Bringing Static Sites to the Fediverse: Enhancements and Implementations Integrating static sites into this ecosystem via the ActivityPub protocol presents unique challenges and opportunities. In this post, I share recent updates and discoveries from my journey to seamlessly connect static sites to the Fediverse. Enhancing Content Delivery with Customizable Templates One of the primary goals in integrating static sites with ActivityPub is to ensure that content is delivered effectively within the Fediverse.

A rollercoaster of pride, panic, and AI gasliting I code to relax. Some people do yoga, some meditate—I open VS Code at 11 PM like a gremlin-raccoon. Don’t judge. I work full-time at Microsoft, and between family time and my other hobbies, I somehow keep starting new side projects. I’ve got VocalCat, an AI interviewer for SOMOS.tech, some fediverse experiments, and a Mastodon fork where I play with identity and static blog integrations.

Amplify Your Organization’s Voice: Embrace Radical Transparency and Authentic Connections Dear Leaders of Nonprofits and Public Organizations, In our digital age, social media platforms have become indispensable tools for communication, outreach, and community engagement. However, the landscape of these platforms is evolving, it’s crucial for organizations like yours to rethink where and how you engage online. The Challenge with Centralized Platforms Centralized social media platforms, such as X (formerly Twitter), operate under profit-driven models that can influence the dissemination of information.

Find the index and earlier parts of this series here. We’re almost there! Thanks for sticking with me on this journey. In this final part, we’ll integrate replies and comments into your static website. Motivation Integrating replies is quite similar to how we handled subscriptions. Since our posts now exist in the Fediverse, we want to treat them as first-class citizens. This means replies to our posts should appear on our site.

You can find the index and other parts of this series here. We are almost done! Thank you for coming all the way into this journey. In this part we will learn how to broadcast (aka federate) your site posts to your folowers. Overview The federation of your posts (aka. sending your posts to live infitely in the fediverse) is pretty straighforward: sequenceDiagram BroadcastTool-Storage: Retrieve followers (actor uris) BroadcastTool-Follower-instance: Get actor info (including inbox uri) BroadcastTool-Filesystem: Get note json (post) BroadcastTool-Follower-inbox: Send a create action (wrapper of note) In a few words, you will iterate your list of followers, get their inbox url, and send a request to such url to create an fediverse object (note, article, etc.

You can find the index and other parts of this series here. Let’s dig in into the most controversial part of my guide: the inbox. As far as I know, there is no way to make this inbox static. However, thanks to the fact that ActivityPub does not require the inbox to share the same domain as the other elements, we can host it anywhere. I believe it could be controversial for two reasons.

We will take a break from discussing ActivityPub concepts, and I’ll explain how I implemented a very simple “Subscribe” feature for this blog using Mastodon/Fediverse accounts. You don’t need to have your site/blog ActivityPub enabled for this; you will only need a Fediverse account and basic html/css knowledge. You can also navigate the other parts of this series here. The Motivation The motivation behind this simple feature is quite strong:

In this blog post, we will explain how to generate the outbox and notes, ready to be shared in the Fediverse. You can also navigate the other parts of this series here. Overview In the previous blog post, we created the actor endpoint as a static file. As explained there, this file has a pointer to the outbox, which is a collection of notes. A note in the ActivityPub protocol represents an activity, such as a toot, photo, comment, etc.

In this blog post, we will explain how to make your blog discoverable in the Fediverse as an account, and also address some of the annoying pitfalls I encountered. So let’s get started. You can also navigate the other parts of this series here. Overview To enable discovery, we need to implement the webfinger endpoint and the actor file. As shown in the diagram, Mastodon will first reach the webfinger, which points to the actor file.

In Part 2, we will delve into the design of my implementation. If you want to read about why you should bring your site to the Fediverse, check out Part 1. You can also navigate the other parts of this series here. So, you’ve decided to bring your blog to the social web, the Fediverse. That’s cool! This guide might be just what you need. And if you’ve got this or any other method working, shoot me a message on the social web, and I’ll gladly follow.