Recently I saw a post stating that Wordpress can speak with the fediverse more effectively. For months we could post to the fediverse but if we replied to a toot via WordPress it would be lost. Those on Mastodon instances would comment but be “ignored”.
For months I thought that it was bizarre that WordPress would only broadcast to the fediverse, but not allow for two way chats to occur. I found this frustrating because if people did comment on a post I’d have to use another account to answer, and acknowledge that comment.
For a few days I ran ClassicPress rather than WordPress and it ran fine. I noticed that sliding between WordPress and ClassicPress is not as simple as it used to be. Now we need to find the build URL and I couldn’t find documentation about what the Build URL is.
Having said this I was reminded of why I have been with WordPress for 20 years. The answer is “When I break something I can fix it within seconds, or minutes, with little effort or concern.
WordPress and WordPress engine are fighting at the moment. Mullenweg wants WP-Engine to pay its fair share, or contribute more developer hours to keep improving WordPress as a whole. To be more specific “a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark.” source
“The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not.
Last night I started to install wordpress on the Pi5 and I got it to work. I then started to install ClassicPress via the ClassicPress switchtoclassicpress plugin and got blocked. I was blocked because in order for WordPress to update plugins, themes and wordpress it needs to have access to itself via FTP. That’s when I stopped for the night.
VSFTPD This morning I installed vsftpd and the first part went well.
I keep seeing articles and posts about how WordPress is on the Fediverse now via the plugin. This is half true. You can write blog posts and they will appear on the Fediverse. What they fail to mention is that those blog posts can have comments, on the Fediverse, but not on WordPress. If you see a post, and you comment once, then that comment cannot be answered via wordpress, but it can’t be interacted with via Wordpress.
Although it is absurd i decided to migrate the blog from https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/ to https://blog.main-vision.com/. It is absurd because the website has been at the same URL since 2004 or so, and to move it is to lose years of hyperlinks. At the same time the updated URL should be preferred by search engines.
The Blog Is In The Fediverse It is also part of the fediverse now, which means that every post can be followed by people natively on the fediverse, rather tha via RSS, Jetpack and more.
Over a period of a few days I have turned my WordPress blog into a fediverse instance. The process took some trial and error. In the end it was quit easy and there are three steps.
Step One: Have a WordPress Instance The first step is to have a WordPress blog/CMS. You can start with an existing website, that you are willing to have on the fediverse, or you can install the WordPress CMS in another director and use that as a dedicated Fediverse CMS.
Transitioning from WordPress to Hugo Transitioning from WordPress to Hugo is tempting because I don’t need an entire CMS for what I’m doing. What I need is a centralised system that checks for tags, titles and the theme, and updates the navigation as I add new pages. You don’t need a CMS for that.
The Good Old Days If you go through the meta data for many of my static pages you will see that they were created with dreamweaver, frontpage 2000 and other solutions.
In theory WordPress is a fantastic tool to write a blog, without needing to learn to code. In practice I am tired of WordPress and I have been tired of WordPress ever since they started to use blocks, and ever since I noticed that it uses React. React and Meta
I know that PHP was developed by Facebook, and that we use it all the time, but I also know that React was developed by Facebook as it was morphing into Meta, the destroyer of the independent web.
A month or two ago we had the chance to jump on the Substack wagon while it was hot and to ride the wave of new followers and experience a growing community. I could have joined in. I could have become one of those “I’m one of you people” but I didn’t. Substack Life
Substack went from being a newsletter to almost becoming a community of writers. I say “almost”, because for me to consider a community a community it has to behave like a community.