# Unable to follow blog \[SOLVED\] **URL:** \ **Category:** WriteFreely\ **Created:** [April 15, 2019, 12:56am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545 "2019-04-15T00:56:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![arkadione](https://discuss.write.as/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@arkadione](https://discuss.write.as/u/arkadione)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 12:56am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/1 "2019-04-15T00:56:17Z")
> Any other issues you’ve run into? 1. i can’t follow my blog. followers are locked. ![Screenshot-2019-4-15%20Scholar%20Social](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/c0a73ed265400768c77bccae7ed632d18bd1d795.png) i’m not sure if this is a new feature since 0.9 or something broke on my blog. 1. also it seems tags are not federating anymore. i can’t find my blogs posts with #bookReview tag. the last post that shows up when i search #bookReview is from March 19th. NOTE: I wish we could import our posts into a new blog. then i would probably just reinstall my blog and import posts again, and it’d probably work again but i guess I wouldn’t learn more computer skills that way though 😃 ---
**Author:** ![danielbowen](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/danielbowen/32/39_2.png) [@danielbowen](https://discuss.write.as/u/danielbowen)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 2:55pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/2 "2019-04-15T14:55:17Z")
It looks like there’s a trailing slash in your URLs, which could cause Mastodon to reject some requests. Maybe try removing it from the `host` value in your config file, then re-follow your account and see if that works. This should fix both issues 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![arkadione](https://discuss.write.as/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@arkadione](https://discuss.write.as/u/arkadione)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/3 "2019-04-16T02:41:49Z")
ok great. so i changed /var/www/writefreely/config.ini from [https://blog.arkadi.one/](https://blog.arkadi.one/) to [https://blog.arkadi.one](https://blog.arkadi.one) now it shows me following the blog, but still doesn’t show up in my Home timeline. hmm, strange. searching for tags on the test post i made DOES work though. so maybe it is working. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![danielbowen](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/danielbowen/32/39_2.png) [@danielbowen](https://discuss.write.as/u/danielbowen)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/4 "2019-04-16T14:26:57Z")
Hmm, did you re-follow the blog _before_ making the test post? Because otherwise the post won’t show up in your feed. ---
**Author:** ![arkadione](https://discuss.write.as/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@arkadione](https://discuss.write.as/u/arkadione)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 5:08am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/5 "2019-04-17T05:08:47Z")
-unfollowed, refollowed blog -posted again NOW it works. strange. thank you [SOLVED] ---
**Author:** ![danielbowen](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/danielbowen/32/39_2.png) [@danielbowen](https://discuss.write.as/u/danielbowen)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 3:56pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/6 "2019-04-17T15:56:15Z")
Great! Yeah, this is just how ActivityPub works – a user needs to follow a blog first, so our systems know where to send posts out to. Glad it’s working now! ---
**Author:** ![mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/mathieunicolas/32/596_2.png) [@mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/u/mathieunicolas)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2020, 1:00pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/7 "2020-05-27T13:00:34Z")
Hello there ! I up this post because I have a question related to this last answer you posted : when I follow a blog, or even when I watch a new blog in mastodon, I see the account has 2 toots for example, but the toots doesn’t appear. So, the history of the account show less toots than it actually has, and that means it’s impossible to reply or react to posts that have been posted before I followed the blog, even if I discovered them in the reader section of writefreely. Is it a normal behaviour ? ---
**Author:** ![cjeller1592](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/cjeller1592/32/128_2.png) [@cjeller1592](https://discuss.write.as/u/cjeller1592)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2020, 9:57pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/8 "2020-05-27T21:57:29Z")
Hi @mathieunicolas! You’re right, that’s normal behaviour — a quirk of how ActivityPub works as @danielbowen mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/mathieunicolas/32/596_2.png) [@mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/u/mathieunicolas)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2020, 4:27pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/9 "2020-06-01T16:27:27Z")
Hi, thanks for you answer @cjeller1592 ! After few research, It looks like ActivityPub allows people who don’t follow an actor to be able to see the history of the publications, because it’s implemented this way in peertube for example : if I search for a peertube channel, I can see all its videos even if I’m not following him. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/matt/32/2760_2.png) [@matt](https://discuss.write.as/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/10 "2020-06-01T16:48:20Z")
Yep, in your particular case, this is a actually quirk of _Mastodon_, not ActivityPub. Mastodon doesn’t pull in old posts once you follow an actor, as Peertube might do ([see issue #34](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/34)), but it does display the _count_ of total posts, which happens separately from the posts themselves. To find those old posts you mention, the workaround is simple: search for the full URL of the post in Mastodon. That will retrieve it and let you interact with it. ---
**Author:** ![mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/mathieunicolas/32/596_2.png) [@mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/u/mathieunicolas)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2020, 4:51pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/11 "2020-06-01T16:51:44Z")
Thanks for you answer @matt, this is where I don’t understand things anymore : if a search for a peertube channel _in mastodon_ I can see the previous publications, even when I’m not a follower, and even if I don’t subscribe. Do you find any logic in this situation ? I don’t, but I don’t know how AP can be implemented so maybe I miss something ! ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/matt/32/2760_2.png) [@matt](https://discuss.write.as/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2020, 5:12pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/12 "2020-06-01T17:12:46Z")
In ActivityPub, when actor **Alice** follows actor **Bob** , it tells Bob to always send new messages to Alice from that point forward. That’s why previous messages don’t show up for Alice before she follows Bob – he doesn’t know that Alice wants to receive his messages. (It’s like email.) However, totally separate from the ActivityPub protocol, when Alice _searches_ for a message from Bob, she can still find it by its URL. But it doesn’t mean Bob will start delivering new messages to her. Mastodon only retrieves that single post. Does that make sense? ---
**Author:** ![mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/mathieunicolas/32/596_2.png) [@mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/u/mathieunicolas)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 12:31am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/13 "2020-06-02T00:31:35Z")
Hey, thanks for your reply ! That makes perfect sense, and what I don’t understand is why there’s 2 different behaviours : why if I display Bob’s Writefreely account I see the count of toots without the toots, and if I display Bob’s peertube account I see count of toots, and the toots. Here, 2 screenshots from my mastodon client, @actu@blog.alloe.fr is a write.as blog and @astronogeek@alttube.fr is a peertube channel. ![Screenshot 2020-06-02 at 02.29.38](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/6de535f50f648229acbe1d174d5d22ce9046fb68.png) ![Screenshot 2020-06-02 at 02.29.22](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/dede39f8737596f0a37dfce6a360bbc2eaf4fd0a.png) ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/matt/32/2760_2.png) [@matt](https://discuss.write.as/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 3:43pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/14 "2020-06-02T15:43:01Z")
The Peertube channel is likely showing up in its full form because someone else on your Mastodon instance is following the account. That’s another aspect to this that I left out: if another actor on Alice’s Mastodon instance, **Charlie** , follows Bob, Alice can also see Bob’s posts on the Local Timeline – they just won’t show up in Alice’s feed. I agree, it’s a terrible user experience, and it’s the biggest thing I want to see the Mastodon developers fix 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/mathieunicolas/32/596_2.png) [@mathieunicolas](https://discuss.write.as/u/mathieunicolas)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2020, 12:19am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/unable-to-follow-blog-solved/545/15 "2020-06-03T00:19:53Z")
Oh, okay, fair enough ! Thanks for your explanation and your patience, it’s indeed a strange behaviour ! Let’s hope it can be improved in the future 🙂