The Glitch Community’s Guide to Building the Fediverse
Interest in the fediverse has never been greater, and we’re so excited for the opportunity to support a decentralized, creative community building the web together. If you’re new to the fediverse, or federated social networks, there are several fantastic explainers available but here are a few of our favorites to help you get started.
- Mastodon’s docs site: Learn how the fediverse works, how to sign up for a server, and how to use the API to customize your experience.
- Fedi.Garden: A curated site featuring servers on Mastodon and across the fediverse that are open to the public and practice responsible moderation
- Fedi.Tips: The “unofficial” guide to Mastodon and the fediverse that answers your questions from getting started to accessibility, to running your own instance and more! The fediverse is one of the latest examples of the way moving toward a more open web experience benefits us all! We’re excited to share that Fast Forward—Fastly’s program supporting open source initiatives and communities—has recently added Mastodon as one of their latest program members. Mastodon is one of the most popular decentralized social networking platforms, but by far not the only one. In fact, there are multiple standardized, open protocols that implement federation, such as Activity Pub, the one used by Mastodon.
The Glitch community has already been busily building new tools and apps to help folks get started, create creative bots, and make the fediverse so much more interesting and we want to share them with you. Bookmark this post so you can tinker with them, or create a playlist of your favorites to try!
🎏 Fediverse community and posting tools
- ~fediring - static site generator that builds a linked ring of verified fediverse profiles, used by creator to make
- ~bottlenose-bubble-talon - Fediverse webring
- ~steep-parade - mastodon to twitter tool
🔎 Search tools
- ~nostr-twit - nostr-twitter bridge
- ~fedifinder - using your twitter account, search the fediverse for the handles of people you follow (our most viral app)
- ~yesindex - indexes posts (affectionately called toots) from your mutuals
~small-languid-centipede is a tool that allows you to search your local instance timeline using hashtags.
🛠 Make bots
- ~fedibotto - create a Mastodon bot with this starter
- ~stefans-creative-bots.glitch.me - a unique collection of bots to both follow and remix
- ~tinysubversions - build your own Fediverse bot server
🤖 Follow bots
- ~dailyquotes - masto bot that posts…daily quotes
- ~fortune-wide-class - generates random posts using tracery
- ~please-caption-mastodon - bot that reminds you to use image descriptions because accessibility helps us all
- ~owncast-mastodon-announce - post your Go Live events from your Owncast to the fediverse
👉 ActivityPub Projects besides Mastodon
- ~activitypub-starter-kit - get started with activitypub!
- ~activitypub - a very helpful debugging tool for activitypub
- ~suave-knowledgeable-crepe - convert rss to activitypub
- ~activitypub-viewer - view real-world ActivityPub objects as JSON
- ~activitypub-json-feed - ActivityPub outboxes into reformatted JSON feeds, inspired by micro.blog
- ~walnut-hail-cloche - a single instance server, remix it to create your own!
~microblog-sidebarjs-css remix to experiment with style.css to style your micro.blog feed from Sidebar.js!
▶️ Glitch Playlists
- https://glitch.com/@andypiper/fediverse-fun
- https://glitch.com/@Luca/discovering-the-fediverse
- https://glitch.com/@glitch/fediverse-of-madness - which has been updated to include everything recommended above! Have you created something for the fediverse? Let us know so we can share it here, add it to a playlist, or feature it on the blog. Reach out to us @[email protected] and let us know!