Can lemmy be used as a blog (with comment section)?

I am looking for a fediverse solution for a blog and I tried it with writefreely, but it has some disadvantages I can’t live with.

The most important one is, that it should be possible to communicate with people within the fediverse. People should be able to comment on every article with a fediverse account, like it is already possible between Mastodon, Pleroma, PeerTube and others. But comments aren’t a thing with writefreely and this is sad.

After using Lemmy for a few days I just thought if it is possible to use it as a blog and ask on lemmys github if it is possible to restrict a group so only one person could post new articles, but all others can comment. And the answer is yes!

But would it be possible to use it as a blog?

Imagine I would have a group called “utopify.org - Research & Development” and would post current progress about a blog series and you can only comment on it. Would it be possible and would it be something you want to see on Lemmy or would this just be an abuse of the software.

If all of this is just a no-go, are there other ways in the fediverse to have a blog article, which can be shared on the fediverse and be commented on?

saba,

I just read these 2 blog posts recently where they are using ActivityPub for comments:

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/fediverse-blog-comments-mastodon/

https://fietkau.blog/2023/another_blog_resurrection_fediverse_new_comment_system

ajjlyman,

You could… but it’s singly not setup for that. There are blog softwares out there that support activitypub-- I have no experience with it, but microblog.pub was nativity designed as an activitypub blog. There’s also a WordPress plugin that’s basically official (maintained by the company that owns WordPress.com) and has known good integration to at least mastodon, so I would assume it works well with lemmy, peertube, etc, since AFAICT, mastodon is the most opinionated of them when it comes to activitypub conformance.

LazaroFilm,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

Kbin has microblog.

FartsWithAnAccent,
@FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, why not?

baronvonj,
@baronvonj@lemmy.world avatar

You wouldn’t even need to host your own instance, really. You could create a community and check the option that only mods can post. But you can’t follow people on Lemmy.

What about calckey?

can, (edited )

Someone had mastadon comments on their blog. Maybe something similar?

kromem,

Yes. IIRC it’s even discussed in the official docs. Basically just limit post creation on the server and allow comments.

The nice thing about open source is that in the future there might even be add-ons that better format it for blog display vs thread display.

FirstWizardZorander,

I was just thinking that. You could either implement a way to render the linked content as an article, or allow more rich formatting in the text body itself.

m_randall,

Holy Necro….since I’m here tho I think kbin is more set up with this. It has a microblog section although I haven’t really explored it.

jbcarroll,

@utopify_org Wordpress has an ActivityPub plugin that may work in your case.

65gmexl3, (edited )
@65gmexl3@lemmy.world avatar

jbcarroll@friendica.jb-net.us

wow you’re posting this from frendica? do you see my comment? i know mastodon can see lemmy post but not up-to-date. Is it the same in frendica?

jbcarroll,

@65gmexl3 Yep they all talk ActivityPub! Friendica is one of the few that also supports Diaspora protocol so I can talk to people there too.

jbcarroll,

@65gmexl3 Oh and about your other question: it looks like you posted 2 days ago but I received it 13 hours ago at my server, so a little delay. Mainly the nature of working with federated servers is that things aren't always instantaneous.

65gmexl3,
@65gmexl3@lemmy.world avatar

thanks foe the update. im curious if the federation issue is with friendica or lemmy

jbcarroll,

@65gmexl3 Looks like sending from my server was pretty quick, but I'm running a single user node on a probably overpowered server, haha. Could be something with Lemmy or just the amount of tasks your lemmy server is experiencing.

human_no_4815162342,

There was a guy on GitHub that added a Lemmy comment section to his blog hosted on his website. So it’s already an accepted although niche usecase.

I feel like a single user instance of Pleroma would be more appropriate (and easier to host) but even though the character limit can be increased the remote limit of other instances might reduce your visibility, I am not sure.

KaKi87,
@KaKi87@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hi,

I’m feeling the same and wondering the same, did you ended up trying this, and if yes, do you have some advice on how to manage this particular use case ?

Thanks

mwalimu,
@mwalimu@baraza.africa avatar

If that would be possible, how would you moderate comments, seeing how random things can get? Federating with only approved finstances (federated instance)? What if you keep your blog, then push every post you make there to your solo-community on a finstance? You can engineer your comment section on the blog to pint here or fetch the comments content from fediverse to your blog…

utopify_org,
@utopify_org@lemmy.ml avatar

If that would be possible, how would you moderate comments, seeing how random things can get?

I don’t know what you mean? If I am the admin of an instance or the moderator of a group, I could delete comments or is this just not possible?

Federating with only approved finstances (federated instance)?

Why doing this? Wouldn’t it be enough to block the illegal instances and those who are explicitly against your topics?

What if you keep your blog, then push every post you make there to your solo-community on a finstance? You can engineer your comment section on the blog to pint here or fetch the comments content from fediverse to your blog…

I am trying to be as green as possible. Having a blog on one server and the comments on another sounds like an inefficient way of using resources. Why not just put the articles where the comments are?

With Mastodon I had the same idea, that I will publish an article, post a link with short description on Mastodon and then use the Mastodon post as the comment section, then edit the blog article and put the link to Mastodon on the end of the article with a simple text link like “Comment section”.

But even this idea felt a bit odd and more unprofessional.

Lemmy looks like a really good solution to this atm.

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