 Advocates for #ActivityPub - IF YOU HAVE A #WORDPRESS SITE, have you installed the ActivityPub plugin? https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ At the State of the Word address this week, Matt Mullenweg was asked about support for the plugin, and he commented that less than 5,000 sites had installed it. So he wasn't sure how interested people are in it. So... if you have a WP site, let's start installing that plugin and making more sites available via ActivityPub! 😀 69 comments
 @alexskunz @lrhodes yeah, I tested it too and reply were a bit broken but I tested a while ago, there were update since then, I hopt it fixed rhta @krafting @alexskunz @lrhodes when I tested it a few month ago threaded comments were broken too. But release 1.3 from last week is supposed to have them working. Gotta try it again :neofox_glasses:  But I turned comments off on my blog years ago cos they were just spammy crap that took time to moderate. I added a stuff to well-known so that searching for my blog domain in masto returns my Mastodon account. Expect I probably will get around to adding the activitypub plugin one day but not seeing any hurry and expecting it to be a bit of a pain coz my blog isn't at the root of the domain and I have stuff for nostr and more in well-known too.  @cybeardjm @lrhodes @danyork Question: if you don’t have any public-facing comments displaying on your blog, can your blog still reply to comments from fedi within WP admin itself? @lrhodes - What @cybeardjm said. It enriches the content of the Fediverse, and it aids in the *discovery* of content published on WP sites versus inside walled gardens like Facebook. From an advocacy perspective, it also increases the number of nodes connected to the Fediverse, which aids in the promotion of Fediverse/Mastodon with journalists and other who care about numbers. But mostly, it just makes more content available to Fediverse users. @danyork @cybeardjm I suppose if it encourages people to post on WP sites rather than Facebook, that's a positive, but if it's only making existing WP sites available via AP, then I'm not sure that's *really* making more content available, since all of those sites are likewise available on the open web, and are syndicated via RSS by default. @cybeardjm @danyork My guess would be that people who are willing to put up with the oddities of ActivityPub are probably more aware of RSS than the general population. But let's find out: https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/111575373684690250 @lrhodes @danyork I wrote about this RSS stuff some time ago  @lrhodes @BigAngBlack @lrhodes @danyork You're right, you don't need a Mastodon or Pixelfed or Friendica or... account to connect your WordPress blog to the Fediverse. It becomes its own instance. It's just easier to check and reshare and publicize you WP+AP, that's all. With WP+AP, you post to the Fediverse, and your followers (if any) will see and be able to comment. @BigAngBlack @lrhodes @cybeardjm With the ActivityPub plugin, you get publishing to Fediverse and you get comments coming back. As someone else said (DJM?) it's kind of 2-way RSS. You do NOT get "following" of other accounts as you would in a Mastodon account If all you want to do is publish your thoughts and engage with comments, then YES, your WP blog could now be your Fediverse presence. If you want to engage with other accounts, there's another plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/friends/ @danyork @BigAngBlack @lrhodes Or you can use Bridgy Fed (and IndieAuth to follow accounts), a different approach to use ActivityPub, without the "official" plugin. @BigAngBlack @danyork @lrhodes Yes, although the AP plugin is quite old (I started using it in 2019 or so), it's evolving and whole "Fediverse" environment is evolving too, with new apps and tools almost everyday. We know AP still has some limits and might transform again at some point. That's what's interesting, IMHO  yeah, it makes a massive difference in engagement I find. people tend to not click links on social platforms, and this way you circumvent that by simply boosting the entire body of text into peoples feeds directly as an example, this post would never have gotten 120+ boosts if I posted the link to it instead @danyork I've just installed this on my (tiny, nascent) blog @kirk@dualpower.supply @danyork i would like too but then realize people who are bad can also post their crazy conspiracy onto others. Mstodon and the developers of Activitypub need to restrict the flow of misinformation. Owning a WP with Activitypub is just another easy way for bad actors to create millions of accounts without admins stopping them. @firecat @danyork That is very true. That's not limited to the ActivityPub plugin though. The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing, and sometimes that means enabling folks to publish things you don't agree with, misinformation, or worse. I'm afraid that comes with the territory. The good news is, just like RSS, having a site doesn't automatically give you a following, or promote your ideas.  @danyork I was really excited to use this but after installing and much debugging finally realized it won't work for my self-hosted #Wordpress site because the hosting company's firewall blocks some of the necessary requests. @phonner @danyork That's a bummer! Did they let you know why they're blocking the requests, and if they were considering adjusting their rules to avoid these false positives? Do not hesitate to send them to the plugin's support forums on WordPress.org if they want to chat about the different routes they'd need to open, and how.  @danyork If most of these WP sites are individuals, what kind of impact does that have on overall fedi performance? @tasket @danyork None. The performance impact is on the instance pushing out the update and the site linked in the toot. In this case it's the WordPress site running the plugin in both cases. That is something worth considering for site owners using the plugin though; if you have many followers you'll need to implement a caching solution.  @danyork @lisamelton I have two different sites on different web hosts. It won't work at all on one and not well on either of them. Hosting configs. Can be fixed if the wordpress hosting sites get on the ball. @danyork There is a problem for Wordpress blogs hosted on other hosting sites that the developers of the plugin are not in a position to address: many such hosting sites, including Dreamhost who host my blog, have modified html servers that break the activitypub plugin. It is often difficult to find the necessary workarounds, and the hosting companies have not been willing to work with the plugin developers. @MartyFouts Ugh... I'm seeing similar comments from others. 🙁 That is very unfortunate. Hopefully that will change over time. @MartyFouts @danyork Ah. I’m self-hosted on Dreamhost. Presume this is why it isn’t working for me. I gather you have had no luck finding a way to get this to work there? @MartyFouts @danyork With the hint that it was a Dreamhost issue, I found this: https://www.sidhe.org/blog/2023/09/23/setting-up-the-activitypub-plugin-on-a-dreamhost-vps-hosted-wordpress-blog/ - I'm on VPS on Dreamhost, and the instructions worked. @blog is up and running. Haven't tested a post yet, but I was able to follow it. Yay!  @danyork Two of the three WP blogs I manage have ActivityPub enabled. The third would, except that it's in a subdirectory instead of at the root URL, and the last time I tried I couldn't get the plugin working. It's been a while, I should probably check back to see if that's improved at all. @Smrki By "if you host with WordPress", do you mean using WordPress.com ? If so, you don't need a plugin at all, the ActivityPub function is already included. Just go to Settings -> Discussion and click "Enter the Fediverse" ! More info here: https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/10/11/activitypub/ @danyork Well I use WordPress but through wordpress.com - so I can't use any plug ins. @StephenRees Actually, with WordPress.com, the ActivityPub functionality is already there! Just go into Settings -> Discussion and there is an "Enter the Fediverse" switch. Simple and easy. More info: https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/10/11/activitypub/ @danyork The documentation for this plugin is not great. Out of the box, this wasn't a good fit for my site and reading the docs to customize it, didn't help me at all. So I uninstalled it. Not saying my issues aren't addressable but well written documentation goes a long way. @vegetarianzombie Totally hear you on the value of good documentation! Sorry to hear it didn't work well for your site. @vegetarianzombie @danyork That's good feedback! The team has been working on improving onboarding for the plugin so it is getting better in that aspect! Do you remember if there were specific things that were confusing or not well documented when you last tried? @danyork Thanks for this prompt. I didn't know I could connect to Mastodon. I've been running my blog for 7 years. I connected by going to 'Tools', 'Marketing and Integrations,' then 'Connections' and found Mastodon on the list of social media that I can publish to. Done. Thanks for the tip.  On WordPress.com, you need a business level account, which is quite expensive, before you can install plugins. But now you can just use an admin option to federate, without a plugin. I did it recently, quite easy. Maybe that's why so few are using the plugin. @EricLawton Yes, as you note, WordPress.com already has the same functionality built-in. No need for the plugin. There are millions and millions of other WordPress servers out there, though, and *they* are the target for the plugin. @danyork I tried it, but saw my server logs flooded with countless requests for ActivityPub stuff that the plugin doesn't handle. /api* (yes, I keep an eye on my server logs, for reasons, and installing the plugin turned them into a hot mess) I installed it but as my site is not on root of the domain (has URL path /somethingsomething...) it seems to be not working properly. The Web finger address is then incorrect or something and I couldn't get it to work. @danyork For most sites it's a rather useless plugin. If you have a multi-author classic blog with comments turned on, it's a good plugin. If you use Wordpress to create any other kind of webpage, it doesn't really help you and you are better off using Mastodon (along with other kind of social media) to get attention to your content. @danyork I enabled mine but had to get the web host involved to get it to work on shared hosting. FAQs were sparse a few months ago and I didn't really understand that all I was doing at the time was having my posts show up here. I couldn't interact as my blog (just learned about Friends plugin last week though). Comments are off on my blog because spam isn't worth it so adding the ActivityPub plugin didn't make any sense to me. Checking now, my follow to my own blog is still "Pending".  My _mother's_ WP site has this. If anyone is interested in following a Canadian singer/songwriter, her blog is here: |
Gregory's Server
@danyork my traffic went up about 25% just by clicking the connect to ActivityPub