Replied to Is this thing on? (Also: Twitter, Mastodon, and the Fundamentals of DoOO) by Martha Burtis (wrapping.marthaburtis.net)
It’s been. . .a while. It would take too long to review everything that’s happened since I posted last, so let’s start with a recent turn of events: the absolute implosion of Twitter. I’ve been on that site for about fifteen years, and for portions of that time, I barely looked at it. At others times it’s been a critical part of my professional work. Given my on-again, off-again relationship with the space, it feels weird to say that the recent events are terribly significant to me, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I feel at a bit of a loss as I watch my community over there fracture.
@martha I’m hearing a lot of similar experiences across the web like this. Thanks for your thoughts on it.

Kathleen Fitzgerald recently asked about crossposting to Mastodon from her WordPress site and getting replies back. She’s documented some parts recently, and I’ve outlined a few pieces preliminarily including ways you can make your WordPress site look like it’s a Mastodon instance with a few plugins. I suspect Kathleen will have some further thoughts soon after she spends some time tinkering. If you had previously set up to syndicate to Twitter and get responses by via the Brid.gy service, that same sort of workflow will definitely work with Mastodon if you like. (Though it bears mentioning that some of the updates to Mastodon 4.0 this past week or so have introduced some bugs depending on which instance you’re on. I’m sure they’ll be sorted shortly.)

If you’ve not puzzled it out yet, the adding of the requisite rel="me" class to your Mastodon URL link on your website (in the header, footer, via plugin, via menu item, other) is broadly described here (including some details for the classic editor): https://g13g.blog/2022/11/09/how-to-verify-your-wordpress-site-on-mastodon/. I’m personally using the IndieWeb Plugin to accomplish this and have added the URL for my mastodon instance into a field which gets added to my WordPress Profile at /wp-admin/profile.php. I’m happy to help if you need other ideas about how to do it as there are maybe too many potential options—it was all the different options and ways of doing it that confused me when I did it.

In addition to the broader Domain of One’s Own ideas that the “Twitter migration” is spurring, I’m always glad to see more people exploring ways we can have “A Twitter of our Own“.


Also in reply to syndicated copy at: https://mastodon.social/@mburtis/109435099778560251

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Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

2 thoughts on “”

  1. Chris Aldrich says:

    Fascinating! I noticed, by a bizarre, but serendipitous quirk of syndication that Martha has the beginning of a set up, likely using the ActivityPub plugin, at @mburtis@wrapping.marthaburtis.net!

    The ActivityPub plugin, or perhaps those using it, should do a better job of advertising that their site has this functionality from a UI perspective.

    1. Chris Aldrich says:

      It also appears, that (without Webmention support) the ActivityPub plugin pulled over my syndicated response via my syndicated copy to Mastodon! Huzzah!

      Why wouldn’t Martha’s site pick up the full response via ActivityPub via my site that also supports AP? Need to look into this and file either a bug and/or feature request for this. (Perhaps it’s on the roadmap, but not implemented yet?)

      Doesn’t look like she’s using the WebFinger plugin yet: https://webfinger.net/

      And isn’t listed at https://the-federation.info/wordpress, so likely no use of the NodeInfo plugin either.

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