Tag Archives: wordpress

The Fediverse Has Arrived On WordPress.com

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Matthias Pfefferie wrote on the WordPress website: Exciting times are here for all WordPress.com users! The revolutionary ActivityPub feature is now available across all WordPress.com plans, unlocking a world of engagement and interaction for your blog. You blogs can now be part of the rapidly expanding fediverse, which enables you to connect with a broader audience and attract more followers.

What is the “fediverse”?

The fediverse consists of federated platforms like Mastodon, which hare networks of independent websites or servers that can communicate with each other while still operating individually. It’s much like email; you can send emails to users with accounts on different services (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), yet all of them can interact seamlessly. Similarly, federated platforms enable users to follow, share, and interact with content across different services in a unified network.

What is the ActivityPub plugin?

ActivityPub is a WordPress plugin that facilitates seamless integration between your blog and a host of federated platforms, including Mastodon, Pleroma, Frendica, and more. This plugin empowers your readers to follow your blog posts on these platforms.

In addition, replies to your posts from these platforms are automatically turned into comments on your WordPress blog, creating a more interactive and dynamic conversation around your content. Synchronicity for the win!

Transform your blog into a fediverse profile

Your WordPress blog can now become a profile for the fediverse. This means your readers can follow you and receive all the latest posts from your blog directly on preferred platform. More so, they can engage in enriching conversation by replying to your posts, with their replies reflecting as comments on your blog post, creating a synchronized and interactive experience.

On Free, Personal, and Premium sites, you can enter the fediverse through your settings; for Business and Commerce sites, simply install the ActivityPub plug and follow the prompts to set up your profile.

The Verge reported bloggers and other publishers using WordPress to host their site can now use it to join the fediverse through an official ActivityPub plug-in.

ActivityPub allows social networks to talk across platforms, meaning users can see and engage with content on other platforms without making a new account. wordpress.com owner Automattic acquired the ActivityPub for WordPress plug-in earlier this year, and the feature is now available for anyone to install through WordPress settings.

According to The Verge, in the case of a WordPress.com blog, audiences will be able to follow a publisher through other federated platforms like Mastodon. Responses on other platforms will automatically turn into comments on a publisher’s WordPress post, allowing them to interact directly with off-platform audiences. The setting is available across WordPress sites on free, personal, and premium tiers – millions of blogs will now be able to join the fediverse in a few seconds.

In my opinion, the ActivityPub plug-in could potentially give WordPress blog creators more comments and views. As for me, I’m not against the plug-in. That said, I prefer placing some of my blog’s content onto the Fediverse by hand so I can choose for myself what goes there.

WordPress will Treat Google’s FLoC as a Security Concern

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WordPress announced that they plan on treating Google’s new FLoC tracking technology as a security concern and plan to block it by default on WordPress sites, BleepingComputer reported. WordPress has joined the growing list of creators of browsers and search engines that refuse to implement Google’s FLoC in their content.

There is a proposal on WordPress.org titled: ““Treat FloC as a security concern”. The first thing mentioned is the EFF’s post titled: “Google’s FLoC is a terrible idea”, which notes that “placing people in groups based on their browsing habits is likely to facilitate employment, housing and other types of discrimination, as well as predatory targeting of unsophisticated consumers.”

WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web – and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code…

The proposal also points out why it is important to take action against Google’s FloC now, instead of waiting for it to be implemented in the next update. “While it is indeed unusual to read a new ‘feature’ this way, there is precedent in that something that was not strictly a security vulnerability in comments was back-ported to previous versions for the good of the community as a whole.”

It notes that the 5.8 update is scheduled for July 2021, while FLoC will likely be rolling out this month.

Personally, I really like that WordPress is interested in protecting its users from Google’s FLoC. I’ve been using WordPress for my personal blog for years. It is really nice to know that WordPress is taking the preemptive steps to ensure that Google cannot inflict FLoC on WordPress sites.

DreamHost Partners With Jetpack for DreamPress Offering

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DreamHost LogoWebsite hosting provider DreamHost offers a wide range of services to meet its customers’ needs. One of those offerings is called DreamPress, DreamHost’s fully managed service for users running WordPress-based websites. While it’s possible to run a WordPress site on DreamHost’s shared and VPS-based hosting solutions, DreamPress is different in that all facets of a user’s WordPress installation are fully managed by DreamHost. This can save time and energy for users who don’t want to deal with all of the updates and maintenance that come with a complex content management system like WordPress.

DreamHost is actively working to improve DreamPress. In a recent e-mail blast, DreamHost announced it’s partnered with Automattic (the company that steers the core development of WordPress) to bring premium features from Automattic’s Jetpack WordPress plugin to DreamPress users:

We’ve partnered with Jetpack to include a free Premium plan — normally $99 per year — with every DreamPress account at no extra charge.

With DreamPress you can level up your site with a powerful hosting environment, custom-built for WordPress. With the addition of Jetpack Premium you also have best-in-class backup and security scanning services, ad-free video hosting and additional WordPress support.

And:

Made by Automattic, experts in all things WordPress, Jetpack also offers additional free features for your WordPress site including a high-speed image CDN, brute force attack protection, hundreds of themes, uptime monitoring and much, much more.

DreamPress services start at $16.95 per month and all DreamPress users will have access to the new benefits provided by DreamHost’s partnership with Jetpack.

Facebook Adds Embed posts Option

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Facebook opened up their embedded post option to everyone today. Now, you can take a post, grab the embed code and insert into a blog like WordPress.

Developers can now add this to their apps. They released a new version of the Facebook plugin for WordPress that supports Embedded Posts. Otherwise, you can copy code to bring an embedded post into your article. Here is how:

How to Embed a Facebook Status

  1. Call up the specific post. Basically, select where it says how long ago the author posted it.
  2. From the drop-down on the top-right, choose “Embed Post”
  3. Copy the code and paste into your blog. It should look like this:

    embed-facebook-post

The End result:

Post by Geek News Central.

Will Yahoo! Screw Up Tumblr?

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Today Yahoo! announced they have purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Of course, Yahoo’s track record for buying companies seems to be that of a kid with ADHD at Christmas time – by February they want new toys. Will this be a great deal for Yahoo! or will we they just push aside for another acquisition down the road.

Yahoo! Acquires Tumblr

Tumblr, a microblogging and social networking platform that was founded by David Karp in 2007 was purchased by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion dollars. Tumblr brings in 175 employees and 108.5 million blogs that reach 44 million people. This inlcudes the thousands of blogs that were imported from Posterous a few months back.

The Exodus from Tumblr to WordPress May Show No Faith in Yahoo! Tumblr

Yahoo Keep Calm gif
Yahoo Keep Calm animated gif (click on to see the image)

According to Matt Mullenweg’s blog today, imports have spiked to WordPress after the news of Yahoo! purchase. “Normally we import 400-600 posts and hour from Tumblr, last hour is was over 72,000.”

Marissa Meyer replied with a “We won’t screw this up” answer. She posted on her own Tumblr (the one with a very annoying gif saying “NOW PANIC and FREAK OUT” followed by “Keep Calm and Carry On”. You can see the annoying gif here.

“We promise not to screw it up.” says Mayer. “Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going.  We will operate Tumblr independently.  David Karp will remain CEO.  The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve.  Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.”

WordPress and Jetpack combine for Annual Report

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2012 Annual Report

I you run a blog then odds are you are using WordPress  as your content management system. One of the most popular plugins is Jetpack — a great solution for site stats that provides much better information than what is provided by default. Now the two have combined for an interactive annual report.

It is not clear which is behind this, or if WordPress is providing this information to non-Jetpack users, as the email comes from WordPress, while the site linked within it takes you to a Jetpack.me location. Either way, it’s a interesting, and highly interactive look at your site’s 2012 history.

Included are lists of top posts by traffic, top commentors, where the traffic came from — location, referring site and more. The email went out early this morning and a link also now appears at the top of site stats page. It also allows you to make the stats public and share them with your readers.

“Our stats helper monkeys have been busy putting together a personalized report detailing how your blog did in 2012!”

WordPress Runs Almost Half of the Web’s Top Blogs

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Recently a study was released by Pingdom regarding the content management systems (CMS) used by the web’s top blogs and, perhaps not surprisingly, almost half of those sites were powered by WordPress.  48 of the top 100 are using WordPress as their backend system, while Movable Type, the second most used CMS, powers only 7 of the top 100 blogs.

To break the numbers down a bit further, 39 sites were using WordPress and an additional 9 were hosted by WordPress.  In addition, 12 sites used their own custom CMS, Typepad accounted for 8 blogs, and at the bottom end, one was using Tumblr and one was on Diderot.  Gawker sites all run on their own custom software and counts under “Gawker” as opposed to “Custom”.  There is a smattering of Blogger, Drupal, BlogSmith, and others, while 8 blogs declined to answer.  You can check out the chart below to see the full breakdown.

pingdom cms chart