I wonder if there is a plan to support ActivityPub in Plone, or if somebody is working on an add-on for it. WordPress and Drupal already have ActivityPub plugins.
There is an integration to post to Mastodon, but not yet as with WP as a node in the Fediverse.
To my understanding, collective.mastodon acts as a Mastodon client (I guess that it uses the Mastodon REST API). I imagine that a package to make a Plone blog a Fediverse node should associate a collection (or folder) to an agent outbox, and capture replies to the collection elements in an inbox collection. This agent could be associated with a user (or group of users). Maybe it is not as simple to implement this feature.
This sounds like a plan
who implements it?
Btw., there is already partially an infrastructure for the first part, currently for creating RSS/Atom feeds on folders/collections.
The better question is: why implement it ![]()
Do we have any reasonable real-world usecase?
Currently, many German agencies are using Mastodon. However, instead of publishing links to their website from a Mastodon account, they could have their news section accessible from Fediverse. For example, the German Aerospace Center (German Aerospace Center) is using Plone, and has a Mastodon account (DLR (@DLR@social.bund.de) - social.bund.de). This news Strahlungsdetektor M-42 fliegt zum Mond is also referred from mastodon DLR: "🚀 Der DLR Strahlungsdetektor M-42 ist heute an Bo…" - social.bund.de
The why is another question. It is answered as soon as some organization or individual throws money or time at it. I personally would not recommend to turn a Plone (or any) website into a half baken fediverse server (that said I never had a look at the mentioned plugins for the other CMSes). I would post to Mastodon, Pixelfed, ... (depending on what fits best) and then use the fully supported server-software (own instance or some public one). As in the above example DLR uses the well maintained, official, and well suited social.bund.de
And we still have X
, there is Bluesky, there is Mastodon and there is Threads
.
As a content producer, I would look into options for having a cross-posting service to which I would connect Plone (pushing content to the cross-posting service) ![]()
Thank you for your answers. To me, each time a new protocol, data model, or paradigm appears, it is natural to think about how widely it can be applied. A long time ago, some people thought that XML could be used everywhere, but now JSON has displaced XML in some uses, and RDF in others. Regarding ActivityPub, I think it has the potential to grow and switch the communication paradigm. So, I wonder how it is being implemented in different content management systems.
A concrete use case is blogging. This is mainly the use case for WordPress. I found the ActivityPub plugin in WordPress quite useful because it allows for following and replying to posts beyond the WordPress system. So far, blog users have either relied on the commenting capabilities of their blogging system or used external services like DISQUS. Now, they can activate the ActivityPub plugins, and replies to blog posts can be made in other systems. I like the way that ActivityPub works. Of course, some blog owners may prefer the posts be created and stored in their content management system.
As it is usual for protocols and languages, the ActivityPub protocol may not fit all interactions. It may not be applicable to some particular communication workflows. Currently, it has limited support for groups and access control. The ActivityPub working group is discussing how to extend the protocol to support groups, but maybe some features will be excluded for the sake of simplicity. So, I don't think it will be suitable for all use cases, but it is still unclear to me which use cases it is not suitable for. That is the reason I appreciate your answers.
Regarding X, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, they are platforms, so they are not comparable with ActivityPub. Actually, Mastodon implements ActivityPub, and Threads is in the process of supporting the protocol. I think that X owners have no intention to support ActivityPub, and I don't know about Bluesky.
Drupal has an add-on for ActivityPub, which was made possible by a grant from NLnet.
If anyone is interested in making an ActivityPub add-on for Plone, there are some new grant opportunities to fund its research and development. Right now, we're determining which Plone PLIPs and projects to include in an application to the Sovereign Tech Agency. Following that, we'll apply to NLnet for another grant. DM me here, on Discord @stevepiercy, or at Plone Conference 2026 for more information.
I think this would be a great feature to implement, even more considering we could use the ActivityPub as a way to "replace" plone.app.discussions
What's also interesting is to implement the event federation protocol: https://event-federation.eu/
There's sufficient interest to make this happen.
Next steps include:
- Propose a PLIP. This one would come from the people who are interested in doing the work.
- Fill in the placeholder in the STA grant application for this item. I can do that item.
ActivityPub support would be a great addition to Plone. I’d also be interested to know if anyone is currently working on an add-on for it.
Nice! SSOT, and less dependency on the social media channel algorhythms too, it looks like.
Keen to help at the QA stage, and yes, let's get this into the current STA application.
It’s been my experience that very few people comment on Plone content. When I’ve used Disqus on Plone sites, the comments were usually of low quality (let’s put it kindly). I think there is value in being able to distribute Plone content widely but less so in enabling commenting. RSS would be my choice.
We don't yet have a PLIP or people who are committed to work on it in about 6 months after the STA application is submitted (it takes about that long to work through the process, if we get accepted).
We have a placeholder in the STA grant.
The deadline for items that make it into the STA application is Tuesday, October 20. This may be cut if there is no PLIP. Please let me know. Thank you!
Last call to get ActivityPub into the STA grant application!
We're going to apply with or without it.
If you're interested in developing ActivityPub for Plone, please let me know this week.
This would be great and i have the feeling many of the commenters don't understand what ActivityPub is.
Keypoints are:
- you don't just publish to an anti-social platform and lose the conversion there
- you publish to the fediverse, comments and communication can happen there but is synced back to your site. So all the content comes back.
- Site visitors can directly comment on your site using there fediverse account, so they don't need to create an account on your website.
The project @thet was mentioning sounds great as well, but it is still a bit early for that.
I'm not sure if the ActivityPub integration woulde replace or rather build on plone.app.discussion, as we might need most of that structure anyway.
I'm very interested in this project, but currently no time left to work on this.
We removed this from the STA grant application because there's no proposal at this time. However, there are more grant opportunities coming up.
- NLnet Restack. Our deadline to have a draft application is Tuesday, October 27, so we can polish it and submit by the NLnet deadline of November 3, 2026, 12:00 CET (noon).
- NLnet Open Social Fund. The goal of this dedicated fund is to assist in transitioning to the Fediverse, which brings social media back home to the open web platform and federates rather than centralizes. However, at present, NLnet is not accepting new proposals. If the topic is important, and you have budget to spare, they welcome additional donations.
- There is always the possibility to solicit funding from the community and general public for the development of any feature. The Plone Foundation is supportive of this effort, providing the financial management.
Even if you're not available now to do the work, most of these funding vehicles take months to work through before funding actually arrives and development can begin.
Write up a proposal, let me know, and our fundraising team will work on getting some money.