@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.

@haverholm @davidgerard Drupal, BackdropCMS (I run backdrop which is forked Drupal 7), $diety help me Joomla, Grav, Concrete,

Here's a list ... https://www.opensourcecms.com/

@haverholm

Write HTML. HTML is still there. You don't need anything other than HTML to get started for a link-clicky formatted website.

Heck, you could even upload .txt files and use direct urls if you felt like it.

@zygmyd @haverholm I actually do this. I maintain my index page (which is a link dump) using vi in a terminal window, and then Forklift to upload it. (Sadly, my blog is, however, using Wordpress).

https://www.miketorr.com/

@zygmyd @haverholm fedi-enabling plain HTML is nontrivial

@zygmyd While I agree about sticking to the basics when it comes to making a small, new website with no federating features — I'm co-admin'ing a 15 years old site with 2,500 posts, 3,300 comments, 4,500 images, and 260 podcast episodes.

And, as I put in my original post, federation capabilities preferred. I think the .txt approach comes up short for this case.

@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

@oblomov @haverholm

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

@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"...

@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

@zygmyd @oblomov Yeah... I don't see hand coding HTML as a real alternative for most WP users, and would consider "fedi-enabling HTML" nontrivial for them (for instance, me) as well.

But what I hear you say is that it's *possible*, which is encouraging. Just not quite viable for the use case.

@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

@haverholm

Honestly, that put me off too. I totally get it.

At least I can turn that shit off.

@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.

@davidgerard

@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

@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.

@haverholm @davidgerard
"What if, from the end-user to the plugin developer, they could take for granted that there’s 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?