jfedi

This afternoon, I had fun using the Penpot tool to draw what I'd had in mind for a while. Having no design skills whatsoever, I obviously make no claims as to the quality of what I've scribbled! That doesn't stop me from having a lot of fun putting together ideas for a homemade federated blog.

Besides, I'm probably just daydreaming about reinventing the wheel. There's no shortage of tools and solutions available today for creating a federated blog. Just take a look at jointhedefiverse to see the wide range of options available. And isn't this blog already federated thanks to Ghost?

Yes, of course. But what about what I have in mind? The details that bother me? This desire to learn how to do it myself? These are the three questions that drive me, in my spare time, to tinker and daydream about projects... that may never come to life.

ActivityPub runs the Social Web aka Fediverse

This protocol fascinates me. As complex as it may be, the idea of “federating” digital spaces is so brilliant. I discovered Mastodon and its flagship server, set up my own server (now defunct) g33ks.coffee, then migrated to a small personal server with GoToSocial, and finally self-hosted Ghost, which for me comes closest to my vision of federated digital spaces.

Now, how could an artist, a developer, a craftsman, a shop... anyone, any ordinary person, join the fediverse? That's the question I'm trying to answer in my head. How can we make it possible for anyone with a computer that's always connected to the internet to join us?

It takes so much computer knowledge and experience to do it yourself that, fortunately, there are solutions mentioned above so that anyone can join the fediverse. But how do you go about it if you really want to do it yourself, on your own machine, at home, and actively participate in the internet? No longer be a consumer of feeds, but a creator of content in your own right. Take your place on the internet, participate in its decentralization, its original mission.

I think the challenge for the Fediverse is to overcome the technical barriers that prevent non-techies from taking part in this federation without adding to the ranks of the flagship servers. What is the Fediverse without Mastodon.social?

In my imagination, everyone should be able to exist on the internet with their own domain name, their data stored on their own server, simply connected with their computer and able to interact with all other blogs/microblogs/galleries... or what I call federated digital spaces.

There are a thousand barriers to this idea that I am aware of. And that is the mountain I want to try to climb.

One step at a time

You have to start somewhere. I will take my time to describe in other articles on this subject all the challenges, use cases, problems, and solutions I have in mind. I would like to list all the things that bother me about Ghost today. I would also like to discuss in detail why my mini project, codenamed “jfedi,” would add fuel to the fediverse.

But for now, I've just drawn some very simple things to associate a few ideas with a few shapes, and that satisfies me:

This is what I would like our blog's home page to look like.

A header that tells people who we are, where we come from, what we do, and how to contact us.

Then the blog content with both previews of long posts, short posts, photos, and boosted posts from other federated digital spaces.

The buttons below the statistics would allow you to display all types of posts, long or short, or only those containing media.

Visitors can interact with the blog using a set of buttons:

• The “Contact” button could display a modal window with our email address (we could also display a phone number, postal address, etc.);
• The “Follow” button with the Fediverse logo could bring up a modal window inviting visitors to connect to their favorite app to follow our blog by giving them our handle (@hnt@harvestntech.fr);
• The “Create yours” button would redirect to a site explaining the “jfedi” project and inviting visitors to create their own federated digital space;
• The “Learn More” button would redirect to a blog page describing who we are in detail;
• The “Read more” button would only appear for long blog articles and would redirect to the post page;
• The “Support” button would bring up a modal window inviting visitors to donate;
• The “Interact” button would display a modal window with a direct link to the federated content, allowing visitors to find it on their application and like, boost, or respond to the post;
• The “Visit this blog” button would only appear on boosted posts, redirecting visitors to the federated digital space of the author of the boosted post;

And now what?

I'm just really happy that I managed to create this drawing based on a few ideas I had in mind, describe the process in this blog post, share it... and then we'll see about the rest! Maybe it will end up in the box with all the other projects I've started but never finished, who knows?