WordPress and the Fediverse
Alex Kirk
What is the Fediverse?
- Federated (Social) Services
- Federation: someone else hosts your data but it's your choice who that someone is
- To get started, you need to specify your server
- A little more complex than centralized services
Why Federation?
- Centralized services are a single point of failure
- A single person or company can suddenly change the rules, APIs, etc.
Examples of Fediverses
- Twitter → Mastodon
- Facebook → Friendica
- Instagram → Pixelfed
- Slack , Discord , WhatsApp , Signal , ...
→ Matrix
- E-Mail
- Blogging: WordPress.com , Substack ,
Medium , self-hosted
Protocols of Fediverses
- Mastodon, Friendica, Pixelfed: ActivityPub
- Matrix:
- E-Mail: SMTP, IMAP
- Blogging: RSS
- Often 2 protocols / variants:
server-to-server, server-to-client (offline!)
Twitter → Mastodon
- Twitter recently made a lot of changes, cut off apps, increased API prices, etc.
- In the tech community, many people migrated to Mastodon
- Mastodon is a gGmbH (non-profit company) in Germany, owns the trademark
- Mastodon is open source software that talks ActivityPub
How do I start to use the Fediverse?
- Before you can start, you need to choose a server
- Often everyone flocks to the best known server
- → danger of re-centralization!
username@server
becomes your identity.
Choose wisely!
Types of Mastodon Servers
How to choose a Mastodon Server?
- A server is sometimes also called "instance"
- You choose the "
@server
" in username@server
→ it becomes your identity
- Why Topic related or Country related?
- → Local timelines
Mastering the Fediverse
- Share to the Fediverse
- Be part of the Fediverse
- Be the Fediverse
1. Share to the Fediverse
- Use the Fediverse as a multiplicator
- Write a post on WordPress, share to the Fediverse → more visitors
- Many plugins:
Mastodon Auto Share, Mastodon Autopost, Share on Mastodon
- How? You might know it from Twitter: You connect your WordPress with your Mastodon account
1. Share to the Fediverse
- When you post something, a post ("note") on your Mastodon account is created
- Typically: Title + URL
- → that note will be shared with all your followers on Mastodon
- The sender is your (hosted) Mastodon account
Process
1. Share to the Fediverse
1. Share to the Fediverse
Setting it up
2. Be part of the Fediverse
- Teach your WordPress speak the same protocol as Mastodon: ActivityPub
- → ActivityPub plugin
- Your WordPress post is your post on Mastodon
- People don't follow your Mastodon account but they follow your blog
- Your identity = @username@my.blog
2. Be part of the Fediverse
- People directly follow your WordPress, you tell them to follow @username@my.blog
- When you post something, it directly sends your post to all your followers
- Thus, WordPress keeps track of your followers
- The posts come from @username@my.blog
- You use Mastodon to follow others and write status posts
Process
2. Be part of the Fediverse
2. Be part of the Fediverse
Setting it up
3. Be the Fediverse
- Follow people on Mastodon, without having to choose your server (your blog is your server)
- → Friends plugin + ActivityPub plugin
- Like a Mastodon instance, with your own identity
- @username@my.blog
3. Be the Fediverse: Friends
3. Be the Fediverse
Use Mastodon Apps
- Nice apps exist for Mastodon on many platforms
- You can also use them with your own WordPress!
- → Enable Mastodon Apps plugin
- Makes your blog talk the Mastodon API
- Tusky, Ivory, Pinafore, Elk, Mona, ...
- (Works also well without ActivityPub+Friends for shared blogs and/or a slim posting experience)
ActivityPub plugin by
- People from Mastodon directly follow your blog
- Your blog can be followed like a Mastodon account
- When someone replies, it arrives at your blog as a comment on the post
- Your blog maintains your list of followers
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub
Friends plugin by
Friends: People Focussed
Friends: People Focussed
Friends: People Focussed
Enable Mastodon Apps plugin by
Enable Mastodon Apps Settings
Super Easy to join the fediverse
Mastodon tidbits
- No lock in: You can move to another server and take your followers along
- You need to host it yourself for a nice address (e.g. with masto.host; No virtual hosts, see #2668)
- Complex software stack (Ruby, Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch) → use your own WordPress?
Matrix
- Real-time chat, end to end encrypted
- Aims to replace Slack; also WhatsApp, Signal, etc.
- Federated, using homeservers
- Multi-messenger with Matrix possible today with Beeper (join the waitlist)
Matrix and WordPress: Chatrix
Matrix and WordPress: SSO
Blogging is also federated
- Openness: anyone can follow your RSS feed
- Comments have a spam problem → will certainly also arrive in the Fediverse
- Web of trust → connect WordPresses?
- IndieWeb, Gemini (Small web)
Summary
- The Fediverse has many facets
- ActivityPub is recently the best known protocol
- WordPress fits well into the puzzle
- You can choose to which degree you want to integrate WordPress