Now I know…
Federation is broken for custom domain (ex: https://aris.papatheodorou.net)
Federation work fine wit Write.as default URL (ex: https://write.as/aris)
Sorry for the delayed response here. When I search for your domain in Mastodon, the username that shows up is @aris@aris.papatheodorou.net. If you changed the username after following the account, you won’t see any new posts come in, as Write.as is sending out posts under your new fediverse username, which Mastodon and other fediverse software won’t connect to your old one (@blognotes@aris.papatheodorou.net)
Changing usernames is largely unsupported in the fediverse, unfortunately. It’s basically like creating an entirely new account, where everyone needs to re-follow your new username to get your posts. This is an ActivityPub thing, not specifically a Write.as thing (though I will document this somewhere, so it’s clear).
Can you try following your account again from Mastodon, ensuring your new username shows up, and seeing if that fixes things?
Hi,
In fact I reverted to default Write.as ActivityPub ID/Adresse (@aris@aris.papatheodorou.net) for testing purpose, because my custom one (@blognotes@aris.papatheodorou.net) was not working at all.
In clear : I’m not following anymore my blog with @blognotes@aris.papatheodorou.net but with @aris@aris.papatheodorou.net
Doing this, my last post was correctly found by Mastodon, with the preview image… I am waiting now for next post to see if it federate…
I also follow my blog from @aris@write.as. This grabbed the two preview posts… but not the new one.
I will try in next days from an other Mastdon instance.
Really this is a ghost in the machine 
I’m not getting any federation from my blog to Mastodon… I have to manually search for all new posts in order to see them in Mastodon.
I followed my blog right from the get go. I also use a custom domain.
I also don’t see new followers in my Mastodon for my blog - the only one showing is myself, the next new follower is not showing.
Some of this may be Mastodon rather than Write Freely…?
Do you mind sharing your handle here or privately? I can take a quick look to see if something looks off.
Mastodon doesn’t pull in the full information about followers – this is something we’d have to display in WF.
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Is the point of Federation privacy or community? Being not technical, I’m not getting why I should or shouldn’t move forward with it. Thank you.
Thanks for sending along the info. I didn’t find any issues with your instance, and indeed I followed the blog from my instance and received your most recent post automatically. Have you tried unfollowing / re-following your blog more recently?
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The point of it is mostly community. It’ll make the most sense for anyone who uses services like Mastodon, but you can also see how it works in this video.
Thanks for getting back and testing from your end.
I have this evening unfollowed and I will re-follow later. Just putting a post together that I will then see if it federates automatically.
Thanks Matt. I finally figured it out. Is the community mostly within Write.as, or is it across other social platforms. That was my main confusion. Thank you, again.
I can confirm that all is as it should be.
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Here is a Federation issue from @gendor regarding turning off Federation on Write.as:
I tried to disable federation on my blog while I was busy importing a bunch of posts and didn’t want to spam everybody’s timeline. I unchecked "Federation
@gendor@gerritniezen.com"and clicked “Save changes”, but it kept on federating, and when I refreshed the customize page the checkbox was checked again.
When I try to subscribe to my blog, it shows that I have sent a follow request, but I don’t know how to approve the follow request. My blog federation is @oldyogre@write.as, but I don’t know how to sign in anywhere as that identity and approve follow requests. I didn’t think I would have to, as the blog is public. Any guidance?
I’m not too happy with the text that is being shown on Mastodon as a preview. I do not understand what the rules are for text to be displayed on Mastodon. Does it always show the first paragraph? Why doesn’t it seem to work with links. Why can the text be over 500 characters, when it is a continuous paragraph? All in all it seems unpredictable unfortunately.
I understand, that Mastodon is responsible for how it shows these write.as articles on the fediverse while using Mastodon. Still: is there a way to implement something in cooperation with Mastodon that could trigger the preview to end? Like an html code? Or some more information on when the preview is cut off and when it isn’t.
Thank you 
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Federation doesn’t work for a while with my blog. I’m not sure but I believe it stopped working when I switched the domain from tobenschmidt — Write.as to https://tobenschmidt.writeas.com/. Disabling federation and enabling it again didn’t help. Any hint what I can do to make this work again?
Ok, federation with my blog seems to be working again. I did a test with a very short blog post without images and it was posted to the fediverse as expected. I don’t know if this has been fixed or it worked because of the very short blog post. I’ll check this with the next regular blog post.
Attempts to follow being processed as follow requests rather than just following.
With no way to approve a follow request in the writefreely interface.
I thought it might be Pleroma specific, so I tested it on Mastodon, with the same result. I dug through the settings, the config.ini, the forum, and even the github code. Cant figure it out.
Same issue at @atyh here. I can see the profile in Mastodon but not the posts when I follow my Writefreely account. Not sure yet how to troubleshoot, but will try to look in logs.