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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Is WordPress with ActivityPub Plugin a good setup to host my own technical blog? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 1 year ago by usbpc to c/[email protected]

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I've long been thinking about writing some technical things I didn't find easily on the internet down somewhere.

I don't want to use a platform like medium as I'd like to have control over my data. I'm already selfhosting diffrent web services like a password manager (vaulwarden), audiobookshelf and more in docker behind a reverse proxy. So whatever software I decide on should have a docker image available.

It would also be rather nice if the software would play nicely with the fediverse, so from some quick searching it seems that WordPress with the ActivityPub plugin would work nicely.

It there some other software I've overlooked that I should also consider?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I thought about doing something like this, but came to the conclusion that ActivityPub doesn’t make too much sense for a traditional blog. A static site generator with RSS is cheaper, easier to host, more reliable, and a better experience for users.

If I want it on the fediverse, I can just post a link on my mastodon account/lemmy communities. If I’m extra lazy, I can automate that part.

The main issue with the AP protocol is that there’s no way to see old posts. If a new user wants to see your blog content, their server might not have recorded older articles. It’s simply not a good protocol choice for publishing that type of content (IMO)

Wordpress+AP would solve that problem, but only because wordpress remains accessible as a regular website. Unless you want to integrate e.g. a comments/like system using AP identities, I don’t think it’s worth the hassle of maintaining a stack like that.

Plus, if you are publishing content directly to the fediverse, you need to worry about how your article’s formatting will render in the various fediverse clients out there. You’ll also need to worry about actually federating with other servers, and potentially being blocked for arbitrary/technical reasons you need to debug.

…those are just my initial thoughts on this idea. I’m interested to hear opinions from others who disagree and/or are running their own AP blog. SSG + RSS still feels like the winning combo to me.