I think Ghost might be the best option. They just launched their beta Fediverse integration a few days ago.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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After playing around for a bit, this really looks like the best option. I will wait until federation support gets added to the self-hosted version though.
It's already available
E: "available" but not yet functional. Sorry.
Oh, thanks for the heads up, I didn't notice.
Apparently not.
2 days ago from a contributor on the Ghost GitHub Issuetracker:
ActivityPub is currently not supported for self hosted setups, we're working on getting everything working smoothly internally first before adding official support for self hosted setups!
I'm telling you as someone that self-hosts it that it is available.
Hmm... interesting. I don't understand that GitHub comment then.
I should clarify, I suppose. "Available" as in you can go into the settings and turn it on. I assumed there was something wrong with my personal install when it didn't work but I guess it's just not finished yet. Sorry about that.
Did u end up making it work?
No.
Some people use Lemmy. If you create a community and set it to moderator only mode you'll be able to post updates as new threads that are federated without random people starting conversations outside of the posts.
Wordpress (with plugin)
There's WriteFreely for example. There's also Plume, but looks like it's not actively maintained anymore.
I wanted to try WriteFreely, but their federation seems to be broken according to this ticket. And the fediverse observer shows 0 WriteFreely comments since January 2025.
Wtf, how have I not heard that writefreely hasn't federated since Xmas?
I’m not sure what version they’re running on their flagship but I last posted from there on March 20th and my blog federated to Mastodon.
More for the OP but if you’re looking for a blog with a comment section, I wouldn’t recommend WriteFreely at present. Customization is also unnecessarily painful.
It does federate. Social features are rudimentary. I end up using my existing microblogs to promote the posts anyway.
I knew all that going in and chose it anyway. It’s not for everyone but it does what I need it to at a price I’m fine with.
For me federation is working to mastodon, but I don't think comments are really out yet, but I use cactus comments for it, but that doesn't federate to mastodon, it federates to matrix. It also requires a matrix server, which was a total pita to set up.
Even more interesting IMO: what are the options that do not involve self-hosting (thus avoiding the PITA of babysitting a domain and server security)?
You don't have to self host Ghost. They charge a very reasonable flat fee.
Did not know that. Useful.
Hosted Wordpress with ActivityPub plugin
Full DB-driven monster for a few bytes of text. Sledgehammer to crack a nut if you ask me. But sure, this is the obvious answer.
Eh... Wordpress isn't that heavy. Probably not as heavy as matrix or even Mastodon. It's a very versatile, expandable and easy to use platform which I'd strongly recommend.
Sure, it's fine. But if I'm only publishing text and photos, and I don't need tons of specialized plugins, and I'm dealing with things myself - then personally I will go with a static-site generator every time. It's at least as fast, and more secure by design.