* Share your location via an external [plug-in](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations.sharelocation&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub)
* Send voice messages via an external [plug-in](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations.voicerecorder&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub)
can use the email address `donate@siacs.eu` or the button below.
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**Disclaimer:** I'm not a huge fan of PayPal and their business policies. For
larger contributions please get in touch with me beforehand and we can talk
XMPP, like email, is a federated protocol, which means that there is not one company you can create an *official XMPP account* with. Instead there are hundreds, or even thousands, of providers out there. One of those providers is our very own [conversations.im](https://account.conversations.im). If you don’t like to use *conversations.im* use a web search engine of your choice to find another provider. Or maybe your university has one. Or you can run your own. Or ask a friend to run one. Once you've found one, you can use Conversations to create an account. Just select *register new account* on server within the create account dialog.
Using your own domain not only gives you a more recognizable Jabber ID, it also gives you the flexibility to migrate your account between different XMPP providers. This is a good compromise between the responsibilities of having to operate your own server and the downsides of being dependent on a single provider.
If you already have a server somewhere and are willing and able to put the necessary work in, one alternative-in the spirit of federation-is to run your own. We recommend either [Prosody](https://prosody.im/) or [ejabberd](https://www.ejabberd.im/). Both of which have their own strengths. Ejabberd is slightly more mature nowadays but Prosody is arguably easier to set up.
For Prosody you need a couple of so called [community modules](https://modules.prosody.im/) most of which are maintained by the same people that develop Prosody.
If you pick ejabberd make sure you use the latest version. Linux Distributions might bundle some very old versions of it.
Some Bind failures are transient and resolve themselves after a reconnect.
When trying to connect to OpenFire the bind failure can be a permanent problem when the domain part of the Jabber ID entered in Conversations doesn’t match the domain the OpenFire server feels responsible for. For example OpenFire is configured to use the domain `a.tld` but the Jabber ID entered is `user@b.tld` where `b.tld` also points to the same host. During bind OpenFire tries to reassign the Jabber to `user@a.tld`. Conversations doesn’t like that.
This can be fixed by creating a new account in Conversations that uses the Jabber ID `user@a.tld`.
Note: This is kind of a weird quirk in OpenFire. Most other servers would just throw a 'Server not responsible for domain' error instead of attempting to reassign the Jabber ID.
Maybe you attempted to use the Jabber ID `test@b.tld` because `a.tld` doesn’t point to the correct host. In that case you might have to enable the extended connection settings in the expert settings of Conversations and set a host name.
You need to be running the Play Store version of Conversations and your server needs to support push notifications.¹ Because *Google Cloud Notifications (GCM)* are tied with an API key to a specific app your server can not initiate the push message directly. Instead your server will send the push notification to the Conversations App server (operated by us) which then acts as a proxy and initiates the push message for you. The push message sent from our App server through GCM doesn’t contain any personal information. It is just an empty message which will wake up your device and tell Conversations to reconnect to your server. The information sent from your server to our App server depends on the configuration of your server but can be limited to your account name. (In any case the Conversations App server won't redirect any information through GCM even if your server sends this information.)
In summary Google will never get hold of any personal information besides that *something* happened. (Which doesn’t even have to be a message but can be some automated event as well.) We - as the operator of the App server - will just get hold of your account name (without being able to tie this to your specific device).
If you don’t want this simply pick a server which does not offer Push Notifications or build Conversations yourself without support for push notifications. (This is available via a gradle build flavor.) Non-play store source of Conversations like the Amazon App store will also offer a version without push notifications. Conversations will just work as before and maintain its own TCP connection in the background.
¹ Your server only needs to support the server side of [XEP-0357: Push Notifications](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html). If you use the Play Store version you do **not** need to run your own app server. The server modules are called *mod_cloud_notify* on Prosody and *mod_push* on ejabberd.
#### How do I backup / move Conversations to a new device?
On the one hand Conversations supports Message Archive Management to keep a server side history of your messages so when migrating to a new device that device can display your entire history. However that does not work if you enable OMEMO due to its forward secrecy. (Read [The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016](https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html) especially the section on encryption.)
If you migrate to a new device and would still like to keep your history please use a third party backup tool like [oandbackup](https://github.com/jensstein/oandbackup) (needs root access on the device) or ```adb backup``` (no root access needed) from your computer. It is important that you deactivate your account before backup and activate it only after a successful restore, otherwise OMEMO might not work afterwards. Also, remember that you can **only** transfer the backup to either the same version of Android or to a newer one (eg. 5.1.1 -> 5.1.1 or 5.1.1 -> 6.0.1).
* OMEMO works even when a contact is offline, and works with multiple devices. It also allows asynchronous file-transfer when the server has [HTTP File Upload](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html). However, OMEMO not widely support and is currently implemented only [by a handful of clients](https://omemo.top).
* OpenPGP (XEP-0027) is a very old encryption method that has some advantages over OMEMO but should only be used by people who know what they are doing.
OMEMO has two requirements: Your server and the server of your contact need to support PEP. Both of you can verify that individually by opening your account details and selecting ```Server info``` from the menu. The appearing table should list PEP as available. The second requirement is mutual presence subscription. You can verify that by opening the contact details and see if both check boxes *Send presence updates* and *Receive presence updates* are checked.
For your desktop computer we recommend that you use [Gajim](https://gajim.org). You need to install the plugins `OMEMO`, `HTTP Upload` and `URL image preview` to get the best compatibility with Conversations. Plugins can be installed from within the app.
Unfortunately we don‘t have a recommendation for iPhones right now. There are two clients available [ChatSecure](https://chatsecure.org/) and [Monal](https://monal.im/). Both with their own pros and cons.
