What is the use of federating a blog? Just commenting?
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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I look at it like this: ActivityPub is to RSS as a GUI is to a CLI.
Meaning, you could already use the tools (RSS or the CLI) that are there to do the task, but someone has created something (protocol, AP or application, GUI) to make that task easier. In the case of RSS and AP, that task is generally getting content in front of the user. With RSS I have to go hunt down RSS feeds and whatnot, but with AP I just interact with stuff and wait for the people I interact with to interact with stuff, and then I get content.
I think that's a pretty good analogy in this case
People can follow and comment to my WordPress from the fediverse. My posts are long enough that they don't really look right on Mastodon (and images all show up as attachments rather than inline), but nice for shorter format blogs
I'm working on adding ActivityPub to my Hugo blog right now. I support RSS, but I figured AP support means that you can get it into your Mastodon feed or even Lemmy feed making it easy to follow. Additionally, commenting (assuming it doesn't get taken over by spammers.)
I would love to know how you get on with this.
Mostly commenting though the Fediverse, yes, but they also develop the possibility to follow other Fedi users and have a timeline when logged in.
I think most current blog commenting systems have some drawback (closed platform like discuss, limited to WordPress, or something that requires email confirmation, captcha or something else) so the ability to comment from another service is a huge factor for me.
And you would be able to see blog posts in a fediverse feed and subscribe to a blog that way.
This looks a lot like Writefreely.
I tried a random Writefreely instance and it was extremely barebones and had poor markdown styling. It gave me the impression that Writefreely is more for publishing short stories, rather than technical content.
(Is that the point of Writefreely?)
Yes.
Ah, ok. I was barking up the wrong tree.
I never tried writefreely, but I was under the impression that it's really focused on, well, writing. Maybe it's not used that much, but I would like to have the ability to easily upload pictures and include them in the articles with some formatting options etc.
The people who make writefreely are saying that they are working on making image uploads possible for self-hosted instances, not just their own at write.as. Currently if you are self-hosting you can insert an image but it must be hosted elsewhere and inserted via a markdown link.
You can do that but only under paid accounts.
Just curious but is Ghost like an alternative to Wordpress or Squarespace?
It's a blogging platform. So similar to WordPress. Although it looks a lot nicer.
The really cool thing is that it has support for payments in the Self-hosted version, which I've not personally seen before.
gotcha thanks!
The really cool thing is that it has support for payments in the Self-hosted version, which I've not personally seen before.
huh that's actually pretty neat!
Wordpress has become an all-purpose CMS known security vulnerabilities via unsafe plugins.
Ghost has APIs instead of plugins for nearly everything, so it eliminated a lot of security and maintenance headache that way.
Ghost focuses on just a few features centered around independent content creators: blogging, email newsletters and subscriptions.
So features for sending bulk emails and accepting payments are built in, but you won’t find native support for other things like podcasts or recipe markup.
Ghost meets my need, and I love not dealing with 30 plugins at risk of being exploited if I don’t upgrade them promptly.
It's simpler/more lightweight than WordPress, but generally yes (don't know squarespace)
I've seen it mostly touted as an alternative to Substack.
Is this a valid WordPress replacement?
Edit: nope, its closed source
Edit2: oh, it is open source. But the install instructions are glaringly insecure
What's insecure about them?
Npm package manager is vulnerable to mitm attacks. The packages aren't signed like, for example, apt does
I've been following their work on implementing this via their newsletter and it seems to be coming along nicely. Can't wait for them to complete implementing it.
There was a good talk about this at FOSDEM at the weekend!
Were FOSDEM talks recorded?
yes, although they are not all available yet. Here is the link to the videos from the room that hosted the Social Web track. https://video.fosdem.org/2025/ud2208/
Perfect thank you!
Awesome! Once this is out, I think I will migrate my blog from WriteFreely to Ghost. I hope I can reduce disruption for existing followers though...
I think there's no way to remain at the same domain with a different Fedi service unfortunately :/
To be honest it's amazing to see this sort of thing. I'm really waiting for Ghost to become a lot more accessible to the Fediverse as I love writing my little Articles but it seems to not be worth it as much if users can't interact and talk on the page as easily.
Hopefully they open it up to lots more users and articles in the future.