[opensourcedex]

movim is a free, open source social networking project written in PHP and released under AGPL-3.0. It has 2,056 GitHub stars, 283 forks and 43 open issues, and was last pushed 12 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #20 of 44 tracked projects in Social Networking, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 2 stars over the last 3 tracked days.

What is movim?

What it is

Movim is a federated blogging and chat platform that acts as a web frontend for the XMPP protocol. It is written in PHP and released under the AGPL-3.0 license. The project sits in the XMPP social networking ecosystem, where communication can be exchanged across a decentralized network rather than being kept inside one central service.

The concrete problem it addresses is the gap between XMPP as a protocol and people who want a browser-based social interface. XMPP provides chat and federation, but it does not by itself present a complete blog, chat, and social network frontend. Movim aims to give users a web application that can publish posts and carry conversations while connecting to the XMPP ecosystem.

Key capabilities

  • It provides a web frontend for the XMPP protocol, so users can interact with XMPP communication from a browser.
  • It supports blogging as part of a federated social platform, not only direct chat.
  • It supports chat and instant messaging workflows, as indicated by its topics.
  • It is built as a PHP application, placing it in the self-hostable web application ecosystem.
  • It can be tested locally through Podman and podman-compose, which starts a local instance with a blank database.
  • It publishes a container image at ghcr.io/movim/movim:latest for a containerized deployment path.
  • It relies on PostgreSQL for the published container, according to the README.

Who uses it and how

  • People who want a federated social network can join an existing Movim instance through join.movim.eu.
  • Developers and testers can clone the repository, install podman-compose, and run podman-compose up to launch a local test instance.
  • Users can open the test instance at https://127.0.0.1:8443/ and accept the self-signed certificate to reach the login page.
  • Operators can use the published container as a starting point, but they must provide PostgreSQL and follow the installation guide.
  • Contributors can help with translations through Transifex, and users can report security issues through SECURITY.md.

Getting started

The README points to INSTALL.md and the Movim Wiki for deployment, and it offers a quick test path using Podman, podman-compose, and ghcr.io/movim/movim:latest. The test container starts with a blank database and requires PostgreSQL, so production use should follow the installation tutorial.

When to use it — and when not to

Movim fits when the goal is a self-hosted or federated web frontend for XMPP-based blogging and chat, especially in a PHP and PostgreSQL deployment. It is less suitable when someone wants a fully managed hosted service, because the README emphasizes installation instructions and self-hosting. The quick test container is explicitly not optimized and has most caches disabled, so it is only a starting point, not a production deployment.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Movim

Federated blogging and chat platform

build ci badge

About

Movim is a federated blogging and chat platform that acts as a web frontend for the XMPP protocol.

movim screenshot

Deployment

Please refer to the installation instructions in the INSTALL.md file, or check out the Movim Wiki for more information.

Quick Test

You can try out Movim on your local machine in a container using Podman (main website). Podman is a FOSS alternative to Docker that is available on all the main distributions.

⚠️ This setup is only for tests purpose, the containers are not optimized and most of the caches are disabled. To deploy your own Movim instance use the INSTALL.md tutorial.

Install podman-compose and clone the repository before trying the next steps.

Launch the podman-compose script

podman-compose up

After a few minutes it will launch a local test instance with a blank database.

You can then access in your browser at the following URL:

https://127.0.0.1:8443/

The container is using a self-signed certificate, accept to get to the login page.

The container is also available at ghcr.io/movim/movim:latest, but requires postgresql to run (cf our podman-compose script).

Security report

See SECURITY.md.

Support Us

You can help Movim by:

  • Doing a one time donation using PayPal Donate
  • Helping us covering our monthly costs on our official Patreon page Donate
  • Helping us weekly on Liberapay Donate

Links

Translations

Help us translate Movim on Transifex.

License

Movim is released under the terms of the AGPLv3 license. See COPYING.txt for more details.

Frequently asked questions

Is movim free to use?

movim is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does movim do?

Movim - Decentralized social platform

What is movim written in?

movim is primarily written in PHP. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/movim/movim, and it has 2,056 GitHub stars.