I miss blogs. Don’t get me wrong: I write professionally for various websites, I have an e-mail newsletter, but none of them gives me this blog 2000 feeling. The closest thing I’ve found is Mastodon. Maybe it’s the nervousness, maybe it’s the DIY attitude, but browsing through Mastodon reminds me of vintage school blogs.
It turns out that I can combine my passion for old-school blogging with my love for Mastodon. There is a uncomplicated plugin you can install on any WordPress site to make it part of the Fediverse, which is the network of social networking sites that includes Mastdon and ultimately Meta’s Threads. Users of these networks can follow your blog and receive all your posts directly on their timeline.
To get started, just install ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. You can do this by heading to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and search for the plugin. Install, enable and ready: Your website is now live on Fediverse.
Source: Justin Pot
Every user of your WordPress site can now be followed by users of Mastodon and other social networks built on the ActivityPub protocol (collectively “The Fediverse”). I confirmed this by searching and following my Mastodon blog.
Source: Justin Pot
I also followed along to see what it looked like. Full posts are available directly on the Mastodon timeline, so people can follow my blog without leaving Mastodon. But the coolest thing for me is that every reply someone sends to your posts appears as a comment on your site.
Replies from Mastodon and other sites appear directly in the comments section.
Source: Justin Pot
If you want, you can reply to comments directly in WordPress and the user will receive the reply in the same way as any other reply. This allows you to blog exactly as you remember it, while still allowing everyone else to utilize the tools they prefer.
And you can go even further. If you want to follow people, even out of respect, you will need to Friends plugin, which essentially turns your WordPress site into a complete ActivityPub social network. You can even configure the plugin to work with Mastodon apps, including Mona, the best app for Mastodon.
However, this is only for advanced users. For most people, it’s just a uncomplicated way to give potential readers another way to read and interact with your blog posts. Configuring this option also means that Threads users will finally be able to follow your blog without having to utilize Threads. Other websites, including Tumblr, are also working on integration with ActivityPub. Such an ecosystem might just bring blogging back – at least I hope so.
