I’ve been full on the Get Federated train, and have been most happy with having this WordPress blog going beyond just auto posting posts to the Mastodon but blogging about being a fully fediverse resident entity (if you will) via the ActivityPub plugin.
It’s challenging as the expectation for most folks (including me and services like Mastofeed) when thinking about federating their blog is rigging it up to publish to their timeline. It makes sense, and despite all I might blab out, there is a place for that.
But turning your blog (or Ghost) into it’s own fediverse entity means it does much more, even for the simple one that replies come back to it. Still it appears more complex and I suspect still outside of people’s intents. I tried to make a case for it last September for a Reclaim Hosting Community Chat. Tried.
I have found mainly through my own poking around or just noticing patterns, that the ActivityPub WordPress plugin does a lot more under the hood that making toots. And these do not seem to be too evident when you get going.
Fediverse URLs. can be Autoembedded in Posts
The first was that, out of the box, it provides built in support to convert the plain text URL for any fediverse post pasted in the editor into embedded media. This is not supported via WordPress’s own set of services that it provides autoembeds essentially letting you easily embed a YouTube video without needing the HTML code, just paste a video’s URL on a new line in the editor (block or classic) and press return.
The way I have done this is looking at the URLs for the direct link to the web page that held a media item and finding the pattern to re-write that as an iframe. In WordPress this is (Getting Techy Warning Flag) via adding some code for wp_embed_register_handler that has two parts, one is a pattern to match in the URl that identifies thre source, then a call to another function you need to write that takes that and spits out the iframe code needed to embed it.
I had done a few of these over the years for my SPLOT Box media based theme and I eventually put a batch of them into a simple plugin wp-embed-extras that adds support for padlet, Internet Archive audio/video, Sodaphonic Boombox audio, vocaroo audio.
When I started fiddling with posting from my blog to Mastodon I was also keen interested in being able to auto embed Mastodon posts in my blog, just as I had done long before for some kind of Bird themeed service.
The challenge with doing autoembeds is that from the URL themselves your code cannot identify for sure if it is from the fediverse. I hatched/duct-taped by own autoembed based on the patterns I saw in Mastodon URLs, of having a domain, an @ sign, text for user name, and then a string of numbers as an ID. It mostly worked.
but found they did not display in the WordPress editor (big blank spot) but did seem to mostly work in posts when published. It was not until I was testing on a few other sites or maybe it was my WordPress.com test blog that I noticed mastodon embeds were working, where my hacky plugin was not in play.
My hunch was the autoembed capability was being done by the WordPress ActivityPub plugin. I could not find quickly if this was described in the docs, so I took a peek myself by downloading the plugin and doing some searches for “embed” I saw enough to be fairly sure this was built in, though it was not done in the URL matching approach I had done, but the other way to add support via adding an oembed provider. This is a from my guess work, something like an API that the publisher provides, and in fact, I had done it myself for adding support for padlet in my janky plugin.
It’s pretty easy to check, I went to the OEGlobal WordPress site I run for our OEG Voices podcastt where I do have the ActivityPub plugin enabled, create a test page, and found sure enough, the embeds happen automatically.
What is it I am blabbering about?
So if I can find any direct URL to a Mastodon post (in the web client under the ••• menu Copy Link to Post) let’s say my good friend Andy Rush’s Christmas message with an image of his modest sized video display. I just paste this link as plain text in a new paragraph block
https://mastodon.social/@andyrush/115777574463230300
And then press RETURN, zap! Magic happens, Look at that post.
The biggest #Christmas fireplace I’ve ever had. Merry Christmas everyone!
But wait, it’s not just Mastodon, it works for photo posts to Pixelfed, maybe some dog out there who loves the fediverse. Again put the URL on a blank line:
https://pixelfed.ca/p/pimmthedog/908778597691888216
Press return, and Shazam, instant embed.
What else might it work for? I failed with links to some PeerTube servers (video) and Lemmy (link sharing) but did have success with a Castopod podcast episode, via autoembed if its direct link entered in my editor
https://insertcredit.podcast.audio/@show/episodes/icg015
and getting this auto embed.
This is just a start!
Update (later same day)
By a funny circuitoius route getting some notifications of posts form Andy Rush’s social site
I found the post I could not find- it was a reply to my WordPress blog account and I had asked @pfefferle about this, where he confirmed
And worse I had pretty miuch blogged this whole section before. My brain must be tired.
Edits Are Live
To my non credit, I have maby (see?) typos when I write. And by sheer accident, I realized I had a major mistake in the title of a post that had already been federated. What a nifty surprise when I went into WordPress, made te change, and updated, the Mastodon post itself was updated to match.
I am pretty sure I posted a few more examples, but could not seem to fi– HOLD THE BUS, I blogged it, with screen shots showing how Mastodon Posts updated right/soon after editing the WordPress post, even in changing featured images.
I rather feel like this feature was designed by me.
Fediverse Handles Auto Linked as @ Handles
Yeah in the Birdspace days it took nothing to convert a t_____er @user name to its URL because the pattern was easy, it could even be built into web sites.
With Fediverse handles you have the fun game of a double @ convention, and for a while, years maybe, I was doing the manual process to turn say the handle of my good friend Andy Rush into a web hyperlink (you will understand, maybe, why I did this as an image)
Quite recently, by accident, I found if I pasted in full double @ Fediverse handles into my WordPress editor, say again some find folks like @andyrush and say, ActivityPub plugin developer Matthias Pfefferle @pfefferle and oh yes I will toss under the mention bus the ever responding Eric Likness @carpetbomberz and heck why not my new dog Pimm’s Pixelfed handle @pimmthedog
Again saving as an image here I originally composed the paragraph above (hoping it works) (yep a draft preview shows it did) that will be different when viewed:
I am counting on you seeing that not only have their fediverse handles been hyperlinked, the link text is the shorter @name style.
Again, I am sure this is the doing of the ActivtyPub plugin.
But there is more, I notice when I first spotted this in action, if I replied to the federated post (as I will) all these mentions are included on that reply.
Added later after publishing. Just to show what happened when I replied to my federated post, all those names above get included/spam-mentioned in the reply.
Woah, FediNeo!
And Now What?
I do think that somewhere these features are spelled out, and they are also there to support the various blocks the plugin adds to your site.. did you know of these? Look there is a block to list the long list (hah) of people who follow this blog’s persona.
The follow me block- that is follow this blog, not me.
Welcome to CogDogBlog, Alan Levine’s (hey, thats me, writing about myself in third person!) place to bark about cool technology, web X.0 hype, mockng AI, exploring weird web sites, telling stories of serendipty, photography, and other targets big and small- things that get under my fur or make me wag my tail.
This is just saying there’s more than meets the eye that happens when you make your blog into a Fediverse Thing Unto Itself. And the fact that it does not shoot into my own timeline? Heck, I follow my own blog, which beens I can self boost myself.
Fun times with free or almost hidden fedi-features.
Featured Image: My own photo which I weirdly attribute even though the rules so I do not have to Free as In… Rusty Stuff! flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) which I have modified to superimpose the lovely logo for the ActivityPub plugin on the cabinet doors. For the sake of credit, I will make this one…. CC BY.
@barking So there are advantages to being on the Fediverse – I get featured prominently in a @cogdog blog post!!! Blogs. Remember those? I think they're trending again.
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile
Woof! Was someone barking at me?
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile