From WordPress directly to Mastodon & Co.: ActivityPub plugin reaches version 1.0

The WordPress plugin for connecting blogs and websites to Fediverse and thus also to Mastodon, among others, has now reached version 1.0.0. This was announced by the responsible developer Matthias Pfefferle and added that it was the first major update since the plugin was taken over by the WordPress operator Automattic. The biggest change is that you can now create accounts for a complete WordPress blog; previously this was only possible for authors created there. There are also various bug fixes and improved compatibility with the latest WordPress version 6.3.

Advertisement

From WordPress directly to Mastodon & Co.

The basis for the connection is the ActivityPub protocol underlying Fediverse. Thanks to the plugin of the same name, accounts at Mastodon, Pleroma/Akkoma, Friendica, Hubzilla Pixelfed, Misskey and Firefish (formerly Calckey) can receive new blog posts directly in their respective timelines. If you comment on them, they will be displayed as normal comments on the respective blog. Currently this only works for self-hosted WordPress sites, “very, very soon”, but it will also work for sites on WordPress.com, Matt Wiebe from Automattic has now announced.

Automattic bought the plugin in the spring and thereby underlined that it continues to rely on the ActivityPub protocol and thus the Fediverse. The blogging service Tumblr, which was purchased by Automattic, is also supposed to support ActivityPub in the future, but there has been no news about it since the announcement in fall 2022. In view of the acquisition, Pfefferle has assured that it is not about merging the protocol with the main application, but rather “guaranteeing that it remains open source.” The plugin could provide Fediverse with an enormous amount of content, after all WordPress forms the basis of more than 40 percent of all existing websites. So far, the plugin has only been installed a few thousand times.

From WordPress directly to Mastodon

(Bild: Screenshot)

To install the plugin, navigate to “Plugins”, “Install” in the WordPress dashboard and then search for “ActivityPub”. After installation, the plugin’s welcome page contains a username and a URL that can be used to follow the blog. Since the plugin only displays content in Fediverse if at least one follower has subscribed to the page, we recommend that you first subscribe to the account yourself. In the WordPress dashboard, personal information can be adjusted under “User”, which can later be visible in the description of the profile, for example.

(my)

Zur Startseite

#WordPress #Mastodon #ActivityPub #plugin #reaches #version