Elizabeth Tai

Some flaws with ActivityPub and wordpress.com integration

Definitely liking how ActivityPub works with my two blogs. (They are at @elizabethtai.com@elizabethtai.com and @dramatea88.wordpress.com@dramatea88.wordpress.com However, there are a few limitations:

  • You can’t add followers to the Fediverse account
  • I do not know of a way to log into the Fediverse account of the blog through a Fediverse app
  • You can’t follow people from the account
  • If you reply from your blog it won’t appear on the Fedi acc post thread and the commenter won’t be able to see it
  • Not all comments will appear in the blog. Exactly why this happens is a mystery

The issue with the comments is definitely the most frustrating. From what I can see, you need to directly reply to the post itself for it to appear on the blog. Replies to that comment, however, will not appear. This is something to raise with the team, and I have raised a support ticket related to this issue. I have no idea whether they’ll address it 😉

Still, it’s a very good first step to integrate blogs into the Fediverse. I can imagine a future where people happily exist within this network of blogs and non-corporate social media, separate from the Googles and the Facebooks of the world.

Comments

13 responses to “Some flaws with ActivityPub and wordpress.com integration”

  1. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    n3wjack 🎃: @liztai I use it for my blog too, but find it weird I seem to have 2 fedi accounts now. via mastodon.social

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  2. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    dominik schwind: @liztai for now I like to think of the plugin as a broadcast-only option, a bit like RSS. I’ve been using it on my blog for a while ( @dominik@lostfocus.de ) and I’m looking forward to what the developer is doing, now that he can work full-time on it. I’m sure the whole comment thing will be high on the list of priorities.Until then I reply from this account, which is a bit clunky but (to me) an acceptable compromise for the time being. via nona.social

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  3. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    Andy: @n3wjack @liztai that 2 fedi accounts thing is a bit weird, i was going to add a link to follow the blog on mastodon but there is already a link … i guess a way to make that clear will emerge via hachyderm.io

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  4. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    Andy: @liztai it’s a bit annoying that the default account has such a long repetitive name, why didn’t they use ‘@<subdomain>@wordpress.com’ or ‘@blog@<subdomain>.wordpress.com’ via hachyderm.io

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  5. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    Elizabeth Tai | 戴秀铃 🇲🇾: @ely_peddler I find that annoying too, ngl! via hachyderm.io

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  6. Enrique Barcelli Avatar
    Enrique Barcelli

    @elizabethtai.com you may want to check out with @michael, he got his blog working with the Fedi beautifully.

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  7. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    n3wjack 🎃: @ely_peddler @liztai I used the WP author profile description to also mention my main masto account, but more control over that would be nice. via mastodon.social

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  8. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle: @liztai something I didn’t expect was the “likes” appearing as comments. It’s nice in that they appear at all, but at the same time it’s a bit clunky via mastodon.social

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  9. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    Sean Bala: @liztai This is annoying but I really try to think of #ActivityPub as a marathon not a sprint. It is an amazing idea that we can integrate AP into already existing tech architectures. As long as #WordPress keeps actively developing it and ironing out the kinks.I might dust off my WP blog. I have it linked here but have not done much with it. Looking for something to use where I can write more long form. Love #Mastodon but I can be a bit long winded and 500 words can be tight.
    activitypub
    mastodon
    wordpress via mas.to

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  10. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
    Elizabeth Tai

    Alex:

    Replied to Some flaws with ActivityPub and wordpress.com integration by Elizabeth Tai (Elizabeth Tai)

    Definitely liking how ActivityPub works with my two blogs. However, there are a few limitations.

    I’ve been using activitypub for wordpress for several months now, before it was officially supported by wordpress.org and then wordpress.com. Otherwise I don’t have any good knowledge of the plugin, so this is just « random user knowledge », not expert or even power user answers.
    But replying to two of the flaws you highlight with the plugin, Elizabeth:

    I do not know of a way to log into the Fediverse account of the blog through a Fediverse app

    Me neither. Actually, I’m pretty sure you can’t. But I also don’t see why you’d want to do that, outside of replying to some posts on the Fediverse, which brings me to…

    If you reply from your blog it won’t appear on the Fedi acc post thread and the commenter won’t be able to see it

    I recommend using Post Kinds, which seems to be available on WordPress.com. Marking my posts as « reply » make the answer show up, at least on Mastodon. It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t seem to be native, but hopefully eventually all this will work together seamlessly!

    You can’t add followers to the Fediverse account

    Unless I wildly misunderstood what you mean by this, it would be very much forbidden by several consent laws (such as GDPR) anyway. Either people subscribe on their own or they don’t at all – I don’t think you can force-subscribe people to your Mastodon feed either!

    Not all comments will appear in the blog. Exactly why this happens is a mystery

    What I saw on my blog was that mentions that aren’t in reply to a specific blog post or don’t link to one don’t go anywhere, because there are no comments on the blog’s homepage. Maybe that’s also your issue?
    Finally, hard agree on:

    You can’t follow people from the account

    I use RSS feeds to follow people (including their Mastodon accounts), usually, but this is a pain point for me too as I’d love to not have to open a new WordPress tab and manually enter my response URL and the content. Maybe this will come someday, but it would probably be solved by being able to log in via third-party Fediverse apps and websites, as you mention above.


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  11. Should I Federate My Blog? - Wild Rye Avatar
    Should I Federate My Blog? – Wild Rye

    […] is what Elizabeth Tai is doing in her blog post Some flaws with ActivityPub and wordpress.com integration, which has been very helpful to me as I work through this […]

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  12. danicotillas Avatar
    danicotillas

    Hi Elizabeth! I’m following your exact path with comunicacionabierta.net.
    I’d love to know how do you make it to answer from here, the blog, and make it appear on whatever Mastodon instance they write you from.
    Thanks!

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    1. Elizabeth Tai Avatar
      Elizabeth Tai

      Hello Danicotillas. I use brid.gy (https://brid.gy/) but it only works for certain platforms. If you use WordPress, there’s a widget for that.

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