phone, tablet or computer and keep everything in sync.

So what are you waiting for? Come and try it!

If you have any concerns, questions, remarks or critics on the project, feel free to come to our official chatroom: movim@conference.movim.eu and drop us a message.

That's all folks!

Movim is 10 years old and it's with a lot of satisfaction that we are bringing this version 0.14 after 9 long months of development.

Movim is a new concept of social network with instant messaging features that sits between #Instagram, #WhatsApp for the user experience and federated networks such as #Diaspora or #Mastodon.

Ou goal is to bring everything you need to communicate with your community, classroom, company or friend circle in one simple application. Movim can easily be deployed on a server and rely on the XMPP protocol to federate them. Therefore Movim can, by design, already communicate with many XMPP/Jabber clients and doesn't need you to create a new account if you already have an XMPP one 😋.

This new #release is coming with several core changes that greatly improved the stability and performances of the project but it also brings many design and navigation improvements to always provide you with the best experience regarding publication of content and messaging.

Movim and PHP 7.3

Movim is currently having technical issues to run on the upcoming version of PHP 7.3.

This is a known and documented issue that is caused by some incompatibilities with one of the official dependencies of PHP, php-zmq, that is used at several places in the core of the daemon.

A ticket has been open to track and give updates about this issue: Movim is not working with PHP 7.3.

Technical changes

Before presenting the improvements and new features let's talk a bit about what was done under the hood.

Database

The biggest change in this version is certainly the complete replacement of the database layer from the historical, Movim specific, Modl library to the widely used Eloquent.

This work has been detailed in a previous article: From Modl to Eloquent, or how to change a social network database engine. To sum it up, it brought coherence in the database of the project and a huge performance boost on all the pages.

Without any cache involved, Movim is now loading pages in only a few hundred milliseconds.

The new database structure is also keeping good performances with a huge amount of data (millions of messages, thousands of articles on our official pods a this moment).

With Eloquent, Movim is compatible with #MySQL, #PostgreSQL but also, since this version, with #SQLite which can greatly simplify the deployment of small instances. Thanks to JKingweb for his awesome work on this port.

Packaging and dependencies

Scotty will be the first version to be packaged for the #Debian project. Big improvements were made in the dependencies of the project thanks to the work of our contributors mirabilos and nik. Several were fully removed and some are replaced with more stable and reliable ones (like the SASL library, used for the authentication). This package will come a bit later regarding the issue that we have with PHP 7.3.

Movim 0.14 is also the first version to drop the support of PHP5 (now deprecated) to focus on PHP7+.

What's new?

After being a bit boring with those technical changes let's have a look at what you will find as a user in this new version.

Publications

The publication of articles is now simpler than ever and has been fully redesigned. You can quickly publish a link or upload a picture directly from the home page or you can still switch to the more complete form to write long articles (like this one 😉).

When sharing a link that contains several pictures you can now pick the one that you would like to include in your publication (or no picture at all).

The publication visibility toggle has been redesigned to be clearer as well.

Articles

The cards containing the preview of the articles were fully redesigned to be more compact and adaptable to smaller screens.

The news page, contact publications and communities are now paginated allowing simpler navigation.

If you receive articles containing NSFW content and you asked to not display them in the configuration, Movim will now display a spoiler overlay on top of them.

The search feature has been improved and now supports searching in tags as well.

The loading performances of the articles and comments were also greatly improved. Navigating between the articles feels like a breeze.

Notifications

All the notifications are now grouped in a panel easily available from the main menu both on desktop and on mobile. Thanks to XMPP all those notifications are received and synchronized in real time 😀.

Those notifications contain likes, comments and invitations that you received.

Chats

Several message synchronisation issues were fixed allowing Movim to handle properly the receival and read acknowledgement of the sent messages.

Chatrooms

The chatrooms were slightly redesigned, the moderators messages are now shown with a specific color. The messages addressed to you are also displayed with a colored border.

You can now also publish Stickers and emojis in your favorite chatrooms.

But also!

You can now use Movim to authenticate to third party websites using your XMPP account. On the websites that implement that feature, you just have to give your XMPP account and a notification will be displayed in Movim.

You just have to accept it and you'll be automatically authenticated to the external website. How easy is it?

More information there Journal of a Bot - Authentication with XMPP.

Several small bugs were also fixed in the Video Conference feature. Movim is now clearer about the state of the video session and is giving proper feedbacks if the contact hung-up.

The pictures can be directly previewed within Movim before going to the external link.

Around the project

The new redesigned version of the official website will now present more clearly what the project is about and all the exciting features that you can use within Movim.

You will also find there all the apps for your desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux) and your Android phone.

What's next?

We are not done yet! There is already some plans for the upcoming release.

The 0.15 will focus on the integration of the OMEMO end to end encryption protocol. The related ticket has been reopened with more proper explanations. This will be a big risky project.

Some improvements will also be done on the suggestions of the chatrooms and communities to allow Movim users to explore and discover content more easily.

In the meantime we all invite you to try out this new version on our official instances or deploy it on your server. You will find everything to do so on the official website.

You can also always help us with donation to the project or support us on Liberapay or Patreon :). Giving feedbacks or talking about Movim around you is also helping us a lot!

That's all folks!