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!
@danyork my traffic went up about 25% just by clicking the connect to ActivityPub
@danyork Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work properly.
@jeremy @bishop @danyork I've seen alot of people asking the same questions but no fix yet. In my case, trying to follow a person results in being stuck in pending and never getting approved. I have a fairly unique configuration and there's a large number of possible factors. Also posts don't seem to come out quickly if at all (one came in testing then no further). I don't even know where to start troubleshooting this.
@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 Ugh... that's unfortunate.
@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.
@carstingaxion @jeremy @danyork Thanks for the advice. I contacted HG once about it with no luck, maybe I'll try again. For the record, here's the article I eventually found that explained what (I think) is going on. Apparently it's a ModSecurity issue.
https://blog.rac.me.uk/2022/11/10/activitypub-for-wordpress-how-to-fix-modsecurity-to-make-it-work/
@phonner Thank you for sharing! This was indeed very enlightning to read.
@lispi314 @73ms True... although at the moment the whole thing requires some extra work.
After you enable it, initially it's highly unlikely that anyone will be able to find your new ActivityPub-enabled site on the Fediverse.
You'll probably need to manually follow your site from your Mastodon account. That will then bring the ActivityPub ID into your Mastodon instance... and then from there others may find it.
This is all really early days.
@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.
@danyork You can activate the plugin only if you have a business plan if you host with Wordpress. So much for Matt Mullenweg comments. He seems to be just a Zuckerberg in hiding.
@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 Thanks Dan, seems I was wrong. Although this was not that easy to figure out. Wouldnt find it if you didnt explain.
@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 @StephenRees So I have a blog on wordpress.com, and it appears that adding the ActivityPub plugin requires a paid account.
Does this “Enter the Fediverse" toggle give me the same functionality without having to go to a paid plan?
@petergarner @StephenRees Yes, on WordPress.com they have already installed the functionality (back in October). So all you need to do is toggle that button.
More here: https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/10/11/activitypub/
@danyork Thank you. Done that now.
@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?
@jeremy @danyork Hi Jeremy, Thanks for reaching out.
This was my issue. I run a single author blog and I already have an active Mastodon account.
When I activated the plugin, it created a new account. It was based on my author account that looked identical to my current mastodon account. I had no idea how to configure it to reflect my blog nor did I want to reorganize my content.
Given the choice, I would rather have people follow my personal account than my blog account.
@jeremy @danyork That said, this looks very promsing:
https://mastodon.social/@Researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host/111575607851296571
@vegetarianzombie @danyork Right, that is how the plugin is designed to work ; it creates a new instance that sends your posts to your followers on the Fediverse.
If you already have an active account on the Fediverse and want to keep it, the plugin probably isn't for you.
You'd probably be better off with another plugin that automatically pushes your new blog posts to your existing mastodon.social account. There are a few plugins that can do that, if you're interested. Here are two: Share on Mastodon, Jetpack Social (disclaimer, I work on the latter).
@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.
Latest: a series on the philosophy of Byung Chul Han, if you're interested.
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 Since they bought the plugin they should make it core like RSS is core.
@danyork was he talking about plugins enabled on all WordPress installs or on wordpress.com?
@warrows He was talking about installations of the plugin in WordPress installs. When you install from the central plugin repository, they gather a count of how many sites have installed a plugin. And that number shows on the plugin page, and can help give people considering a plugin a sense of how actively the plugin is used.
Right now it says:
Active Installations: 4000+
@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".
@jeffalyanak @yo That’s awesome!
@danyork been on my agenda for a while, will update my blogs before the end of the year :)
@danyork I installed it and found it caused the admin site to grind to a halt so I had to deactivate it. Time to try again I guess!
@danyork I couldn't get it to work on my site. Something to do with "webfinger" or something like that?
@danyork I tried installing again, but it insists on using my non-public username as the Mastodon handle. I keep the username secret to make life harder for hackers. The plugi settings page makes the username field look editable, but it isn't. I'm not surprised more people aren't using this plugin
@danyork
I installed it a while back on my self hosted WP blog. I followed my blog from Mastodon to test it out. If I recall, the first post after that showed up in my Mastodon feed, but none have since.
Now I just promote new blog posts and pages through my Mastodon account and don't worry about it. I treat most of this stuff as beta versions of nice ideas that don't really work yet. I mean, I can't even get Mastodon to display preview cards to the posts correctly.
I'll just wait till this all gets a little closer to the "just works" stage and try again.
@danyork would if I could put plugins are paywalled, expensively
@MxVerda If you are talking about the hosted WordPress.com site, then you already have the feature. You don’t need the plugin.
Learn more: https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/10/11/activitypub/
@danyork i did and one upgrade of the plugin stopped it from working. Sad I am
@danyork thanks for this. I’ve added my little blog to the Fediverse.