So my blog publishes (I assume) to: @justin@justinferriman.com
I see how I can create a Mastadon account and follow my blog, but can I “claim” this account on Mastadon so that @justin@justinferriman.com is my account that auto-posts blog content and anything I manually post?
In other words, I don’t want two accounts.
So the way federation works is kind of odd, compared to what you might be used to. Basically, your blog itself is an “account” you can follow from the fediverse. In terms of using it in the fediverse, it’s the exact equivalent of a Mastodon account, i.e. people can follow it, receive posts, and favorite them. So just by having a Write.as / WriteFreely blog, you’ll have the exact thing you’re going for: anyone can search for @justin@justinferriman.com from Mastodon and directly receive new posts from your blog – no additional Mastodon account needed.
Here’s what that looks like for your blog:
Of course, what’s missing for now is the ability to see when people reply to your posts in the fediverse. We’ll support that in the future, but for now you might use a Mastodon account for this, since it supports more interaction than we do right now.
Ah okay, thank you Matt.
So, I can’t use this account to make “other” kinds of posts besides the automated blog posts? Just curious because right now, it looks a little plain. I’d like to add a photo, description, etc. – interact on it or make non-blog post related messages as well.
Right, only your blog posts will show up in the fediverse. Note that it will show your blog title and description on your profile – and when we support logos / avatars, they’ll show up in the fediverse too.
As for posts, we do take advantage of some things ActivityPub gives us. For example, post photos will show up in-line in the fediverse. And if you make a post without a double-linebreak (i.e. a new paragraph), it’ll actually come through as a Note, which displays the entire post instead of just a link.
Otherwise, there aren’t any plans to support explicit non-blog posts in the fediverse. (Though that could change if enough people are interested in it!) At the moment, I just think it makes sense to focus on our strengths – long-form writing – and leave more dynamic interactions to platforms already built for it, like Mastodon.
Okay, thanks Matt.
