[User Feedback] Suggested Improvements for ActivityPub Federation Templates in WordPress

[Jiwoon-Kim]

Context

Activity Object Type Options:

• Automatic (default): The plugin selects the most appropriate object type. Currently, if the post is under 400 characters, it is federated as a Note; if over 400 characters, it is published as an Article.
• Note: The entire content is always federated as a Note (long-form).

Problem

Let’s consider a real-world publishing scenario.
I usually write long-form blog posts between 3,000 to 8,500 characters. But do I really want these posts to be federated as Article objects?

Not necessarily.

My preferred format for Fediverse federation is a "teaser-style" post, consisting of:

• [title]
• [short excerpt / summary]
• [permalink or shortlink] (with proper OpenGraph preview if available)
• [hashtags]

This is sufficient. I want to retain the full content exclusively on my WordPress site, and only allow Fediverse replies to be federated back as comments (via inReplyTo).

Of course, when I'm reposting or quoting someone else's content, I may want to cache or include the full content — but that’s a separate use case.

Observation

Interestingly, Mastodon already handles this well:

• When viewing an Article from my blog on Mastodon, only a summary is shown.
• When my blog embeds federated replies, it can retrieve and show the full Mastodon comment content.

However, Misskey doesn’t render Article objects as cleanly — this is one of the main reasons I would prefer to publish even long posts as Note objects.

Another issue: Unlike Note, the summary of an Article is not editable across the Fediverse — meaning I lose control over how my content is introduced.

TL;DR: My Publishing Needs

• I frequently publish long-form blog posts (3000–8500+ characters).
• I prefer teaser-style previews on Fediverse: title + excerpt + link + hashtags.
• I want to avoid rendering full content outside WordPress.
• I want federated replies (comments) to be synchronized, but not the full content.

Currently, the default behavior in the plugin doesn’t fit these needs well:

Problems with Current Templates:

• Note mode: Always publishes full content, which can break rendering and violate minimalistic expectations on Fediverse (e.g. HTML tags showing up).
• Article: Renders inconsistently across platforms, especially on Misskey, and limits editing of summaries.

Suggested Improvements

1. Introduce a middle-ground template style:

   • Allow publishing a Note even for long-form posts, but only include:
     • [ap_title]
     • [ap_excerpt length="300"]
     • [ap_permalink type="url"]
     • [ap_hashtags]
   • This would provide consistent, readable content across platforms and prevent HTML or full body overload.

2. Support for micro-posts without titles:

   • Add an option to publish short, microblog-style content in a separate field from the main post body (or even via the comment field, without requiring inReplyTo).
   • This allows quick updates or casual posts that don’t belong in the main blog feed but can still federate to the Fediverse properly.

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Thank you for your excellent work on this plugin. It has opened up exciting possibilities for decentralization. I hope this feedback can help improve the plugin for advanced and semi-professional use cases like mine.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

1. Executive Summary

This document provides feedback on the current federation templates in the ActivityPub plugin, specifically for users who publish long-form content (3,000-8,500 characters) but prefer a "teaser" style presentation on the Fediverse. The current Automatic and Note settings are not ideal for this use case.

The core proposal is to introduce a new template option, "Note (Teaser)", which would federate posts as a Note object containing only the title, a custom excerpt, a link, and hashtags. This would function like a rich preview card (e.g., OpenGraph) and drive engagement back to the original WordPress post. A secondary proposal suggests a method for publishing short, microblog-style posts independently from the standard WordPress post editor.

2. Analysis of Current Limitations for Long-Form Content

For authors who consistently write long posts, the current settings present a dilemma:

• Automatic Setting: This setting federates any post over 400 characters as an Article. For many users, this is not the desired behavior.

  • Rendering Issues: Article objects render inconsistently across different Fediverse platforms. For example, the rendering on Misskey can be less aesthetically pleasing than a standard Note.
  • Lack of Control: The summary for a federated Article does not appear to be editable from the Fediverse, offering less control over the content's presentation after publishing.

• Note Setting: This setting federates the entire post content as a Note (long-form).

  • Social Etiquette: Publishing a 5,000-character post directly into a microblogging timeline is generally considered poor etiquette and can overwhelm followers' feeds.
  • Technical Issues: This can lead to HTML rendering problems and is not fully aligned with the common use of the Note object type, which is typically for shorter content.

The ideal scenario for this user workflow is to leverage the broad compatibility of the Note object type while avoiding the pitfalls of publishing the full content.

3. Proposed Solution: New Template Options

To address these limitations, I propose the addition of new, more flexible template options.

Proposal A: Add a "Note (Teaser)" Template

This would be a new option under Activity-Object-Type that provides the best of both worlds: the compatibility of a Note with the summary style of an Article preview.

• Behavior: This template would always federate the post as a Note object, regardless of character count.

• Default Content: The content of the Note would be defined by a pre-configured template using the existing Template Tags. A suggested default structure would be:

  [ap_title]
  
  [ap_excerpt length="300"]
  
  [ap_permalink type="html"]
  
  [ap_hashtags]
  

• Benefits:

  1. Full Author Control: The author decides to send a summary, not the plugin.
  2. Drives Traffic: Encourages users to click the link to read the full content on the WordPress site.
  3. Consistent Presentation: Creates a "rich card" or "OpenGraph" style preview that is visually appealing and consistent across most Fediverse platforms.
  4. Preserves Full Content on Blog: The complete, detailed post remains exclusively on the author's blog, which is the desired single source of truth.
  5. Federated Replies: This model works perfectly with the goal of only embedding federated replies (in-reply-to) back into the WordPress comments section.

Proposal B: Introduce Standalone Micro-posts

For users who want to publish short, microblog-style updates without creating a full, titled WordPress post.

• Concept: A separate, simplified input field within the WordPress dashboard (perhaps a new menu item or a dashboard widget) for creating title-less Note objects.
• Workflow:
  1. The user writes a short message in this new field.
  2. The content is published directly to the Fediverse as an independent Note activity.
  3. This activity does not create a corresponding post in WordPress, keeping the blog's main content clean and focused on long-form articles.
• Alternative Implementation: As the user suggested, this could potentially leverage the existing WordPress comment form, allowing an administrator to post a new comment without an in-reply-to field, thus creating a new, independent Note.

4. Summary of Desired Federation Workflow

• For Long-Form Posts: Use the proposed "Note (Teaser)" template to publish a summary, title, link, and hashtags.
• For Short Updates: Use the proposed "Standalone Micro-post" feature for quick, title-less notes.
• Full Content: The complete text of articles should only exist on the WordPress source.
• Incoming Interactions: Only direct replies (in-reply-to activities) should be federated back and displayed as comments on the WordPress blog post.

5. Conclusion

The ActivityPub plugin is an essential tool for connecting WordPress to the Fediverse. Implementing these proposed template enhancements would provide much-needed flexibility for content creators with specific publishing workflows, particularly those focused on long-form content. It would empower users with greater control over how their content is presented, respecting both the author's intent and the cultural norms of the Fediverse.

Thank you for your consideration of this feedback.

[pfefferle]

The template (Note) setting is a legacy artefact and I would love to remove that completely.

Templating is from the old cross-posting world and we should no longer have stipped down versions of the content, but work on a proper support for long form content in the fediverse instead!

• https://socialwebfoundation.org/long-form-text-on-the-fediverse/
• https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/b2b8/fep-b2b8.md

[Jiwoon-Kim]

In fact, the argument that we should avoid using the author archive page as the Fediverse profile and instead create a dedicated profile page, and the idea that comments should be handled through the Note object field actually share the same goals and are functionally aligned.

Both approaches aim to:

Separate blog content from social activity for better clarity and UX,

Provide cleaner, more intentional federation behavior across the Fediverse,

Enable more modular, interoperable design patterns (e.g., replies, boosts, likes via Notes; canonical content via Articles or post pages).

These strategies complement each other and should be considered together when designing or configuring ActivityPub integration in WordPress.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

@pfefferle
The issue is that WordPress posts are far more than just plain long-form text. They can include rich text, embedded maps, multimedia content, events, and a wide variety of object types—such as Mermaid diagrams, LaTeX equations, tables, files, oEmbeds, and third-party plugin blocks. These are essentially complex, modular documents, and we should assume that they will only render correctly in a WordPress-to-WordPress federation or repost environment, not across the entire Fediverse.

While I don’t know the internal structure of the plugin in depth, from this context I assume that the templating system exists to simplify and restructure content to suit various platforms. For federation compatibility, a templated version of the content is stored in the outbox, isn’t it? When this templated content is also used in local feeds or profile views, doesn’t that cause a rendering difference from the original post?

(In fact, I believe that such a difference is necessary and intentional, to allow feed customization as permitted by the ActivityPub specification.)

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1. Federated content is not the actual WordPress post

The content stored in the outbox is a derivative version, created via templates based on the original WordPress post.

This derivative is formatted in ActivityPub-compatible JSON-LD, where the content field is usually text/html or text/plain. Therefore, rather than trying to directly include the full block-based content structure from WordPress, the plugin must generate a simplified version for compatibility.

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2. The same templated version might be shown in local feeds

Depending on plugin settings or implementation, the content shown in a WordPress ActivityPub feed or profile page may be this simplified, templated version, not the full post.

This leads to content divergence between the original post and its federated representation.

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The fidelity dilemma

Fidelity to the original post sounds ideal, but even for the relatively simpler Note type, rich text support varies wildly between platforms. So what about the more complex Article type?

The Article type brings even more inconsistencies and room for interpretation:

Some platforms only show the summary.

Some ignore title or attachment.

Others strip HTML or style information.

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Isn't separating excerpt and content—and assigning different URLs—inevitable?

Would it be naïve to think that we might need to store excerpt and content separately in different database tables, assigning different derived URLs?

Actually, WordPress already stores post_excerpt and post_content as separate fields. If we assign a separate shortlink to the excerpt, we can provide teaser-only content to external feeds or federated platforms.

Here’s how this could be extended into a proper content layering system:

[excerpt] → Used as the summary content for the Fediverse (published as a Note)

[content] → Kept as the full Article or linked to via the origin property

The excerpt-only teaser can have its own dedicated permalink, and the full post can be linked via a canonical URL.

This technique is known as content layering or preview/deferred reading structure, and is widely used in platforms like RSS, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, Medium, and more.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

📝 Issue: WordPress Posts Are More Than Just Long-Form Text

The issue is that WordPress posts are far more than just plain long-form text. They can include rich text, embedded maps, multimedia content, events, and a wide variety of object types — such as:

• Mermaid diagrams
• LaTeX equations
• Tables
• Files
• oEmbeds
• Third-party plugin blocks

These are essentially complex, modular documents, and we should assume that they will only render correctly in a WordPress-to-WordPress federation or repost environment, not across the entire Fediverse.

---

💡 Templating and Outbox: Derived vs. Original

While I don’t know the internal structure of the plugin in depth, from this context I assume that the templating system exists to simplify and restructure content to suit various platforms.

For federation compatibility, a templated version of the content is stored in the outbox, isn’t it?

When this templated content is also used in local feeds or profile views, doesn’t that cause a rendering difference from the original post?

Note: I believe such a difference is necessary and intentional, in order to allow feed customization as permitted by the ActivityPub specification.

---

1️⃣ Federated content is not the actual WordPress post

• The content stored in the outbox is a derivative version, created via templates based on the original WordPress post.
• This derivative is formatted in ActivityPub-compatible JSON-LD, where the content field is typically text/html or text/plain.
• Therefore, rather than trying to directly include full block-based content from WordPress, the plugin must generate a simplified version for compatibility.

---

2️⃣ The same templated version might be shown in local feeds

• Depending on plugin settings or implementation, the content shown in a WordPress ActivityPub feed or profile page may be this simplified, templated version, not the full post.
• This results in content divergence between the original post and its federated representation.

---

⚠️ The Fidelity Dilemma

Fidelity to the original post sounds ideal, but even for the simpler Note type, rich text support varies wildly between platforms.

So what about the more complex Article type?

• Some platforms only show the summary
• Some ignore title or attachment
• Others strip HTML, styling, or embedded content entirely

→ This introduces interpretation issues and inconsistency.

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🔄 Isn’t separating excerpt and content — with different URLs — inevitable?

Would it be naïve to assume that we might eventually need to:

• Store excerpt and content separately, possibly in different tables or contexts
• Assign unique derived URLs to each for federation?

Actually, WordPress already stores:

• post_excerpt
• post_content

We can take advantage of this to build a teaser-only excerpt with a unique shortlink for external consumption.

---

🔧 Content Layering / Preview-Based Structure

This approach is similar to what's used in RSS, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Medium:

[excerpt] → Used as the summary content for the Fediverse (published as a `Note`)
[content] → Kept as the full `Article` or linked to via `origin`

We can assign a dedicated shortlink to the excerpt-only content (e.g., /p/1234-preview), and a canonical permalink to the full content (e.g., /p/1234-full).

---

✅ Benefits

• Avoids rendering errors on platforms with limited HTML/Rich Text support
• Supports clearer separation between teaser and full content
• Improves ActivityPub federation reliability
• Closer to established paradigms in modern content platforms

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References:

• Long Form Text on the Fediverse (SocialWebFoundation)
• FEP-b2b8: Federated Long-Form Articles

[Jiwoon-Kim]

When both the blog profile and the user profile are active, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to publish article posts under the blog handle, and note posts—such as teasers or excerpts—under the user handle.
You could even redirect the post permalink so that it leads to the full article published on the proxy blog profile.

[pfefferle]

Why should we publish them in different formats under different Actors?

This is not properly working with ActivityPub, because both (Note and Article) are a reference to the same object, so they should have the same ID. But one object can only have one attributedTo (at least this is how it is widely adopted atm.). This would force us to use different IDs for the same object and that would mess up reactions and replies completely.

We should not think about ways to work around current display issues on certain platforms, but work on removing them, to make the Article a fully supported object across all kinds of platforms, even microblogging.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

Ah, I see—so what I initially thought might be a good UX design actually conflicts with how the ActivityPub specification is currently implemented.

Now I understand your point: we can’t publish both a Note and an Article representing the same content under different Actors. That makes sense.

It’s clear that a different design approach is needed for the Fediverse compared to traditional Jetpack-style social cross-posting.

Alternatively, we could consider separating the excerpt as a distinct object and publishing it independently. Of course, that would have pros and cons—such as splitting the replies and reactions.

Otherwise, we may need to drop the idea of federating full posts as Article objects and instead publish just the excerpts as teaser-style Note posts.

What if we publish it as a Note when there’s an excerpt, and as an Article only when there isn’t one?
That could actually be a practical compromise, especially since integrating only Note-type posts into microblogging platforms would drastically reduce complexity, without needing to fully tackle long-form support right away.

Is the current focus on supporting Article and long-form content primarily aimed at reproducing the full WordPress Reader experience on the Fediverse?

I’d certainly love to see that happen eventually—but wouldn't it make sense to first focus on implementing a Note-based feed in WordPress, and only then move on to full Article rendering?