7.8.0 – Happy Holidays
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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!
-
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!
@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!
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@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!
@iftas @activitypub.blog it is ☺️
Thank YOU for providing and maintaining the list!
-
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!
@activitypub.blog @about.iftas.org What you don't say: That the plugin is not updated in ClassicPress installations if already installed, and can't be installed on installations without a former version.
On my main blog with ClassicPress 2.6.0, although automatic updates are active, the version of the plugin is still 5.3.2 – and it only works here and there. Mostly the articles don't reach the Fediverse.
On another blog, also with ClassicPress 2.6.0, I tried to install it yesterday and the plugin site said: no.
It seems to me that ClassicPress is not wanted in the Fediverse.
-
@activitypub.blog @about.iftas.org What you don't say: That the plugin is not updated in ClassicPress installations if already installed, and can't be installed on installations without a former version.
On my main blog with ClassicPress 2.6.0, although automatic updates are active, the version of the plugin is still 5.3.2 – and it only works here and there. Mostly the articles don't reach the Fediverse.
On another blog, also with ClassicPress 2.6.0, I tried to install it yesterday and the plugin site said: no.
It seems to me that ClassicPress is not wanted in the Fediverse.
@atarifrosch @activitypub.blog @about.iftas.org There’s no intention to exclude ClassicPress. Our resources are limited, so we don’t actively test with it, but I’m happy to fix issues when possible... or, even better, merge PRs that resolve them.
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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non abbiamo voluto creare citiverse.it per rinchiudere i "nostri" utenti sequestrandoli nel nostro forum, ma per offrire un servizio a tutti gli utenti italiani, sia quelli del nostro forum, sia quelli delle nostre istanze, sia quelli di tutte le istanze!
Questa è la cosa più importante di tutte ed è il motivo per cui vi rispetto!
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@macfranc @fediverso @informapirata @lealternative quindi si aggiunge a feddit.it oppure lo sostituisce?
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@macfranc @fediverso @informapirata @lealternative Continuate così che state facendo grandi cose! 👍
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Ecco il nuovo logo di Citiverse.it: il forum dei luoghi e città integrato con il Fediverso
Siamo quasi giunti alla fine del 2025 che per noi è stato un anno molto importante.
Mentre si consolidano le nostre tre istanze federate poliverso.org, feddit.it e poliversity.it possiamo finalmente spingere per lo sviluppo della quarta istanza creata: citiverse.it
Citiverse.it è un progetto che stiamo portando avanti con pochissime risorse, ossia qualche donazione e, soprattutto, l'autofinanziamento da parte dei due promotori, ossia il progetto poliverso.org (by @informapirata ) e l'ecosistema che si è sviluppato intorno al sito @lealternative D'altra parte si tratta di un progetto molto ambizioso perché mira a creare uno spazio per gli utenti italiani che vogliono un'alternativa ai gruppi facebook locali.
Facebook infatti deve il proprio successo a diversi fattori, primo tra tutti l'effetto rete che rende più interessante un luogo in cui sono presenti "miliardi" di persone, ma il motivo per cui tanti utenti rimangono è l'ecosistema che si è creato che prevede la creazione e la fruizione di:
1) eventi
2) annunci di vendita
3) gruppi FacebookPer i primi due aspetti abbiamo già delle alternative nel #Fediverso.
L'aspetto degli eventi è coperto da Mobilizon, una piattaforma sviluppata da Framasoft proprio per creare un'alternativa agli eventi Facebook e che in Italia è presente con il portale mobilizon.it; ma in Italia abbiamo anche le bacheche federate delle diverse istanze locali Gancio, che con un'interfaccia minimale possono consentire a chiunque di inserire un evento datato e geolocalizzato; infine Friendica consente ai suoi utenti di creare eventi che hanno lo stesso aspetto degli eventi Facebook e inoltre l'utente #Friendica è anche in grado di "vedere" nel proprio calendario gli eventi creati da #Mobilizon e #Gancio! Aggiungiamo che il plugin #EventBridge for #Wordpress consente già ora di federare i blog Wordpress che hanno attivato il plugin #Activitypub for Wordpress e uno dei plugin dedicati alla gestione dei calendari.
Per quanto riguarda invece gli annunci di vendita, il nuovo progetto Fedimercatino.it ha portato per la prima volta in Italia un server #Flohmarkt, un ambiente dedicato soprattutto al riuso in cui tutti gli utenti iscritti possono inserire il proprio annuncio di vendita (ma con un limite di prezzo impostato a 200 euro).
Per sostituire i gruppi Facebook abbiamo già messo a disposizione sia i gruppi Friendica, sia una intera piattaforma basata su Lemmy, feddit.it, appunto, ma questa soluzione non consentiva una gestione ottimale dei gruppi locali.
Con il server citiverse.it abbiamo finalmente dato una risposta valida a questa esigenza!Citiverse.it è basato su #NodeBB, una piattaforma open source nata per i forum e che proprio nel suo design consente di cerare diverse categorie ramificate. Lo sviluppatore di NodeBB ha intrapreso un percorso di ricerca delle tecnologie possibili per cercare di trovare una soluzione che consentisse di mettere in connessione tutti i forum basati sulla sua piattaforma, in modo che un utente di un forum NodeBB potesse riuscire a leggere e commentare i contenuti di un altro forum NodeBB mantenendo il proprio account. Questa soluzione è stata trovata proprio grazie al protocollo Activitypub e oggi possiamo riconoscere che l'implementazione di Activitypub in NodeBB è il caso di successo più interessante di tutto il Fediverso, forse ancora più interessante del capolavoro che, grazie allo sforzo di Matthias Pfefferle, ha reso Wordpress la soluzione oggi più facile di creare un'istanza federata.
NodeBB ci ha sorpreso molto positivamente: le funzionalità complete di una piattaforma forum professionale si sono sposate benissimo con l'implementazione di Activitypub e le possibilità di federare utenti e gruppi (le "categorie" vengono tradotte proprio in gruppi, come le comunità Lemmy o i gruppi Friendica) sono incredibilmente performanti.
Oggi abbiamo quindi deciso di imprimere una forte accelerazione che viene simboleggiata dalla modifica del logo provvisorio che avevamo creato per citiverse.it e che oggi, pur mantenendo i vecchi colori, vuole trasmettere l'idea della territorialità, della localizzazione del Fediverso e della componente più importante oggi gestita, ossia quella dei luoghi e delle città.
Oggi l'utilizzo di citiverse.it consente una convergenza tra tipologie diverse di utenti, pur mantenendo alcune caratteristiche distinte:
1) chi si iscrive al forum, infatti può disporre di poteri di moderazione (che vanno richiesti agli amministratori) e può "visualizzare" la struttura alberata tipica del Forum; ma può anche interagire con altri utenti del Fediverso e può "iscriversi" ad altri gruppi Activitypub come i gruppi Friendica, le comunità Lemmy, i magazine Mbin o le riviste Flipboard;
2) gli utenti del Fediverso possono comunque utilizzare le categorie del forum: chi abita nel Fediverso dei gruppi (Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed, etc) può "iscriversi" alle categorie di Citiverse e creare o partecipare alle discussioni; chi abita nel Fediverso dei social (Mastodon, Friendica, Misskey, Pixelfed, etc) può invece "seguire" quelli che verranno mostrati come account di tipo "gruppo" e può crear un proprio thread semplicemente menzionando l'account corrispondente alla categoria, oltre naturalmente a seguire i singoli utenti del Forum!Citiverse.it non è solo luoghi e città, ma presenta anche altre categorie, eppure il focus principale è sulle comunità locali e le associazioni locali; ci sono, è vero, anche categorie su temi di interesse generale, ma chiediamo a tutti gli utenti del Fediverso di valorizzare soprattutto le categorie locali, perché è da questo che dipenderà il successo dell'iniziativa e la sua "portata" nel Fediverso.
Oggi siamo arrivati a creare una novantina di città, tra province e alcune località più rilevanti, ma dobbiamo aggiungerne ancora una quarantina per completare le province e se avete qualche richiesta particolare, potete farci una richiesta. Abbiate fiducia!
Per questo progetto abbiamo investito le nostre risorse e il nostro tempo, perché riteniamo importante creare alternative: non abbiamo voluto creare citiverse.it per rinchiudere i "nostri" utenti sequestrandoli nel nostro forum, ma per offrire un servizio a tutti gli utenti italiani, sia quelli del nostro forum, sia quelli delle nostre istanze, sia quelli di tutte le istanze!
Quando utilizzate le categorie di citiverse.it ricordatevi di questo nostro sforzo e, dopo avere naturalmente sostenuto le istanze che vi ospitano, ricordatevi anche che un modo molto gradito di farci avere un riscontro positivo è quello di aiutarci nella campagna di autofinanziamento!
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@atarifrosch @activitypub.blog @about.iftas.org There’s no intention to exclude ClassicPress. Our resources are limited, so we don’t actively test with it, but I’m happy to fix issues when possible... or, even better, merge PRs that resolve them.
-
@activitypub.blog @about.iftas.org What you don't say: That the plugin is not updated in ClassicPress installations if already installed, and can't be installed on installations without a former version.
On my main blog with ClassicPress 2.6.0, although automatic updates are active, the version of the plugin is still 5.3.2 – and it only works here and there. Mostly the articles don't reach the Fediverse.
On another blog, also with ClassicPress 2.6.0, I tried to install it yesterday and the plugin site said: no.
It seems to me that ClassicPress is not wanted in the Fediverse.
-
If it exposes sockets to the Internet, it should be contained. Not by Docker but by Podman. #rootless
@mapache
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@mapache@hachyderm.io It probably depends on the dependencies?
If the app relies on external services like PostgreSQL or Redis, Docker images with Helm charts or Docker Compose configs might make sense—they bundle the complexity nicely.
For standalone apps, system packages (deb/rpm) would be nice in theory, but I imagine maintaining packages for multiple distros is quite a bit of work. Maybe a practical middle ground could be: provide packages for the major families (RedHat + Debian) and offer a single-file executable as a fallback for everyone else?
Personally, I tend to avoid install scripts when possible—they feel less transparent to me, though I understand others might feel differently.
