what do we have to do to make the #ActivityPub plugin attractive to more #WordPress users? We are currently at 4000+ active users on WordPress.org + the WordPress.com users.
@pfefferle Is there a kind of directory of those users available? I like the idea to enrich my timeline with some blog articles, but how can I find wordpress authors with fediverse addresses?
@pfefferle I ended up going with Post to Mastodon on my most recent WP site because I want features like replies and the like, but I don't want them as comments on the site. Also, the site is a subset of a larger org, so I want its posts to go on the parent org's account.
@pfefferle@fediversereport I think the recent threaded comments release will really help. Also maybe federating replies from logged in users? Enabling local and fedi commenters to interact with each other more should help catalyse discussion and engagement.
@pfefferle to me it also takes a kind of shift in mindset to think of the blog as coterminous with the social node. I am interested in that approach but feel cognizant of the fact that I am not there yet in my thinking.
For me, the ability to fine tune how the Fediverse profile is presented would be great. I believe there’s some work on the roadmap to better define how the Header Image, Icon, Biography and other profile details are propogated. It would be good as well to be able to add validated links to the profile at the blog level.
There may be a capacity to do this in the separate webfinger and nodeinfo plugins, but those are too opaque for a non-technical admin.
@MartyFouts I already tried to get in touch with some of the big WordPress Hosters to see how we could get it to work on their infrastructure, but mostly it was frustrating. I think ActivityPub (in the WordPress area) is not present enough to force Hosters to support it.
@pfefferle the thing that would make it more attractive to me is probably out of scope for you: I host my blog at Dreamhost and their tools mean that your plugin won’t work out of the box there. I don’t have the bandwidth to debug this so I don’t use the plugin.
@69francs that is maybe because most users assume that it works the same way as a Mastodon instance. With WordPress I tried to not introduce a lot of new settings, but re-use what’s already there. So to set/change the avatar, you simply have to change your profiles avatar or the site-icon.
@pfefferle I think too much knowledge is still assumed. If I remember right, for example, there's nowhere that tells me how to change the avatar and header in my profile. Mastodon apps can’t do it, and I have no idea how to do it on Wordpress.
A FAQ would be handy, but on Wordpress and not on daunting places like GitHub or whatnot that the average person can't do anything with 🙂
@pfefferle@fediversereport FWIW, I installed the plugin some time ago but can’t follow the blog from my Mastodon account. I just see an endless “pending” state.
@caspar that's exactly what i tried to avoid. i didn't want to turn WordPress into a social network, but to make WordPress part of a network. my idea was that it should simply work and that everyone (in the best case) should be able to continue using WordPress as before. with the small addition that you can now subscribe via ActivityPub in addition to RSS and the small but nice addition of the backchannel.
@pfefferle Decouple the user experience from WordPress? WordPress can still be the engine but shouldn't posting, reading and reacting happen in one unified UI, like people know from other social media? I understand ActivityPub puts my WordPress site on the Fediverse but does it provide me with an integrated user experience to publish and interact? Or am I getting it completely wrong and missing something?
@pfefferle When people comment from the fediverse to a blog post, and it gets a comment from another blog reader on the fediverse comment, would it be possible to the blog user comment's to appear on the fediverse like @user@blogDomain ?
@manualdousuario good point... I think this is mainly an UI issue... I have no idea how to do that nicely... just talked about that with @linos and @ruru4143
Maybe we should add that to our thoughts about using Block-Editor-Templates for that.
@manualdousuario@linos@ruru4143@mattwiebe oh! I think it is hard to resolve it the classic way! there is a possibility to handle that using filters, but that requires some code...
@lifewithtrees@manualdousuario@techaddressed I understand your needs, but this is really a completely different use case and solved by a lot of other plugins including Jetpack.
@manualdousuario@techaddressed@pfefferle thing is I have a mastodon account already...all I want is to connect my current mastodon account with my current website...the rest, while I understand it's function, is too much work. It needs to be as easy as adding a "publish to facebook" button using whatever acounts they want to have people use it in a bigger way.
@pfefferle I've tried multiple times to get it working on my WP site and it never seems to work and I haven't really had time to devote to troubleshooting it.
@techaddressed@pfefferle I have a WordPress site to do it too but have not yet done it as there were limitations on which account it connected with iirc. The support team at WordPress didn't know much about it.
Like I didn't want it to connect to a new instance i set up related to the wordpress account, but an already existing fedi account
```I assume you already have page caching in place and you do not have some other plugin on your site that would interfere with page caching, like batcache, WP SuperCache and more. For my site I use Cloudflare’s APO for WordPress and nothing else.```
@pfefferle I've attempted to get it working on a couple of different sites, and for some reason, I'm having issues with it (and getting verification to work at all)...
Tried some trouble shooting, but basically anything that makes it quicker, easier and requires less technical input to get it up and running would make it much easier to recommend (especially to clients, who might not be convinced by Mastodon enough to devote lots of time and energy until they have something up and running)
@badgergravling that's totally true, but the current (shared) hosting environments are playing a significant role in that "game". Quite a lot of tweaks are required because of caching, limited mod-rewrite possibilities because of custom letsencrypt setups, blogs in subfolders or traffic limitations.
@lifewithtrees@manualdousuario@techaddressed@pfefferle What you are looking for should be the setup under Marketing Tools. Here you connect your existing Mastodon (or other social media) account to your blog. Once you‘ve done that you should be prompted during the post publishing process to create a post to be sent to your Mastodon account. I described this (with screenshots) in my blog post a while ago, look for “Connecting your Mastodon account to the blog“: https://sylkeweb.com/2023/10/15/wordpress-and-the-fediverse/
@pfefferle ich bin da ja eher zufällig drüber gestolpert, hab aber sofort kapiert, dass vielen Leuten gar nicht auf Anhieb klar sein wird, wie sich das unterscheidet, vor allem, wenn das als Marketing Tool daher kommt. 😅 Ich poste schon seit bestimmt 10 Jahren Content von verschiedenen Websites zu Social Media Konten und kenne mich da mittlerweile ein wenig aus, verwende zum Teil auch Buffer um das zu automatisieren. Vielen ist das alles schon „zu technisch“, mir macht es Spaß.
@pfefferle Somehow market how many more followers that would give them and how it would improve their readership? I guess it depends on the general motivation for these folks having a Wordpress site to begin with…
@pfefferle Yeah, I've worked on a large scale WordPress plugin in the past (on the marketing/content/product dev side, not code), so I appreciate how difficult it is to account for hosting/other plugins etc...
So I can understand why it's not easier, but at the same time, with my marketing hat on, it's the main reason why it's not more widely adopted...
If I can't get it working after going through all the help files I can find, I can safely say no client is going to bother...
@BeAware@pfefferle Oh, sorry for misunderstanding; installing the plugin is "one touch and go" -unless you encounter problems such as in SiteGround for example-; what's less easy it's to create a database of all federated plugins... Unless you could decide to have a unique hashtag for this.
@pfefferle I think #fediverse should grow as it's a way to connect with other networks without being forced to join thousands of social networks. And yes, a network of WordPress #ActivityPub compatible blogs would be nice but practically uneasy to implement. Anyways, I'm afraid many trouble with nginx and cloudflare through several hostings, make people scared.
@pfefferle the one thing I’m missing is to have different post templates for different content types. It’s difficult to manage picture/video only content with the same template as blogposts.
Aside from that, is there a way to have more option to customize the visible profile? Name, URLs, Picture etc. no I need a third party plugin to upload a custom image if I don’t want to use gravatar.
Never tested, but does audio publishing work with ActivityPub? Might be nice for podcasts.
@ichderfisch you can change templates using a filter. Besides of that: we are planning a complete rewrite of the templates using the block editor. Maybe templates to add to your (custom) theme would also be an option.
@Stegemann this does not work! You can‘f follow fediverse users on mastodon (yet). The focus is still on publishing and if we have a solid state there we think about the next big step: following!
Unfortunately, I can't find fediverse users by searching on the Wordpress site and then follow them. How can content from fediverse be automatically published on the Wordpress site? For example, my account on Mastodon.