Write.as Development @writeas_dev@abunchtell.com

@Blort Absolutely, that mentality really holds a lot of projects back and keeps people away. Getting more people on board with FOSS, decentralization, etc. means being accessible to everyone, regardless of skill level. This is all stuff I'm very passionate about :)

@Satsuma @jalcine @write_as Indeed, especially just for understanding different capabilities of different platforms. But maybe with us introducing "no replies" some kind of standard for handling it will evolve.

Good morning. Goals for today:

- Finish UI for enabling federation
- Experiment with rejecting replies
- Build onboarding flow for new users who want federation

@tomskee The feature isn't completely finished yet, but right now Write.as blog posts can be federated, that is, followed from federated platforms like Mastodon. For example, here's mine: @matt@write.as -- you can follow it here, get my posts, and favorite / boost them on your Masto account.

So the stats you're seeing on Write.as are how many blog followers you have in the "fediverse" / on Mastodon and similar platforms.

Something I'm looking forward to: non-technical users seeing this new setting on their blog and asking me what it means. I have no doubt it'll be confusing to the uninitiated, so it'll be nice to hear everyone's questions, and figure out how to explain federation in a way that makes sense to them.

Based on that, I can tweak the UI so more people understand what's going on right away. Enough of that, and more people will be able to join the fediverse without the whole learning curve.

Actually it'll be something like this in the "Publicity" section for everyone, with a textbox that appears when "Custom domain" is selected.

Okay, custom domains are discoverable and have all endpoints in place. Now just need to let everyone choose their handle. This will go in a new "Federation" section on the blog settings page -- a page that's starting to get a little long I think, so I'll have to redesign it a bit in the near future.

@jalcine Thanks! Actually for this I'm trying to figure out how to reject ActivityPub replies, or notify platforms like Mastodon that a reply wasn't received by a user, as we don't support comments / mentions on @write_as right now (by design)

One thing I want to do is make sure replies from the #fediverse are gracefully handled / rejected, since they don't go anywhere when replying to blog posts right now. Not sure how to do that, but I'll try a few things before the full roll-out.

Now I'm working on making blogs on custom domains discoverable in the fediverse , then adding a setting for all users to enable #federation.

Turns out boosting does work, just not on #writingexchange for certain accounts of mine I was testing with and broke on that instance (like @matt@write.as).

Only major bug I've found was with following multiple Write.as blogs -- the second or greater blog you followed didn't save in our database correctly.

That's fixed now, and I've reconstructed the missed follows via the server logs, so you should still be subscribed. Still, please double-check the blogs you're following, and if you see an hourglass icon where the follow button normally is, do the ol' unfollow/follow-again to get things right.

Now you can see how many #ActivityPub followers your blog has on your Stats page (though we don't divulge who individuals are -- again, goal is #privacy for readers, too)

@geekgonecrazy 👍 Yep, unfortunately that's how it works. But I'm making a new post tomorrow, so everyone should see the post then.

Noticing some failed follow attempts from... Hubzilla? I believe. Going to see what I can do about supporting these other platforms next.

An account like @blog@write.as should work though...

Just kidding, I just had the IDs still pointed to the dev server, so @matt@write.as didn't work on certain instances (unfortunately including mastodon.social). Going to try deleting the account on dev and maybe that'll cause it to refresh the account?

Changes deployed, all looks good except follows are not being received. Looking into this now...

Soo not really sure if I need to do anything extra to get Announces (boosts) to work at this point. They do show up on my profile here when I boost, but don't appear to show up on my followers' timelines.

Otherwise everything seems solid. One last test and then I'll deploy the changes.

The easiest way to slowly roll this out will be to only have it available to users with Public blogs (a relatively small group of people). After a couple days of that, anyone will be able to enable federation.