It is well-known that, if you look up sites in the fediverse, you'll get a list of thousands, but how does someone know if a site is digitally capable of joining it (and other questions)? (lemmyusa.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Hayley566@lemmyusa.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Suppose I am thinking of a website. I might think to myself "this would be great to have in the fediverse" (the last time I thought this was with Neopets, as I was joking that still being HTML was their way of waiting 20 years for the fediverse to be invented). But unless you have some kind of third party linking technology, I am aware there are limitations in a website's code. But you can't simply take a glance at a website and know if it's compatible, right? Is there a way to know without having to constantly ask admins and take their word? What sites would you want to join the fediverse if you could inspire it?

Speaking of third party software or tech, can they join? I hear the Hypothesis toolbar is quite popular as a third party feature and might be good for this thought experiment.

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[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Fediverse uses ActivityPub protocol, you have to implement the protocol to be part of the Fediverse. Anything that implements it can join.

There's a special endpoint that all Fediverse instances have to implement and if that endpoint exists and is valid, the instance is part of the Fediverse. Note that if you implement only the single endpoint, it's pretty useless, because no interaction occurs, so you need to implement more parts to actually be a meaningful part of the Fediverse.

As an example, I'm currently writing a blog system for my blog which will implement ActivityPub, so the posts will be directly available in Lemmy. And all the Lemmy comments will appear on my blog.

Edit:. If you're interested more specifically in the special endpoint, it's /.well-known/nodeinfo, every Fediverse instance (no matter the software) will have one, for example your Lemmy instance: https://lemmyusa.com/.well-known/nodeinfo or mine: https://lemmings.world/.well-known/nodeinfo or the Mastodon server I'm on: https://phpc.social/.well-known/nodeinfo

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 1 month ago

The HTML is just the user interface, the surface. 90% of the work happens under the hood, processing and forwarding posts, all the logic... You can't transfer that from a random site to another. It's all purpose-built.

this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024

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