Today, I’m excited to announce that my blog has finally joined the fediverse! Today I installed the new ActivityPub plugin for hosted WordPress.com Blogs like this one (available on self-hosted WordPress)group blog for a while).
I’ll leave it to developer Matthias Pfefferle to explain (the full post follows).
Exciting times are ahead for all WordPress.com users! The innovative ActivityPub feature is now available on all WordPress.com plans, opening up a world of engagement and interaction for your blog. Your blog can now become part of the rapidly expanding fediverse, allowing you to connect with a wider audience and attract more followers.
Let’s take a closer look at what this means for every WordPress.com blog.
Fediverse consists of a federated platform, such as Mastodon, which is a network of independent websites or servers that operate individually but can communicate with each other. It’s very similar to email. You can send emails to users with accounts from various services such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc., and all users can interact seamlessly. Likewise, federated platforms allow users to follow, share, and interact with content across a variety of services in the federated network.
ActivityPub is a WordPress plugin that facilitates seamless integration between your blog and a variety of federation platforms, including Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, and more (see diagram at the top of this blog post). This plugin allows your readers to follow your blog posts on these platforms.
Additionally, replies to posts on these platforms are automatically converted into comments on your WordPress blog, creating a more interactive and dynamic conversation around your content. Synchronicity for the win!
So, if you’re on Mastodon (like me), you can now choose to follow my blog the same way you follow other Mastodon users! My blog username is:
@ryanschultz@ryanschultz.com
The URL of my blog profile is:
https://ryanschultz.com/@ryanschultz
Matthias continues:
Your WordPress blog can now become your profile on Fediverse. This means your readers can follow you and receive all the latest posts from your blog directly on their preferred platform. What’s more, they can reply to your posts and their responses will be reflected as comments on your blog posts, creating a synchronized, interactive experience so they can engage in rich conversations.
Now, this is very new to me so I’ll probably have to troubleshoot a few issues with my system. But actually I’m very happy! For now, I’ve decided to keep the old WordPress plugin I used to automatically publish blog posts to my personal Mastodon account.
@ryanschultz@mastodon.social
Or, if you prefer a URL over my personal profile:
https://mastodon.social/@ryanschultz
You’ll notice that the social media icons on the RyanSchultz.com blog’s left menu (below the option to subscribe to my blog via email) have also been upgraded, adding a much nicer-looking Mastodon icon. My personal Mastodon profile above. I currently need to figure out the best way to integrate my two Mastodon profiles (one for my personal account and one for my blog)! I’ll continue with both for now.
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