My domain is back! More testing of the Fediverse can be done. 😁

#SylkewebBlog #Sylkeweb #Fediverse #TestingTheFediverse #ActivityPub

http://sylkeweb.com/2023/10/14/sylkeweb-com-is-back/

My domain is back! More testing of the Fediverse can be done. 😁

#SylkewebBlog #Sylkeweb #Fediverse #TestingTheFediverse #ActivityPub

http://sylkeweb.com/2023/10/14/sylkeweb-com-is-back/

My husband managed the domain handling and I decided to pay up for being able to blog under the old name using WordPress. After so many years of owning a blog with them it seems only fair, especially considering that I don’t get dissected here as a commodity.

It’s been years since I had to find my way through the jungle of the WordPress setting options and certain areas have changed beyond recognition, especially the editor where I’m writing. But I think it’s a good change.

There is a lot of stuff in this blog that doesn’t work right now and I still don’t have a lot of time to deal with that but at least I can use it to post new shiny content. 🤪

My main concern is comments. In the past I had so much spam that I closed off comments wherever possible and only allowed them in through a special contact form. Now we have the connection with ActityPub to the Fediverse and I’m not sure how commenting from there works when I don’t allow comments on a post. I switched them off for this one to test things out.

After yesterday’s post I followed the blog from most of my various Fediverse accounts (see the social links menu at the right) and I was able to send comments from Mastodon and Friendica. Comments from Hubzilla and Firefish didn’t arrive here but were visible to my other accounts within the Fediverse. It’s all a bit confusing and I’m going to update my big Fediverse connectivity table over on my Mastodon testing account soon and then post it here.

https://sylkeweb.com/2023/10/14/sylkeweb-com-is-back/

#ActivityPub #Fediverse #Sylkeweb #SylkewebBlog #TestingTheFediverse

Today I found a 50 step list of how to connect a WordPress blog to the Fediverse and thought, I have to try this. Especially as I can cut out many of the steps, since this site already existed.

I started dabbling with websites in 1996. In the early 2000s I had a self hosted WordPress blog (www.sylkeweb.com) which I used regularly for about 10 years. At some point things became too cumbersome and there was new shiny Facebook (the great destroyer of everything good about the World Wide Web, well after ads). For a while I still used to write on my blog and publish a link on Facebook until I just gave up and posted straight to Facebook.

Then there was a problem with our server. That’s when I decided to set up this blog on the WordPress site. I imported my posts but lost all of the photos going with them. In the meantime I had become a mother and no time to fix everything. So this blog just sat there. RSS (such a great idea!) had gone out of fashion (was it ever in fashion with anyone but nerds?) and it just seemed too iffy to get blog posts out into the world. Twitter and YouTube appeared, so did Instagram and I ended up using all of those. Enshittification of the services got worse and worse. I never made it over to TikTok, Video is not my medium (I use YouTube videos like Podcasts, mostly to listen 😅).

I still ran other websites but using Blogger as they were easy to set up and didn’t cost a thing even when using your own domain name. However, those weren’t really mine.

I had heard about new services with better data security and no exploitation of user data, Diaspora was mentioned as a new Social Media Service. I never made it there, just no time. Finally, in 2022 the changes at Twitter made me look into the newfangled Mastodon, touted as a new Twitter just without Enshittification. I regret I didn’t do that earlier! While falling on my feet at Mastodon I learnt about the Fediverse, the loose network of various new (some not that new) social media services with better data protection and a much more democratic approach to running things. Yes, it’s not perfect yet but none of the other services were what they are these days when they started out.

I found PixelFed (which is similar to Instagram) and saw that it integrates through the same protocol with Mastodon. I discovered Friendica (quite similar to Facebook), Calckey now FireFish (similar to Twitter), Hubzilla (which to me seems like the grandparent of non-siloed social media). I still haven’t tried Diaspora. Then I heard about WordPress wanting to join the Fediverse party too. At first it was only for paid sites, so I couldn’t try. Today I saw that post and here we are.

The next step will be to reattach the website domain to this blog. We still own it. ☺️

https://sylke.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/resurrection/

#Fediverse #Sylkeweb #SylkewebBlog #WordPress

My very old blog might get a new lease of life!
#Sylkeweb #SylkewebBlog #WordPress

https://sylke.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/resurrection/