So, given WP is willing to sell all its users down the river for some quick "AI" buzz, what fedi-enabled alternatives exist for human-centric websites?
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@zygmyd @haverholm fedi-enabling plain HTML is nontrivial
I'm presuming at this point that you mean something more complex than pasting a URL in a mastodon post, but it sounds like any of the other alternatives will be better at this than me. =D
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Used ClassicPress for awhile, enjoyed it!
I eventually moved over to Ghost, though. No real reason other than shifting preferences. https://ghost.org/
@albinanigans Those are two fairly weighty alternatives, yeah. I get creepy "monetize me!" vibes from Ghost, but they may be a small annoyance compared to "AI"...
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@haverholm @davidgerard Classicpress was pretty decent last time I tried it. As a bonus you also get to avoid the godawful block editor with its mystery meat interface.
@woe2you LOL, yeah. I know the block editor was what launched ClassicPress to begin with!
I'll be honest, part of me would've probably forked WP before v3, when it was just a lean little blog engine. @davidgerard
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I'm presuming at this point that you mean something more complex than pasting a URL in a mastodon post, but it sounds like any of the other alternatives will be better at this than me. =D
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@manualdousuario I've seen some new traffic on the AP-enabled WP site, crossing over from the fediverse to the blog. Not much, but it's already a niche site, and at that scale the comments pulled in via ActivityPub have added to the traffic.
YMMV, obviously. I mostly wanted the fedi channel open out of principle, because I want to promote the independent platforms/networks. @davidgerard
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@albinanigans Those are two fairly weighty alternatives, yeah. I get creepy "monetize me!" vibes from Ghost, but they may be a small annoyance compared to "AI"...
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@coop I mentioned write.as in my toot; @writefreely is of course the software running that site (and others). Thanks for the correction

I called them 'ascetic', because WP and its host of themes seem more accommodating for image content and customisation. But the writefreelies may still be a viable alternative, with some extra work.
And another vote for Ghost. Will give that a more serious look, too.
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@albinanigans Ah, good to know that's an option
Thanks! -
@manualdousuario Oh shoot, neither of us is going to change the other's mind then


@davidgerard -
@elfin I know a lot of those, have tried them.out through the years, and am still testing Grav for my personal site. I heard the other day that Drupal might be turning to the Magic Eightball machine as well, if so that's off the list.
The crunch points for alternatives are a) the ability to migrate an old, multi-user WP site without breaking too many historical URLs and feeds, and b) needing a somewhat familiar backend for most of those contributors to even post stuff... @davidgerard
@haverholm @davidgerard I have problems with the later Drupals ... that's why we forked D7 into backdrop. Also I don't like installing stuff with composer because I'm lazy. D11 is a no-go for me. D9-D10 are OK (still composer.
Drupal is rather friendly with WP data. Importing is trivial.
But Drupal is programmatically The UNIX Way which gives a good module ecosystem, and comes with the highest learning curve in CMS Land.
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@haverholm @davidgerard
"What if, from the end-user to the plugin developer, they could take for granted that thereβs an AI model accessible to me by virtue of being in WordPress?" he writes. "What kinds of things would people use it for? What amazing things would people create that are built on the reliable presence of a capable LLM?"These are great questions that they should find answers to before trying to launch this shit.
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@haverholm @davidgerard
"What if, from the end-user to the plugin developer, they could take for granted that thereβs an AI model accessible to me by virtue of being in WordPress?" he writes. "What kinds of things would people use it for? What amazing things would people create that are built on the reliable presence of a capable LLM?"These are great questions that they should find answers to before trying to launch this shit.
@jargoggles There are also three major, unsupported assumptions in that last question:
"amazing things"
"reliable presence"
"capable LLM"They might more realistically be replaced with "bullshit", "hallucinations", and "magic 8-ball".
@davidgerard -
@manualdousuario @haverholm @davidgerard Anyone have a link to a good noob guide to options for posting from a WP install to a mastodon account... like a way to make a dedicated category that perhaps doesn't get included in the home page or rss feed (can do that with functions.php already)?
Or, does anyone have a self-hostable masto version, that can work within the scale of resource use of WP, perhaps with no global feed, just for a single user to read and post?
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So, given WP is willing to sell all its users down the river for some quick "AI" buzz, what fedi-enabled alternatives exist for human-centric websites? https://www.therepository.email/wordpress-ai-team-outlines-vision-for-ai-as-a-fundamental-part-of-wordpress
I know of write.as, plume. They're too ascetic to match the brief. ClassicPress could be an option, provided the WP-ActivityPub add-on works with that.
#wordpress #ActivityPub #CMS #noAI #fediverse
cc @davidgerard@haverholm @davidgerard nobody asked for Gutenberg and nobody asked for this
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So, given WP is willing to sell all its users down the river for some quick "AI" buzz, what fedi-enabled alternatives exist for human-centric websites? https://www.therepository.email/wordpress-ai-team-outlines-vision-for-ai-as-a-fundamental-part-of-wordpress
I know of write.as, plume. They're too ascetic to match the brief. ClassicPress could be an option, provided the WP-ActivityPub add-on works with that.
#wordpress #ActivityPub #CMS #noAI #fediverse
cc @davidgerard@haverholm @davidgerard ClassicPress, the fork of WP, doesn't have all these AI features
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@manualdousuario @haverholm @davidgerard Anyone have a link to a good noob guide to options for posting from a WP install to a mastodon account... like a way to make a dedicated category that perhaps doesn't get included in the home page or rss feed (can do that with functions.php already)?
Or, does anyone have a self-hostable masto version, that can work within the scale of resource use of WP, perhaps with no global feed, just for a single user to read and post?
@metaning Read the room, please. @manualdousuario @davidgerard
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@metaning Read the room, please. @manualdousuario @davidgerard
@haverholm @manualdousuario @davidgerard Yes, it contains people who don't like the new WP direction (and are talking about alternate fediverse WP posting bridges). I'm still on 4.x and probably going to migrate to ClassicPress, because Gutenberg is a flaming bag of excrement. Hence why asking.
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@haverholm @davidgerard ClassicPress, the fork of WP, doesn't have all these AI features
@dalereardon And I mentioned Classicpress above, asking if it's compatible with the WP-ActivityPub add-on. @davidgerard
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@haverholm @manualdousuario @davidgerard Yes, it contains people who don't like the new WP direction (and are talking about alternate fediverse WP posting bridges). I'm still on 4.x and probably going to migrate to ClassicPress, because Gutenberg is a flaming bag of excrement. Hence why asking.
@metaning @manualdousuario @davidgerard And I reply, again, this is not the right thread to ask.
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So, given WP is willing to sell all its users down the river for some quick "AI" buzz, what fedi-enabled alternatives exist for human-centric websites? https://www.therepository.email/wordpress-ai-team-outlines-vision-for-ai-as-a-fundamental-part-of-wordpress
I know of write.as, plume. They're too ascetic to match the brief. ClassicPress could be an option, provided the WP-ActivityPub add-on works with that.
#wordpress #ActivityPub #CMS #noAI #fediverse
cc @davidgerard@haverholm I'm glad you asked because I was wondering the same thing. Yesterday I posted about how infuriating it was to spend hours doing normal tasks and after I finally got a blog post up, Wordpress sent me a questionnaire asking how they could improve it. I told them to get rid of AI and read Ed Zitron and Cory Doctorow. Or I suggested they offer the old non-AI version as a option. Here's something I wrote about AI:
proustsaidthat.blog/2025/05/11the-microsoft-doom-loop/
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