First project phase recap
Note: This article is targeting a rather technical audience.
Our first project phase was called Architecture decisions & plugin skeleton: The most major decision is whether the plugin should work stand-alone, or as a child plugin of the existing ActivityPub-Plugin followed by a technical design draft: most API endpoints and the structure of the code should be sketched.
It consisted of two parts:
1. Research and decision whether to start of with a “child” or standalone plugin. Proposing solutions how to manage ActivityPub actors and ActivityPub transformation of custom post types. Proposing needed extensions of the upstream ActivityPubplugin.
As explained in previous posts, we decided that it would be best to work as closely as possible with the upstream ActivityPub plugin. We wrote two design proposals on how to implement flexible and dynamic actor and transformer management within the upstream plugin.
Actor management has proven to be extremely complex. With version 1.0 of the ActivityPub plugin, a blog-wide actor became available and we found out through direct exchange with the maintainer that there is already an application actor that would covers use cases like server-to-server following. Such fine-grained settings for ActivityPub profiles seem to be a feature that is mostly relevant for professional users in an advanced interface. That even the current complexity can be overwhelming for the average became clear to us. In addition, it seems reasonable to us not to develop such features before we know whether and how exactly they are needed. Furthermore, we believe it makes sense to implement other related features, such as moving accounts, first.
Transformer management: as a way to handle custom WordPress to ActivitPub transformers, e.g. that an custom post type that handles events does not end up as a Note, we proposed an addon-like structure where third party plugins could register their transformer(s) and in the ActivitPub settings the user would have a final control over which one is used. This approach would also mean a more complex admin UI, which was likely the main reason Matthias Pfefferle decided to go for a simpler, but maybe more error-prone solution: the upstream plugin provides a hook (filter) where other plugins could directly replace the transformer. In the future, a collision of multiple plugins trying to override a transformer might become more likely, but until this time comes, the risk is minimal. So far this approach seems like a good pragmatic solution for us.
2. Plugin skeleton for the ActivityPub event extensions and extending/creating the needed ActivityPub classes and ActivityStream representations for the events.
A pull request implementing more flexible ActivityPub object handling and a skeleton for and Event object which provides common extensions currently used mainly by Mobilizon has been merged upstream and is already released in the latest versions.
We created a repository for our ActivityPub event extensions plugin. This work is still pre-alpha, it is just kind of a public playground at the moment. Please don’t try to use it yourself until we tag first alpha or beta releases. We started adding transformers for popular event plugins. After many unsuccessful attempts to find out why our Transformers were no longer compatible with Mobilizon, we decided that a test site for developers was necessary, which we are currently trying to implement as a side project.
In addition, we have recognized the need to display various help messages and hints in the admin area in order to be able to better handle typical stumbling issues on the WordPress ActivityPub setup, which have also happened to us (more than once).
When writing the initial version of our project plan as signed and agreed with by NlNet we didn’t know yet about the dynamics of the community, specifically about how the cooperation between the maintainers of the #WordPress #ActivityPub plugin and #Mobilizon would be like. The level of collaboration with other #Fediverse developers would determine whether our project goals could only be achieved through a series of workarounds, or whether we could work together to strengthen interoperability and compatibility in the Fediverse.Mobilizon was the first Fediverse application with true event federation. #Gancio has very limited ActivityPub capabilities, partly by design, but is working on an enhanced federation, and other services like #Friendica have a very different approach to events: their implementation focuses on sending invitations rather than publishing events. #Pleroma might get initial event support soon and it’s fork #Rebase already implemented it. As is usual with any software, you will find a lot of small bugs if you have not done any tests beforehand. In the case of Mobilizon, this was not possible since there were no alternative platforms to do the tests with in the past, especially if it comes to the instance-to-instance federation, so the only option was to test the Federation with other Mobilizon servers. We seem to be the first and we are fascinated and incredibly grateful for the willingness and prioritization that such issues have among the other developers (thanks to tcit and les). The issues may seem small, but they have a big impact: 304, 33, 321, 1509, 1507, 1392, 1385, 1388, 1387, 1378, 1376.
The other deciding factor for us was that we didn’t know how close the interaction with the upstream WordPress ActivityPub project would be. The exchange of ideas and the desire for a joint solution is strong. We would like to thank @pfefferle again for the regular exchange, his ideas and inspiration, without his commitment to the community our project would be less sustainable.
Tasks done (almost)
- We published a repository that aims to make it easy for other developers, including ourselves to start developing and debugging WordPress along with Mobilizon.
- We have created a pull request to add management of various ActivityPub transformers to the admin interface. The current implementation basically works, but we have a lot to polish and improve on our roadmap.
- Using that patched ActivityPub plugin we explored writing transformers for two popular event plugins, this gave us a lot insight on what is important. These transformers already have fundamental compatibility with Moblizon.
- Updating our About us page showing some information who we are.
Upcoming tasks
- Implement FEP-2677: Identifying the Application Actor
- Implement the followers list of the application actor in the admin UI along with the ability to reject, approve, and remove followers. We are very inspired by how #PeerTube has solved this in the admin UI. This of course includes a an option as:manuallyApprovesFollowers that can be set for an ActivityPub actor within WordPress.
- Write an initial draft of the user documentation informing about custom ActivityPub transformers and instance-to-instance federation with Mobilizon. The target audience will be non-tech people. Parts of this will also be used as a non-tech description of our project.
- Improve the admin UI and propose a solution to handle the settings for each transformer, if there are any.
- Write more transformers for other popular event plugins to discover common pitfalls.
If you have any questions, ideas, or would like to help us, for example by testing our progress in case your are running a WordPress site with events yourself, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We don’t care if you have technical experience or what your background is: any kind of involvement is valuable to us.
event-federation.eu/2023/12/20…
#ActivityPub #Fediverse #Friendica #Gancio #Mobilizon #PeerTube #Pleroma #WordPress
Mobilizon-compatible events (!3955) · Merge requests · Pleroma / pleroma · GitLab
This MR introduces ability to create and interact with Mobilizon-compatible events. Users can join them and they receive a notification 2 hours before they take place.GitLab
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Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua reshared this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •È stata la mia seconda macchina da cucire, dopo aver imparato con la vintagedi mia madre, e l'ho usata per fare numerosi vestiti, sia moderni che diispirazione ottocentesca.
L'ho cambiata non perché avessi raggiunto i limiti delle sue capacità, ma perché qualche anno fa mi sono lasciata tentare da una macchina più grossa, in grado di gestire strati multipli di stoffa pesante da zaini.
La vendo perché ho di nuovo accesso comodo alla vintage di mia madre, e non mi servono veramente tre macchine da cucire elettriche in casa (soprattutto *cough* se ce ne sono anche di non elettriche *cough*).
rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua reshared this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Mi sento di consigliare questa macchina a chi sta imparando a cucire: è semplice e ben funzionante, ma è anche una macchina che continuerà ad andare bene anche diventando esperti, non ha particolari limiti se non eventuali gusti specifici.
È interamente meccanica, garanzia di buon funzionamento nel tempo, e la selezione di punti è praticamente la stessa della mia macchina nuova, che non mi ha mai fatto sentire carenze particolari.
Usa le bobine di plastica semiuniversali, facili da trovare in vendita un tanto al chilo, ed è anche compatibile con i piedini aggiuntivi di terze parti (snap-on e low shank).
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Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •reshared this
rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua, Sabrina Web 📎 e Oblomov reshared this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
Unknown parent • • •@Katy B. :debian:📚 🥛 ecco, io il manichino da sarta non ce l'ho ancora, ma da qualche parte ho una serie di link a guide su come farselo su misura (anche con la forma data da un corsetto, anziché la forma standard di quelli in vendita O:-) )
però temo che vendere una macchina da cucire da tavolo non sia sufficiente per liberare spazio per un manichino 😁
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •@Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso noto però ora che su feddit.it/post/6176862 si vede solo una delle foto che ci sono nel post originale (social.gl-como.it/display/3e3c…): è normale o è un glitch della federazione?
Elena ``of Valhalla''
2024-03-07 16:51:13
Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • •@Elena ``of Valhalla'' hai ragione. Purtroppo lemmy non permette di visualizzare più di una immagine nel post di apertura.
Grazie mille per la segnalazione. Devo modificare la descrizione del canale... 😬
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ • • •@Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso ah, uops.
Grazie per l'aggiornamento delle istruzioni!
Prova di inserimento di due immagini in un commento, per vedere se invece lì appaiono 😀
(stavo per chiedere, ma così ho già la risposta 😀 )
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Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂ likes this.
Poliverso - notizie dal Fediverso ⁂
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • •Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
LaVi
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Ero un po' impensierita, perché a marzo inoltrato non mi si era ancora palesata "la cosa da imparare a fare quest'anno"¹, ma ieri @valhalla e @mercatino credo mi abbiano risolto il problema 🥰
¹ anziché fare i "buoni propositi" d'inizio anno, che tanto poi restavano propositi, da qualche tempo ho iniziato a provare a imparare una cosa nuova ogni anno.
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