Notices by Jeremy Herve (jeremy@herve.bzh)

@scripting

people are liking it somewhere, but we don’t have a Like button on the site. I’m thinking they must be doing it on Mastodon, but where?

@davew Those are just regular Likes (and Reposts) like you can do for any post you come across in Mastodon, either from the web interface or from your Mastodon app if you use one. You should be able to test it by liking or reposting one of your own posts from your account on mastodon.social. You should get a notification right away.

You can display those likes and reposts on your site thanks to the Reactions block.

@jrouet No, the blocks are available on any site running the ActivityPub plugin, regardless of where the site is hosted.

@jrouet If you’re interested, you can check the GitHub repo. That’s where everything ActivityPub/Fediverse happens 🙂

https://github.com/automattic/wordpress-activitypub/

@scripting

the cool thing about the Blogs of Mastodon is you can’t do it on Bluesky, yet. But we hope they will support this too.

@davew Bluesky users can already follow your blog on Bluesky if you use the ActivityPub plugin and if you configure it like so.

@andy

I find the modern WordPress editor and its “distraction free” mode a very relaxing way to write. Nothing really gets in the way, you can focus on writing. No need to worry about classic vs. modern, or formatting. If you know a bit of Markdown and know your way around the editor that’s even easier, you can select blocks using Markdown and using the / command.

The old classic editor had its distraction-free mode too, but it wasn’t this clean:

#WordPress

@davew asks us to Think Different about WordPress, and reflects on the future of WordPress, and interfaces to interact with WordPress, whether it is to create or to consume content from a WordPress site. He talks about WordPress in comparison to social networks like Bluesky or Mastodon. It’s a compelling vision, and that comparison is very appropriate at a time where it’s easier than ever to turn a WordPress site into a Fediverse presence, thanks to the work of @pfefferle and @obenland on the ActivityPub plugin. My home on the web is my WordPress site, and I’m still very happy with that choice.

Dave has been working hard on a new way to interact with your WordPress site: an opinionated, minimalist editor built with writers in mind. As I watch WordLand grow, I can’t help but think about my beginnings with WordPress, more specifically with third-party WordPress editors.

15+ years ago, third-party editors weren’t just nice to have. They were essential. If you were a serious blogger, you probably used MarsEdit on your Mac, or Windows Live Writer on PC. Those 2 editors were probably the biggest third-party editors for WordPress at the time, and were built on top of WordPress’ XML-RPC API. It worked well, except when your hosting provider blocked XML-RPC altogether as a quick fix to avoid XML-RPC pingbacks being used to DDoS sites! That API is still around, and is a good testament for WordPress’ promise of backwards compatibility.

Not only did those editors work well, they were a great alternative to the default post editor in WordPress, which, frankly, sucked for writers using it every day. I remember using it almost exclusively with the “code” view to avoid the dreaded HTML adjustments in the visual editor.

Over the years, MarsEdit and Windows Live Writer slowly disappeared, and a few other options appeared. Here are a few that come to mind:

• Ulysses for Apple users.
• iAWriter for minimalist / focussed writers.
• The Google docs to WordPress browser extension
• StackEdit for Markdown fans.
• Zoho Writer

Fast-forward to today, I don’t think any of those options are that popular anymore. WordPress’ classic editor is still around, but there is a new(-ish) kid on the block with the Gutenberg editor. That editor is still very divisive, especially for folks used to editors of the past.

But if Gutenberg is so problematic, why haven’t third-party editors made a comeback? I have a few theories.

Maybe, despite all its flaws, Gutenberg crossed a critical threshold. It’s not perfect, but it does the job, better than the classic editor did back when third-party editors were necessary, even if some still struggle to adopt the new editor.

Page builders like Elementor have become increasingly popular in the past 10 years. For many new WordPress users, they’re the default post editor interface, they’re the definition of “editing in WordPress” for many. They offer many more visual editing options that third-party editors just cannot offer.

Maybe the market for text-focused editors shrank because WordPress itself pivoted away from text?

While WordPress was largely viewed as a blogging platform 15 years ago, it’s no longer the case today. It powers online stores, small and large business sites, portfolios, and more.

For such site owners, there is no need for an external editor. In fact, there is often no need for posts at all.

This may be my number 1 theory. 15 years ago, shortcodes were the most popular way to add custom content to your WordPress posts. This could be done from a third-party editor with no issues.

Nowadays, many plugins offer blocks that are useful for bloggers. Calls to Action, ads, newsletter popups, social media embeds, … They’re not just formatting tools, they’re useful every day, and they’re all available natively in the core editor. A third-party editor can’t replicate them without rebuilding half of WordPress.

Writers may choose the core editor because using anything else may mean losing traffic and revenue tools.

Third-party editors focused on publishing to WordPress may have become obsolete because there are so many other editors out there, none of them publishing to WordPress. Folks can write in Obsidian, Notion, ChatGPT, … and then copy / paste the output into the core editor. The Gutenberg editor is now a lot more capable of picking up the right format on paste.

Editing consequently happens in custom tools not dedicated to publishing. WordPress is just the final step, the publishing pipeline.

I think there is another force at play that directly challenges Dave’s vision: the rise of bundled publishing platforms like Substack.

Platforms like Substack don’t just offer an editor. They offer you an audience. Your posts can be promoted to Substack readers that are already logged in, can receive newsletters via email, are used to rely on Substack for their daily reading, and have payment methods saved and available in one click to pay you.

This goes against Dave’s ideas of interop and open standards like RSS, because as a creator you don’t have to think about any of that anymore. Instead of thinking about their content flowing freely between platforms with things like ActivityPub or RSS, folks can pick a walled garden where there is no friction. You don’t have to worry about an editor, plugins, you don’t have to know what RSS or ActivityPub is. You can just focus on publishing and trust the platform to do the rest.

“Trust” is the operative word here. You lose a lot of control over your content and your workflow. You lose ownership and data portability, but you may gain something that matters a lot more to you: the eyes of an audience through recommendation engines built by the platform to keep their readers there, and monetization tools to make money from your audience.

I think Dave’s WordLand faces a lot of those challenges, like the other third-party editors I mentioned above. It’s not just a technical challenge though ; it’s a challenge to build something with values that differ from some of the popular platforms out there, like Substack or Bluesky.

That’s not to say it cannot work. 🙂 There will always be a group of people who value content ownership and the open web. In my experience, that group of people actually blogs quite a bit!

I consider myself one of those people. The web still means something special to me.

#EN #WordPress

This study on the impact of AI on perceived developer productivity is making the rounds. I find @simon, Quentin Anthony, and @gergelyorosz’s take the most interesting.

My personal theory is that getting a significant productivity boost from LLM assistance and AI tools has a much steeper learning curve than most people expect.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44523442

It’s super easy to get distracted in the downtime while LLMs are generating. The social media attention economy is brutal, and I think people spend 30 mins scrolling while “waiting” for their 30-second generation.

x.com/QuentinAnthon15

I cannot stay in the zone when using a time-saving AI coding tool; I need to do something else while code is being generated, so context switches are forced, and each one slows me down. It’s a distraction.

Cursor makes developers less effective?

I can confirm the danger of getting distracted when working with AI. I’ve learnt and continue to learn how to best leverage Cursor in my daily work. I know its impact on my productivity is very different depending on the projects I work on. I know I must use Cursor differently depending on the codebase I work with. I know I’m not as productive as I would like with some project types, because I haven’t found the best way to organize my work yet.

But I think the same was true when I worked without the help of AI.

#AI #development

Today I learn about Lumo, a new AI assistant from the folks at @protonprivacy.

The cynic and ex-Proton customer in me cannot help but think that an AI assistant is definitely not on top of the priority list for Proton customers today. It’s curious that Proton would choose to focus on that. I guess AI is where it’s at these days, you got to surf that wave…

AI assistant that respects your privacy

• Strict no-logs policy
• Encrypted
• Built and based in Europe

Lumo

It seems the free version gives you access to “limited daily chats”. There is no more information right now, I’m assuming you’re limited to a certain amount of tokens but they don’t say how many. Lumo itself won’t tell me either 😐

Their docs mention that the bot uses open-source models: Nemo, OpenHands 32B, OLMO 2 32B, and Mistral Small 3. Some may find those a bit limited, but the privacy focus is certainly interesting! That makes me curious to see what’s the advantage of Lumo versus using one of the many apps that allow you to use LLMs locally.

Their landing page and docs also keep mentioning that Lumo’s code is open source, so I figured I may find some answers there. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find any link to the actual source. Proton has multiple GitHub organizations (ProtonVPN, Proton Mail), but I couldn’t find any Lumo repositories there. It must be somewhere, I’m just surprised the folks at Proton didn’t link to it!

A new podcast series about the Fediverse! 🎉

In this episode of Open Web Conversations, and the first in the Fediverse series, @pfefferle introduces the show and chats with @alex about decentralized social networks and the open web.

[…]

Owning your own content, hosting your own social interactions, and controlling what you follow ensures privacy and longevity in the Fediverse.

Decentralized Social Networks & WordPress with Alex Kirk — @DotheWoo@dothewoo.io

#EN #Fediverse #WordPress

This banned Pride march is looking great 🙂!

🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️

#Budapest #Pride

A few days ago, @florianziegler suggested that all of us running blogs with RSS feeds make a small change:

Please add your email address to your RSS feed.

Add Your Email Address to Your RSS Feed

This email address can be used by RSS feed readers to display an Email button next to each feed entry, so folks can reply to the post via email instead of visiting the post on your site to leave a comment.

That seems like a good idea. I found that there was no WordPress plugin that allowed that out of the box, so I built my own. If you’re a blogger and use WordPress, give it a try!

https://wordpress.org/plugins/rss-reply-via-email/

Next step will be for more feed readers to support that issue. I consequently opened an issue for my feed reader of choice, NetNewsWire, to support this, and another for the Android app I use, FocusReader. If you use a different feed reader, don’t hesitate to contact them about it!

#EN #plugin #RSS #WordPress

@benpate

You mentioning custom protocol handlers reminded me of FEP-07d7 – A Custom URL Scheme and Web-Based Protocol Handlers for Linking to ActivityPub Resources. It feels very related to your FEP-3b86 somehow.

I like your idea of not waiting for browsers though.

@tchambers @sl007

@manualdousuario @pfefferle If the default WordPress experience doesn’t fit your needs, and if you need the classic editor out of the box without having to make any changes, ClassicPress may be what you need, not WordPress. I think that’s another proof of the flexibility of WordPress I mention in this post, and the power of Open Source in general. If you need something, chances are someone already built it, or you can build it yourself on top of existing open source tools and solutions!

Earlier today, @davew published a blog post titled WordPress and me. He talked about WordLand, his focused and fast editor for writers and bloggers. Through developing the editor, he’s discovered WordPress again.

I think WordPress has all that’s needed to be the OS of the open social web. We needed it and it’s always been there, and I saw something that I want to show everyone else, that the web can grow from here, we should build on everything that the WordPress community has created. It’s a lot stronger foundation that the other candidates for the basic needs of the open social web, imho.

@davew

I’ve been following Dave’s work with WordLand for the past few months, and it’s been really nice and encouraging to see him work on a product that aligns with my values. And now, Dave will get to present his tool and his ideas to others in the WordPress community! He will be talking at WordCamp Canada in October.

It should come as no surprise that someone so involved with some of the key concepts of the Open Web, like RSS, values ideals of openness and giving writers control over their content. WordLand’s approach to « what you see is what you get » is something that aligns so well with WordPress’ own ideals. It clashes with walled gardens like Twitter or Bluesky where you’re limited in length, format, content, and where you ultimately do not own your writing. It’s super motivating and empowering when someone newer to the WordPress ecosystem recognizes those shared values and the power of the platform.

In his post, Dave talked about his journey of rediscovering WordPress through a new lens. The WordPress.com REST API, its endpoints and its authentication layer, gave him the tools to build the editor he needed, while still benefiting from everything the WordPress community has created in the past 22 years.

This is also what we had in mind when Automattic released Calypso 10 years ago:

Calypso is…

• Incredibly fast. It’ll charm you.
• Written purely in JavaScript, leveraging libraries like Node and React.
• 100% API-powered. Those APIs are open, and now available to every developer in the world.

Matt — Dance to Calypso

Calypso and its underlying API paved the way for the first REST API endpoints that made it to WordPress itself a year later. That API then became a cornerstone of the Gutenberg project:

WordPress has always been about the user experience, and that needs to continue to evolve under newer demands. Gutenberg is an attempt at fundamentally addressing those needs, based on the idea of content blocks. It’s an attempt to improve how users interact with their content in a fundamentally visual way, while at the same time giving developers the tools to create more fulfilling experiences for the people they are helping.

Matías Ventura — Gutenberg, or the Ship of Theseus

On a more technical note, the folks more familiar with WordPress will wonder why WordLand uses the WordPress.com REST API, and not the core WordPress REST API.

Dave chose to use the WordPress.com API for WordLand — and that makes perfect sense for the goals of the project. It provides built-in authentication and opinionated endpoints that would otherwise need to be built on top of the core REST API, and would need to be shipped to every site that wants to use the WordLand editor. That’s simply not what WordLand was designed to do.

Perhaps more importantly, the WordPress.com REST API is just one of the many ways to interact with WordPress. That’s the beauty of WordPress: it’s open and flexible, allowing different tools and solutions to thrive. In this case, it’s nice to see how WordLand, WordPress, and WordPress.com came together to empower writers, each bringing their own strengths to the table. It’s a great example of how open tools and platforms can work hand-in-hand to create something truly special.

It’s always exciting to see new tools emerge from old foundations — and even more so when they help bring us closer to the open web we want to build. Funny enough, the WordPress.com REST API still relies on XML-RPC — a technology built by Dave 27 years ago 🙂

If you haven’t tried WordLand yet, go give it a try! All you need is a WordPress site, either hosted on WordPress.com or running the Jetpack plugin.

#Automattic #EN #OpenWeb #WCEH #WordLand #WordPress

@snoopy

Lemmy c’est génial, mais j’ai peur que les premiers pas soient encore compliqués à expliquer au plus grand nombre. Comment vous gérez cette partie « onboarding » avec les nouvelles communautés qui se créent, pour que les gens comprennent ce qu’est un compte sur le Fediverse, où aller pour s’en créer un, comment choisir son instance, comment publier dans la communauté… Ça donne toujours l’impression de faire beaucoup de questions, et donc un vrai frein pour les gens qui veulent juste poser une question, et qui sont donc déjà dans une position d’inconfort.

@fabi1cazenave @AntoineD @lord

@pfefferle I only have one so far. How do you ensure that people find those pages?

#EN

@tchambers@indieweb.social @voxpelli@mastodon.social Yeah, that makes sense, thanks for expanding on that!

It would be a workaround to get publication type displayed alongside the publication.

ActivityPub already comes with object types: « Note » for status updates, « Question », « Page », « Image », « Audio », « Video », « Event », and « Article » which is a good descriptor for long-form content I think.
I know some Fediverse solutions (like WordPress) allow you to set a different object type depending on the content.
Some Fediverse clients also try to display the content differently based on the object type.

I am assuming others have made that suggestion before, but maybe it would be interesting for the main Fediverse clients like the Mastodon UI / app to clearly display the object type next to the content.

This is probably even more important for object types that are close to each other. If you see an « Image » post on the Fediverse you immediately know what it is. If you see a « Note » or an « Article » however, only the length really differentiates them (if you’re lucky, since some Fediverse clients like Mastodon are built for Notes and do not even want to display full posts).

All this to say, I am all for adding an obvious sign next to long-form content to indicate that 🙂 . Until Fediverse clients do it, a hashtag can work! I’ll try to remember to do it for my next posts (but only the long ones, « Notes » don’t need to be tagged as #Fediblog!)

@pfefferle We’ve talked about adding the hashtag to federated WordPress posts ; what if the option only added it to « Article » publication types, to avoid tagging short updates or shared pictures as « Fediblog »?

@voxpelli@mastodon.social @voxpelli @tchambers I think it would quickly become quite noisy. Imagine if I added the hashtag to each one of my replies in this thread, or if one added the hashtag in a reply to a thread talking about something completely unrelated?

Similarly, should all GoToSocial users add a specific hashtag to all their posts?

I think the platform used to communicate should not matter, the content is what’s really important.

@voxpelli @tchambers Since both WordPress and Ghost sites support RSS out of the box, I don’t think you need an indicator. 🙂

Now, should we add the tag to long-form content only, or to any posts published via Ghost or WordPress (like this one)?

#EN #FediBlog #IndieWeb

Quick tip if you use the ActivityPub plugin on your WordPress site, and if you write in multiple languages on your site. Use the activitypub_post_locale filter to make sure your posts on the Fediverse are set to the locale matching the post on your site.

This way, I can add the #en tag to this post, and ensure the post will be shown as an English-language post for folks on the Fediverse.

This is important for folks who filter posts per language on the Fediverse, or who use translation tools to automatically translate posts in foreign languages.

#ActivityPub #EN #WordPress