7.8.0 – Happy Holidays

[activitypub.blog@activitypub.blog]

As the year winds down, we’ve wrapped up a release that brings better moderation tools, a new way to display reactions, and a small surprise, just in time for the holidays.

Stronger Tools for Moderation

Moderation can be hard work, especially on the Fediverse, where conversations flow in from all directions. This release introduces new tools that help you stay in control with less manual effort.

You can now subscribe to shared blocklists and let the plugin keep them up to date automatically. Subscribed lists are synced on a weekly cadence, so changes made upstream are reflected on your site without you having to lift a finger.

On top of that, we’ve added a bulk domain blocklist importer. You can upload a CSV or plain text file, including Mastodon-style exports, and quickly add large numbers of domains at once. To make it even easier to get started, the importer includes a one-click option for the popular community-maintained IFTAS DNI list (@about.iftas.org).

Together, these features make moderation more scalable and less stressful, so you can spend more time engaging and less time firefighting.

Reactions, Your Way

Reactions are a big part of how conversations feel alive on the Fediverse, and now you have more control over how they appear on your site.

The Fediverse Reactions block gained a new Summary display style. Instead of showing a facepile of avatars, this option presents reactions as clean, inline counters for comments, likes, boosts, and replies. It’s a great fit for minimal layouts, feeds, or sites where avatars are disabled.

You can switch between the classic facepile and the new summary style directly in the block settings. And if avatars are turned off in discussion settings, the block automatically falls back to the summary view.

A Sneak Peek at the Reader (Experimental)

One more thing, for the curious among you, there’s now an early preview of the ActivityPub Reader, hidden behind a feature flag in the Advanced settings tab. If you don’t see it yet, open Screen Options at the top right of the ActivityPub settings page, check “Advanced Settings,” and save. That reveals the Advanced tab where you can enable the Reader.

When enabled, this adds a new “Social Web” submenu to your Dashboard menu item. An place where you can read posts and shares from accounts you follow, turning your WordPress admin into a lightweight Fediverse reader.

Because this is still very much a work in progress, the Reader is disabled by default and clearly marked as experimental. The UI, behavior, and feature set will change significantly in future releases as we explore what a great native Fediverse reading experience inside WordPress could look like.

If you enjoy testing new ideas, we’d love to hear your feedback, whether it’s bug reports, rough edges you’ve noticed, or ideas about what this Reader should become. Early input helps shape where this goes next, so feel free to share your thoughts in whatever form works best for you.

Changelog

Added

• Add blocklist subscriptions for automatic weekly synchronization of remote blocklists.
• Add compact display style to Reactions block that hides avatars.
• Add domain blocklist importer for bulk importing blocked domains.
• Add image optimization for imported attachments (resize to 1200px max, convert to WebP).
• Add local caching for remote actor avatars.
• Add relay mode to forward public activities to all followers.
• Add scheduled cleanup for remote posts, preserving posts with local user interactions.
• Add site health check to warn when DISABLE_WP_CRON may impact ActivityPub functionality.
• Add Social Web Reader for browsing ActivityPub content directly in WordPress admin.
• Delete remote posts on plugin uninstall.
• Mastodon importer now imports self-replies as comments, preserving thread structure.

Changed

• Cache expensive operations in Post transformer to improve performance.
• Improve performance and reliability of @-mention detection.
• Reduce federated content size by removing unnecessary HTML attributes.
• Skip downloading video and audio attachments, embedding remote URLs directly to avoid storage limits.
• Use stable term_id-based IDs for Term transformer to ensure federation consistency.
• Wrap blocked domains and keywords tables in collapsible details element.

Fixed

• Respect WordPress “show avatars” setting for remote actor avatars.
• Ensure NodeInfo accurately represents site administrators to the Fediverse.
• Fediverse Followers block now works correctly when the “Hide Social Graph” privacy option is enabled.
• Fix NodeInfo documents to comply with schema specification.
• Follow Me block button-only style now respects width settings from the inner Button block.
• Preserve whitespace inside preformatted elements when federating content.

Downloads

• WordPress.org: activitypub.7.8.0.zip
• GitHub: tag/7.8.0

Holiday Thanks

A special thank-you to everyone who joined us during the recent office hours — for the questions, the thoughtful feedback, and the great conversations about where ActivityPub for WordPress should go next. Talking directly with you helps shape these releases more than any roadmap ever could.

See you in 2026 — and happy holidays!

[iftas@mastodon.iftas.org]

@activitypub.blog Wow! That looks like a one-click IFTAS DNI list subscription, is that correct?

Thank you for these updates, and for considering the DNI list in your approach, greatly appreciated!

[pfefferle@mastodon.social]

@iftas @activitypub.blog it is ☺️

Thank YOU for providing and maintaining the list!