wordpress

Getting started with ActivityPub on WordPress just got a lot easier. A new guided onboarding experience is now part of the plugin, designed to help you configure key settings and understand how your site connects to the Fediverse—from the moment you activate it.

Whether you’re new to ActivityPub or just setting things up again, the onboarding flow helps you make informed choices around visibility, content formatting, and profile setup. It’s built to give you confidence that your content is reaching the right audiences in the right way.

Tailored for You

The plugin now adapts its behavior based on the caching plugins you have installed. You’ll also find clearer guidance if you’re using Surge, and an option to fine-tune how your content is tailored for browsers versus Fediverse services.

We’ve moved profile-related settings out of the welcome page and into new dashboard widgets, so they’re easier to find and update. And to make the learning curve smoother, the Help tab now includes a section explaining how ActivityPub works on the users page.

Media, Previews, and Performance

Beyond onboarding, this release adds support for audio and video attachments in ActivityPub embeds and previews. Posts shared to the Fediverse can now include up to four images, and you can choose how many to include on a per-post basis. Editor previews have also been improved—they now show media even if the post hasn’t been published yet.

For performance, author profiles now return a smaller set of extra fields (up to 20) to avoid bloated responses, and invalid items in the Outbox are skipped gracefully instead of causing errors.

Designed to Grow With You

This update also brings better mobile support for settings pages, improved documentation, and more robust error handling for things like missing or misformatted Outbox requests. And for developers, several filters and hooks have been updated or deprecated to make future work smoother and more predictable.

If you’ve been curious about joining the Fediverse or connecting your blog in a more structured way, now’s a great time to try it. Just activate the plugin and let the onboarding guide you through the rest.

Tried the new onboarding? Let us know how it worked for you and what you’d like to see improved.

Full Changelog

Added

ActivityPub embeds now support audios, videos, and up to 4 images.
Added a check to make sure we only attempt to embed activity objects, when processing fallback embeds.
Add setting to enable or disable how content is tailored for browsers and Fediverse services.
Adjusted the plugin’s default behavior based on the caching plugins installed.
A guided onboarding flow after plugin activation to help users make key setup decisions and understand Fediverse concepts.
Author profiles will cap the amount of extra fields they return to 20, to avoid response size errors in clients.
Fediverse Preview in the Editor now also supports video and audio attachments.
Guidance for configuring Surge to support ActivityPub caching.
Help tab section explaining ActivityPub capabilities on the users page.
Profile sections have been moved from the Welcome page to new Dashboard widgets for easier access.
The ActivityPub blog news feed to WordPress dashboard.
The Outbox now skips invalid items instead of trying to process them for output and encountering an error.

Changed

Batch processing jobs can now be scheduled with individual hooks.
Better error handling when other servers request Outbox items in the wrong format, and 404 pages now show correctly.
Fediverse Previews in the Block Editor now show media items, even if the post has not been published yet.
Hide interaction buttons in emails when the Classic Editor is used.
Improve compatibility with third-party caching plugins by sending a Vary header.
Much more comprehensive plugin documentation in the Help tab of ActivityPub Settings.
NodeInfo endpoint response now correctly formats localPosts values.
Reactions block heading now uses Core’s heading block with all its customization options.
Settings pages are now more mobile-friendly with more space and easier scrolling.
The number of images shared to the Fediverse can now be chosen on a per-post basis.
Updated default max attachment count to four, creating better-looking gallery grids for posts with 4 or more images.
Use a dedicated hook for the “Dismiss Welcome Page Welcome” link.
Use FEP-c180 schema for error responses.
Use Audio and Video type for Attachments, instead of the very generic Document type.

Deprecated

Deprecated rest_activitypub_outbox_query filter in favor of activitypub_rest_outbox_query. Deprecated activitypub_outbox_post action in favor of activitypub_rest_outbox_post.

Fixed

Broken avatars in the Reactions and Follower block are now replaced with the default avatar.
Email notifications for interactions with Brid.gy actors no longer trigger PHP Warnings.
Improved support for users from more Fediverse platforms in email notifications.
Improved the handling of Shares and Boosts.
Issue preventing “Receive reblogs (boosts)” setting from being properly saved.
Mention emails will no longer be sent for reply Activities.
Prevent accidental follower removal by resetting errors properly.
Properly remove retries schedules, with the invalidation of an Outbox-Item.
The blog profile can no longer be queried when the blog actor option is disabled.

Downloads

WordPress.org: https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/activitypub.5.9.0.zip
GitHub: https://github.com/Automattic/wordpress-activitypub/releases/tag/5.9.0

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This release is mostly made up of behind-the-scenes improvements, but one update you’ll notice right away is the refreshed Followers table. It now looks and feels much more like the standard WordPress admin tables: you can customize it with screen options to hide columns or change how many followers are shown per page, and you can now delete individual followers using inline action links. We also polished the layout by increasing information density and improving the readability of date columns.

We’ve made migrations easier to kick off by automatically resolving account aliases and saving their ID form. That means you can now paste in WebFinger IDs, profile URLs, etc. and the plugin handles the rest, as long as it resolves to an ActivityPub profile.

This release also fixes a long-time annoyance: unfederated posts (like those published before the plugin was activated or imported later) will no longer be sent out to followers just because they were updated. For now, we use a simple cutoff for posts older than a month, which should cover the majority of those cases.

Coming Soon: Following Others!

Most of the work that went into this release is still invisible, hiding behind a feature flag in Advanced Settings (you can find it by opening Screen Options in the ActivityPub settings screen).

There’s really no functionality around it yet, beyond following accounts from other instances, as we have yet to start processing incoming posts and adding the ability to interact with them. But if you just can’t wait to show your appreciation for other accounts by following them, go wild!

Behind the same feature flag, we’ve also added initial beta support for Fediverse Starter Kits. This lets new users follow a set of recommended accounts from a predefined list, following the format proposed by @dansup for Pixelfed. For now, only Actor objects are supporteded, but we’re hoping to expand that over time.

Full Changelog

Added

Added a first version of the Follow form, allowing users to follow other Actors by username or profile link.
Added initial support for Fediverse Starter Kits, allowing users to follow recommended accounts from a predefined list.
Ensure that all schedulers are registered during every plugin update.
Followers and Following list tables now support Columns and Pagination screen options.
The featured tags endpoint is now available again for all profiles, showing the most frequently used tags by each user.
The following endpoint now returns the actual list of users being followed.

Changed

Follower tables now look closer to what other tables in WordPress look like.
Improved Account-Aliases handling by internally normalizing input formats.
Minor performance improvement when querying posts of various types, by avoiding double queries.
Set older unfederated posts to local visibility by default.
Step counts for the Welcome checklist now only take into account steps that are added in the Welcome class.
Table actions are now faster by using the Custom Post Type ID instead of the remote user URI, thanks to the unified Actor Model.
The following tables now more closely match the appearance of other WordPress tables and can be filtered by status.

Fixed

Ensure correct visibility handling for Undo and Follow requests
Ensure that the Actor-ID is always a URL.
Fixed a bug in how follow requests were accepted to ensure they work correctly.
Fixed an issue where the number of followers shown didn’t always match the actual follower list.
Fixed a PHP error that prevented the Follower overview from loading.
Fixed missing avatar class so that CSS styles are correctly applied to ActivityPub avatars on the Dashboard.
Fixed potential errors when unrelated requests get caught in double-knocking callback.
Improved WebFinger fallback to better guess usernames from profile links.
Prevent WordPress from loading all admin notices twice on ActivityPub settings pages.
Removed follower dates to avoid confusion, as they may not have accurately reflected the actual follow time.
Stop purging Follow activities from the Outbox to allow proper Unfollow (Undo) handling.

Downloads

WordPress.org: activitypub.7.1.0.zip
GitHub: tag/7.1.0

Thank you!

Big thanks to everyone who contributed code, feedback, testing, or encouragement—this community helps make the fediverse more connected with every release. ❤️

Update to 7.1.0, try it out, and tell us what you think!

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In this version of ActivityPub for WordPress, most blocks received a pretty fundamental overhaul of their technical infrastructure, design, and functionality.

The biggest change is almost invisible—all blocks now use WordPress’ Interactivity API under the hood, shedding a substantial amount of load-heavy scripts. On well-optimized sites, this should lead to noticeably quicker load times and improved web vitals.

Let’s dive in and look at each block individually.

Follow Me Block

After updating, you might glance at your existing Follow Me blocks and think… “Did anything change?” That’s the goal! We’ve worked hard to keep things fully backwards compatible, so nothing should break—or even look too different—unless you want it to.

The “Follow” button was updated to use WordPress’ built-in Button block, so all those customization options you already know and love are right there. We also turned “Button Only” into a proper Block Style. You’ll see it right next to the default, complete with a hover preview, making it easy to switch between.

And speaking of style: there’s a new Profile style! This transforms the block into something that looks like an author card, complete with a description, header image, and post/follower stats. More social, more visual, still fully customizable. Not into the rounded corners and shadows? No problem—you can tweak those in the Styles tab.

But that’s not all! The Modal containing the follow information also received a slight makeover, making it more theme-agnostic in its appearance.

Followers Block

For this block we didn’t hold back on updating the design—subtler styling and better theme integration, so it looks at home wherever you drop it. Like we did with the Reactions block in version 5.9.0, we’ve updated the title to use WordPress’ native Heading block. That gives you more control over appearance, while keeping things compatible with existing content.

This block now benefits from the same Interactivity API improvements and renders server-side on first load, making it feel noticeably faster and more responsive right from the start.

We also introduced a new Card style here (you might’ve spotted it in the 6.0.0 announcement). It pairs nicely with the Follow Me block’s Profile style—rounded corners and a coordinated look that helps everything feel part of the same family.

They’ll be more changes to come soon, as we unlock font and background customizations to bring the block up to par with the rest of them.

Reactions Block

The Reactions block is a bit of a behind-the-scenes hero. Thanks to block hooks, it can automatically appear at the end of posts—no editor work required. But if you want to place it manually (like we’re doing here), you totally can.

Beyond receiving the same technical upgrades as the other blocks, this one now displays the actual reactions in the Editor, matching what you see on the frontend—no more stand-in data unless there are no reactions yet. It also includes a few subtle improvements, like rendering an HTML comment when there’s nothing to show (so you’re not left guessing), and displaying more avatars when the block is set to “wide” or “full”-width, making better use of the space.

Remote Reply

This one’s a bit niche, but clever: Remote Reply lets logged-out users respond to Fediverse comments directly from your site. It’s not a block you can add in the editor, but it now uses the same lightweight tech as the Follow Me button—so it loads faster and feels smoother.

If you’ve never seen it in action, you’re not alone—it only appears when certain conditions are met (logged out, looking at a Fediverse-sourced comment, etc.). Here’s a quick demo:

While most of what ActivityPub does happens quietly behind the scenes, this update puts a little more shine on the parts your visitors can see. The blocks are lighter, more flexible, and a bit more fun to work with.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think! Every improvement in this release was shaped by feedback from users like you—so keep it coming.