README

A quiet place for meaningful conversation.

Murmur is a self-hosted, open-source social platform designed for calm, intentional discourse. No algorithmic feeds. No engagement metrics. No federation complexity. Just you and your community.

Why Murmur?

Modern social platforms optimize for engagement, not connection. Murmur takes a different approach:

• No algorithms — Posts appear in chronological order. You see what you follow.
• No metrics — No follower leaderboards, no viral incentives. Like counts are shown, but who liked a post stays private.
• No federation — Your instance, your rules. Simple to run, simple to moderate.
• Your data — Self-hosted means you own everything. Export anytime.

Features

• Posts & Replies — Share thoughts with optional image and video attachments
• Topics — Organize conversations by category; follow topics that interest you
• User Follows — Build your own feed by following people you care about
• Private Messaging — One-to-one conversations between mutual follows
• OAuth Authentication — Sign in with Google, Facebook, or Apple
• Multi-Language — Full internationalization support with YAML translation files
• Flexible Storage — Local filesystem or S3-compatible cloud storage (Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO, Cloudflare R2)
• Theming — Customizable themes with CSS-only styling
• Admin Controls — User management, registration settings, approval workflows
• Multi-Database — MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQLite

Quick Start

# Install Murmur
composer create-project moonspot/murmur murmur
cd murmur

# Configure database
cp etc/config.ini.example etc/config.ini
# Edit etc/config.ini with your database settings

# Create database tables (SQLite example)
sqlite3 data/murmur.db < schema/sqlite/schema.sql

# Start the development server
php -S localhost:8000 -t public

Visit http://localhost:8000 and complete the setup wizard to create your admin account.

Documentation

Requirements

• PHP 8.1 or higher
• One of: MySQL 5.7+, MariaDB 10.3+, PostgreSQL 12+, or SQLite 3
• Composer

Project Structure

murmur/
├── public/          # Web root (index.php, uploads, static assets)
├── src/             # PHP application code
│   ├── Controller/  # HTTP request handlers
│   ├── Entity/      # Value objects (User, Post, Topic, etc.)
│   ├── Repository/  # Data mappers for database access
│   └── Service/     # Business logic layer
├── templates/       # Twig templates
│   ├── admin/       # Admin panel (not themed)
│   └── default/     # Default user-facing theme
├── translations/    # YAML translation files (messages.en-US.yaml, etc.)
├── schema/          # Database schema files
│   ├── mysql/
│   ├── postgresql/
│   └── sqlite/
├── tests/           # PHPUnit test suite
└── etc/             # Configuration files

Architecture

Murmur follows a clean layered architecture:

HTTP Request
     ↓
Controller (thin — routing, request/response)
     ↓
Service (business logic, validation)
     ↓
Repository (data mapper pattern)
     ↓
Entity (typed value objects)
     ↓
Database

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Write tests for new functionality
4. Ensure all tests pass (vendor/bin/phpunit)
5. Submit a pull request

License

Murmur is released under the BSD 3-Clause License.

Copyright (c) 2026, Brian Moon

Credits

Built with:

• Twig — Template engine
• Symfony Translation — Internationalization
• dealnews/db — Database abstraction
• pagemill/router — HTTP routing