14 ms·

Plume – WIP Federated Blog Engine with ActivityPub

157 points by lkurusa 8y ago

bbimbop 8y ago
This is awesome.
- lkurusa 8y ago
  Indeed, can’t wait to get rid of the those “We’ve seen you here before” nag screens Medium imposes.
  - ronsor 8y ago
    "Let's make it official" very annoying
  - okket 8y ago
    Safari -> "Use Reader automatically on 'medium.com'"
    - lkurusa 8y ago
      Wow, thanks for the tip!
ckluis 8y ago
Not arguing, but Medium is more than the votes & articles. It's the totality of the experience (from reading/metrics to emails & recommendations to paywalls & payments). I'd hardly call this medium - its a distributed blogging platform.
- samschooler 8y ago
  I guess they might be thinking of the syndication. Medium allows anyone to post, and suggests articles from different authors. This is similar. It enables blogs (if they use activity pub) to be syndicated throughout the blogosphere.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pat2man 8y ago
Is there an ActivityPub aggregation service that lets me run Plume, Mastadon, PeerTube, etc all on the same domain? Or will people always have to follow me three times...
- slipstream- 8y ago
  This can be done by, say, boosting the Plume/PeerTube content from Mastodon.
Xeoncross 8y ago
I'm really happy to see more applications published using Rust (and Go). Without even looking, I know I'll be able to run Plume on commodity hardware. PHP, Ruby, and Java programs seem so wasteful when it comes to memory. Especially PHP and Ruby where re-using any of the codebase for a mobile/desktop app is often close to impossible. Consider the Plume install vs Mastodon (Ruby): - https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT.md https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT.m... - https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Production-guide.md https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni...
- TekMol 8y ago
  In my experience, PHP is super lean and fast. You definitely can run PHP software on commodity hardware. The typical LAMP application based on Laravel or Symfony runs just fine on a $5/month VM. And will serve something like a million monthly users without breaking a sweat.
  - Xeoncross 8y ago
    I used to write a lot of PHP. My framework, MicroMVC was faster and lighter than the original phalcon framework (written in C) according to the techempower benchmarks. In fact, in round 3(?) it was the fastest PHP framework period (and it included an ORM). I still think PHP and Ruby need to be depreciated. I would never start a product using either in this day and age.
    - juliend2 8y ago
      > I still think PHP and Ruby need to be depreciated. I would never start a product using either in this day and age. Why? Only because they take more memory than Rust, Go, or C? Or is there another reason?
      - Xeoncross 8y ago
        - stdlib full of edge case problems causing you to second-guess and double-check things. I had to write so many libraries to wrap core classes like libxml. - No support for multiple CPU cores - UTF-8 is still a second-class citizen - Not strongly typed - High memory usage - Slow execution PHP and Ruby can't even serve themselves safely over HTTP and they are web languages. They offer nothing that isn't better handled by Go and Rust. Even Node is a better choice thanks to non-blocking I/O, the huge talent pool, and the ability to reuse code on the frontend, desktop, and mobile.
TekMol 8y ago
Federation is cool. I have the feeling it needs its "Ubuntu Moment". Mastodon and Plume are interesting technology wise. But it seems there are no instances with good design yet. I tried hard to like mastodon.social but the interface drives me insane. It's even worse then Twitter. Until Ubuntu arrived on the scene, Linux was for hardcore nerds. Now every technically interested person has at least tried it. I wonder what would happen if ActivityPub was used to build Twitter/Instagram/FB alternatives with less aggressive advertising. But with the same user friendly interfaces. It wouldn't need much. Rather less. For example the choice of fonts and colors on mastodon.social. Who thought it's a good idea to use tiny grey chars on a black background? And then the idea to have multiple feeds on the screen that constantly update without user interaction. This all screems '1337 Haxor Dashboard!!!'. I have no idea whom I am supposed to impress with it. But I know I get a headache from it. Even using the browsers defaults would go a long way. White background, black text, normal font, normal size. Plus a static feed in the middle of the screen. And nothing much else.
- slipstream- 8y ago
  there are a few alternate web user interfaces that work with the Mastodon client API (which Pleroma also implements); halcyon and pinafore being two of them. To be more specific, Halcyon's UI is Twitter-clone.
  - TekMol 8y ago
    Urls? Tried to google these, but did not find anything.
    - slipstream- 8y ago
      https://halcyon.toromino.de/ https://halcyon.toromino.de/ https://pinafore.social/ https://pinafore.social/
      - TekMol 8y ago
        Halcyon: That is supposed to be a Twitter clone? First page already looks way more complex and flimsy then Twitter. Then I click on 'or create an account' and I am redirected to mastodon.social. WTF? Pinafore: I don't understand what I am supposed to do with it.
zamalek 8y ago
So this acts as an ActivityPub inbox (comments) and outbox (publications)? Brilliant! I had been toying around with the same idea the past few weeks. Go ahead and try searching for @BaptisteGelez@baptiste.gelez.xyz in Mastodon, then toot-reply to one of the article toots (from Mastodon) - your toot will show up on the blog post as a comment after a few seconds and a refresh. Great work!
edhelas 8y ago
On a similar way we already built a "Blog" solution on XMPP. This is relying on the Pubsub extension and some others (like https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html). Two projects are already implementing it for several years Movim (https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/) and Salut à Toi (https://salut-a-toi.org/ https://salut-a-toi.org/). Here is the official blog of the Movim project https://nl.movim.eu/?node/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim https://nl.movim.eu/?node/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim. It already supports comments (and likes), edition, attached files and urls, tags, richs texts and many other things. The posts are published and distributed in real time across the XMPP network and you simply need a XMPP account (and a recent server) to enable it :) The big advantage to rely on XMPP is that this also allows us to use the many other features provided by the protocol. If you subscribe to someone blog, you can also chat in real-time with him, do video-conference, across lots of different clients on lots of devices, invite him to chatroom… all those things are not possible with ActivityPub and will require "another protocol" to do that. On the contrary, the "blog" feature is more seen as a little piece of XMPP (that is also an IETF standard and implemented in several servers already used by hundreds of services accross the world (see https://xmpp.org/uses/ https://xmpp.org/uses/ )). One final thing, because XMPP is built on XML, the "blog" feature is simply Atom elements published in Pubsub. No new standard, just some good old XML things put together. Creating a simple HTTP-Atom feed from Pubsub is then easy-peasy (https://nl.movim.eu/?feed/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim https://nl.movim.eu/?feed/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim and the other way around https://github.com/edhelas/atomtopubsub/ https://github.com/edhelas/atomtopubsub/) :)
evv 8y ago
This makes it super easy to create a blog! So easy, I even managed to create the following blog without even registering. (Yes, it seems that empty-username:empty-password is a valid login on this service.) https://baptiste.gelez.xyz/~/MyLiveDemo https://baptiste.gelez.xyz/~/MyLiveDemo Also it seems that the "new article" functionality is broken, which is pretty important for a blogging service without any content.
kodablah 8y ago
Disappointed it requires postgres. We need to be focusing on running some of these things at home with small, mostly self-contained desktop-style apps. Many people have always on home machines (or this stuff could justify one). NAT busting has been mostly solved, but you could use something like Tor onion services otherwise.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I've opened an issue here, feel free to +1: https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/issues/93 https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/issues/93
- kitotik 8y ago
  I had the exact same reaction. As much as I love postgres for monolithic business systems, its a horrible choice for something that to see meaningful adoption needs near-zero barrier of entry. if it can’t easily download and run on an rpi it seems like a poor architecture for the use case.
  - TekMol 8y ago
    Why can't you run postgres on a rpi? Isn't installing postgres as easy as mysql aka 'apt install mysql-server'?
- 18pfsmt 8y ago
  I thought I was going to be the only one to raise this issue. Not only are the advanced features of postgres unnecessary, these types of fleeting platforms don’t really need to have their histories maintained. HN runs without a DB just using flat files, IIRC.
grahamburger 8y ago
Here's the thing I don't really get about Mastodon (and by reverse extension ActivityPub): Say I'm interested in Video Games, so I join a Mastodon instance all about video games. Also, I'm interested in FPV Drone Racing. Should I join a second Mastodon instance about FPV drone racing? If I do, then I have to switch back and forth to use them (and for every other interest I might have). Which isn't too difficult, but seems to defeat the purpose of federation. If I just follow FPV drone racers from my Video Gaming account, then I am polluting the federated timeline of the Gaming instance with stuff other people on it might not be interested in. Also I have to follow each account on the FPV Drone instance manually and don't get the local timeline of that instance. It seems like federation would be more useful if accounts were federated as well - like once I have an account on one instance I can use that account to join other instances as well. Or if it were more like email where the server you're on doesn't really make you part of that 'community' - it's just a place to store your stuff. Maybe I'm using it wrong?
- edhelas 8y ago
  This is exactly how the XMPP network is made and how the social features that we are building around are designed :) You use the same XMPP account to login to different instances and everything is synchronized from the server your account is on. You can try it on https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/, we propose several instances across the world and you can login with the same account between them (it's still better to pick the one that are geographically closer to you to have a quicker load time).
morganvachon 8y ago
Not to be confused with Plume Creator, an open source tool for writing novels and short stories: https://plume-creator.eu/ https://plume-creator.eu/
Geenirvana 8y ago
Choice of name seems a bit unfortunate. My immediate thought when looking at title was something to do with the Android Twitter client Plume.

157 points by lkurusa 8y ago

bbimbop 8y ago

This is awesome.

lkurusa 8y ago
Indeed, can’t wait to get rid of the those “We’ve seen you here before” nag screens Medium imposes.
- ronsor 8y ago
  "Let's make it official" very annoying
- okket 8y ago
  Safari -> "Use Reader automatically on 'medium.com'"
  - lkurusa 8y ago
    Wow, thanks for the tip!

ckluis 8y ago

Not arguing, but Medium is more than the votes & articles. It's the totality of the experience (from reading/metrics to emails & recommendations to paywalls & payments). I'd hardly call this medium - its a distributed blogging platform.

samschooler 8y ago
I guess they might be thinking of the syndication. Medium allows anyone to post, and suggests articles from different authors. This is similar. It enables blogs (if they use activity pub) to be syndicated throughout the blogosphere.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pat2man 8y ago

Is there an ActivityPub aggregation service that lets me run Plume, Mastadon, PeerTube, etc all on the same domain? Or will people always have to follow me three times...

slipstream- 8y ago
This can be done by, say, boosting the Plume/PeerTube content from Mastodon.

Xeoncross 8y ago

I'm really happy to see more applications published using Rust (and Go). Without even looking, I know I'll be able to run Plume on commodity hardware. PHP, Ruby, and Java programs seem so wasteful when it comes to memory. Especially PHP and Ruby where re-using any of the codebase for a mobile/desktop app is often close to impossible. Consider the Plume install vs Mastodon (Ruby): - https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT.md https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT.m... - https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Running-Mastodon/Production-guide.md https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni...

TekMol 8y ago
In my experience, PHP is super lean and fast. You definitely can run PHP software on commodity hardware. The typical LAMP application based on Laravel or Symfony runs just fine on a $5/month VM. And will serve something like a million monthly users without breaking a sweat.
- Xeoncross 8y ago
  I used to write a lot of PHP. My framework, MicroMVC was faster and lighter than the original phalcon framework (written in C) according to the techempower benchmarks. In fact, in round 3(?) it was the fastest PHP framework period (and it included an ORM). I still think PHP and Ruby need to be depreciated. I would never start a product using either in this day and age.
  - juliend2 8y ago
    > I still think PHP and Ruby need to be depreciated. I would never start a product using either in this day and age. Why? Only because they take more memory than Rust, Go, or C? Or is there another reason?
    - Xeoncross 8y ago
      - stdlib full of edge case problems causing you to second-guess and double-check things. I had to write so many libraries to wrap core classes like libxml. - No support for multiple CPU cores - UTF-8 is still a second-class citizen - Not strongly typed - High memory usage - Slow execution PHP and Ruby can't even serve themselves safely over HTTP and they are web languages. They offer nothing that isn't better handled by Go and Rust. Even Node is a better choice thanks to non-blocking I/O, the huge talent pool, and the ability to reuse code on the frontend, desktop, and mobile.

TekMol 8y ago

Federation is cool. I have the feeling it needs its "Ubuntu Moment". Mastodon and Plume are interesting technology wise. But it seems there are no instances with good design yet. I tried hard to like mastodon.social but the interface drives me insane. It's even worse then Twitter. Until Ubuntu arrived on the scene, Linux was for hardcore nerds. Now every technically interested person has at least tried it. I wonder what would happen if ActivityPub was used to build Twitter/Instagram/FB alternatives with less aggressive advertising. But with the same user friendly interfaces. It wouldn't need much. Rather less. For example the choice of fonts and colors on mastodon.social. Who thought it's a good idea to use tiny grey chars on a black background? And then the idea to have multiple feeds on the screen that constantly update without user interaction. This all screems '1337 Haxor Dashboard!!!'. I have no idea whom I am supposed to impress with it. But I know I get a headache from it. Even using the browsers defaults would go a long way. White background, black text, normal font, normal size. Plus a static feed in the middle of the screen. And nothing much else.

slipstream- 8y ago
there are a few alternate web user interfaces that work with the Mastodon client API (which Pleroma also implements); halcyon and pinafore being two of them. To be more specific, Halcyon's UI is Twitter-clone.
- TekMol 8y ago
  Urls? Tried to google these, but did not find anything.
  - slipstream- 8y ago
    https://halcyon.toromino.de/ https://halcyon.toromino.de/ https://pinafore.social/ https://pinafore.social/
    - TekMol 8y ago
      Halcyon: That is supposed to be a Twitter clone? First page already looks way more complex and flimsy then Twitter. Then I click on 'or create an account' and I am redirected to mastodon.social. WTF? Pinafore: I don't understand what I am supposed to do with it.

zamalek 8y ago

So this acts as an ActivityPub inbox (comments) and outbox (publications)? Brilliant! I had been toying around with the same idea the past few weeks. Go ahead and try searching for @BaptisteGelez@baptiste.gelez.xyz in Mastodon, then toot-reply to one of the article toots (from Mastodon) - your toot will show up on the blog post as a comment after a few seconds and a refresh. Great work!

edhelas 8y ago

On a similar way we already built a "Blog" solution on XMPP. This is relying on the Pubsub extension and some others (like https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html). Two projects are already implementing it for several years Movim (https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/) and Salut à Toi (https://salut-a-toi.org/ https://salut-a-toi.org/). Here is the official blog of the Movim project https://nl.movim.eu/?node/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim https://nl.movim.eu/?node/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim. It already supports comments (and likes), edition, attached files and urls, tags, richs texts and many other things. The posts are published and distributed in real time across the XMPP network and you simply need a XMPP account (and a recent server) to enable it :) The big advantage to rely on XMPP is that this also allows us to use the many other features provided by the protocol. If you subscribe to someone blog, you can also chat in real-time with him, do video-conference, across lots of different clients on lots of devices, invite him to chatroom… all those things are not possible with ActivityPub and will require "another protocol" to do that. On the contrary, the "blog" feature is more seen as a little piece of XMPP (that is also an IETF standard and implemented in several servers already used by hundreds of services accross the world (see https://xmpp.org/uses/ https://xmpp.org/uses/ )). One final thing, because XMPP is built on XML, the "blog" feature is simply Atom elements published in Pubsub. No new standard, just some good old XML things put together. Creating a simple HTTP-Atom feed from Pubsub is then easy-peasy (https://nl.movim.eu/?feed/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim https://nl.movim.eu/?feed/pubsub.movim.eu/Movim and the other way around https://github.com/edhelas/atomtopubsub/ https://github.com/edhelas/atomtopubsub/) :)

evv 8y ago

This makes it super easy to create a blog! So easy, I even managed to create the following blog without even registering. (Yes, it seems that empty-username:empty-password is a valid login on this service.) https://baptiste.gelez.xyz/~/MyLiveDemo https://baptiste.gelez.xyz/~/MyLiveDemo Also it seems that the "new article" functionality is broken, which is pretty important for a blogging service without any content.

kodablah 8y ago

Disappointed it requires postgres. We need to be focusing on running some of these things at home with small, mostly self-contained desktop-style apps. Many people have always on home machines (or this stuff could justify one). NAT busting has been mostly solved, but you could use something like Tor onion services otherwise.

StavrosK 8y ago
I've opened an issue here, feel free to +1: https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/issues/93 https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/issues/93
kitotik 8y ago
I had the exact same reaction. As much as I love postgres for monolithic business systems, its a horrible choice for something that to see meaningful adoption needs near-zero barrier of entry. if it can’t easily download and run on an rpi it seems like a poor architecture for the use case.
- TekMol 8y ago
  Why can't you run postgres on a rpi? Isn't installing postgres as easy as mysql aka 'apt install mysql-server'?
18pfsmt 8y ago
I thought I was going to be the only one to raise this issue. Not only are the advanced features of postgres unnecessary, these types of fleeting platforms don’t really need to have their histories maintained. HN runs without a DB just using flat files, IIRC.

grahamburger 8y ago

Here's the thing I don't really get about Mastodon (and by reverse extension ActivityPub): Say I'm interested in Video Games, so I join a Mastodon instance all about video games. Also, I'm interested in FPV Drone Racing. Should I join a second Mastodon instance about FPV drone racing? If I do, then I have to switch back and forth to use them (and for every other interest I might have). Which isn't too difficult, but seems to defeat the purpose of federation. If I just follow FPV drone racers from my Video Gaming account, then I am polluting the federated timeline of the Gaming instance with stuff other people on it might not be interested in. Also I have to follow each account on the FPV Drone instance manually and don't get the local timeline of that instance. It seems like federation would be more useful if accounts were federated as well - like once I have an account on one instance I can use that account to join other instances as well. Or if it were more like email where the server you're on doesn't really make you part of that 'community' - it's just a place to store your stuff. Maybe I'm using it wrong?

edhelas 8y ago
This is exactly how the XMPP network is made and how the social features that we are building around are designed :) You use the same XMPP account to login to different instances and everything is synchronized from the server your account is on. You can try it on https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/, we propose several instances across the world and you can login with the same account between them (it's still better to pick the one that are geographically closer to you to have a quicker load time).

morganvachon 8y ago

Not to be confused with Plume Creator, an open source tool for writing novels and short stories: https://plume-creator.eu/ https://plume-creator.eu/

Geenirvana 8y ago

Choice of name seems a bit unfortunate. My immediate thought when looking at title was something to do with the Android Twitter client Plume.