Hi,

Lemmy can also function as a blogging platform. Doing this is as simple as creating a community and enabling the option “Only moderators can post to this community”. Now only you and other people that you invite can create posts, while everyone else can comment. Like any Lemmy community, it is also possible to follow from other Fediverse platforms and over RSS. For advanced usage, it is even possible to use the API and create a different frontend which looks more blog-like.

(Source)

Does this apply to PieFed as well ?

Thanks

    • KaKi87@jlai.luOP
      7·
      21 days ago

      for maximum autonomy you might consider creating your own instance

      Indeed.

      In fact, I already created a Lemmy instance for this purpose, but it’s not going well : apparently federation isn’t working, and there aren’t any tools available to determine what’s wrong and how to fix it… So now I’m considering the alternative platform that is PieFed.

      • Dave@lemmy.nz
        5·
        21 days ago

        Piefed uses the same technology to federate, so does Piefed have tools to determine federation problems?

          • Rimu@piefed.socialMEnglish
            4·
            20 days ago

            In the admin UI it shows all the activities that are going in and out, and the JSON of each activity can be viewed:

            table

          • Dave@lemmy.nz
            1·
            20 days ago

            Looks like it is!

            But whatever issue you are having with federation is most likely not related to Lemmy itself. Piefed is a solid choice though, so if it helps you get it sorted then great!

            For federation issues, I would check various things like where are you hosted (if at home, do you have a public IP?)? Are you hosting in Singapore, China, or other areas that commonly host AI scrapers as many Lemmy instances block IP ranges from those areas? Was your instance set up with a domain name that you have been using since the beginning (if you change your domain name or move to a subdomain then federation won’t work). Are you using Cloudflare or similar - if so, be aware that federation is bot traffic, any settings around blocking bots or AI will break federation. Remember your instance has to be publicly accessible to receive anything!

            Also see this showing the federation state of instances (enter your own if you are having trouble with outbound, enter a remote one if you are having trouble with inbound then check where your site is): https://phiresky.github.io/lemmy-federation-state/site?domain=lemmy.world

            Also see this for showing which instances are having trouble with federation. Set targets along the top: https://grafana.lem.rocks/d/edf3gjrxxnocgd/federation-health-activities-behind?orgId=1&var-instance=All&var-remote_instance=lemmy.world&var-remote_software=All

            • KaKi87@jlai.luOP
              2·
              20 days ago

              where are you hosted

              At Netcup, in Germany.

              Was your instance set up with a domain name that you have been using since the beginning

              Yes, and it’s very fresh.

              Are you using Cloudflare or similar

              No and never.

              Remember your instance has to be publicly accessible to receive anything!

              Yes.

              see this showing the federation state of instances

              All numbers are at zero : https://phiresky.github.io/lemmy-federation-state/site?domain=blog.kaki87.net

              see this for showing which instances are having trouble with federation

              Hmm, how does that one work ?

              • Dave@lemmy.nz
                1·
                20 days ago

                Hmm, how does that one work ?

                Instances report the latest activity ID through a public API endpoint. This compares the latest across instances. I can’t remember the details, but one thing to remember is that not every instance gets every activity so it’s not 100% accurate.

                The way federation works is that you subscribe to a community, then that community starts sending your instance new content from the community posted after you subscribe.

                If you have no subscribers, then you have no federation.

                Check out https://lemmy-federate.com/ for getting federation started. This lets you enter a community and instances that have signed up will have a special account subscribe which causes your community to start sending content to their instance.

                You can also post in special lemmy communities for letting people know about your new community.

                Hopefully this is all the issue is! Have you tried using your account on your instance for commenting on other instances, e.g. replying to me here?

                • KaKi87@jlai.luOP
                  2·
                  17 days ago

                  But if one uses search to fetch my article from their instance and comment on it, shouldn’t my instance still receive the comment ?

                  Because I don’t really want to send content to instances, I just want the abovementioned scenario to work, basically the purpose I see in Lemmy as a blog is to enable readers to interact with me from their own instance, which solves the issue with CMS-powered blogs which whom people never interact with because of not wanting to create an account there.

                  Thanks

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    21 days ago

    I swear kbin had something like this active by default along with ability to add mastadon folks and such. Unfortunately the feeds were seperate though so it largely caused it to be unused.

  • 鴉河雛@PieFed@pf.korako.meEnglish
    1·
    20 days ago

    Yes, you can definitely use PieFed as a blog — and honestly, there are many other creative ways to use it too.

    I actually used Lemmy as a blog alternative in the past, and that hasn’t changed now that I’ve moved to PieFed .
    Also, as mentioned, I’ve seen people build custom frontends for Lemmy to make it look more like a blog.