Crossposted from https://kbin.earth/m/[email protected]/t/2330341

Crossposting to get more input (on the actual issues)

Fedi folks, I turn to you for advice with a bit of a problem. I co-admin an ActivityPub-enabled Wordpress site with 15+ years worth of blog posts and a couple of long podcast series. When WP announced their “vision” to become a CMS for “AI”, the collective admin reaction was to get the hell off that boat before it turned to algorithmic shit.

[NB — I realise this isn’t an anti-“AI” community, but that part is only the starting premise of our situation here. I’m not getting into discussions with slop herders in the comments]

We’re a loose network of nerds discussing the speculative genres, including sci-fi. We’ve seen this movie, we know how it’s going to play out. Trouble is, we’re not coders. We can assemble the proverbial IKEA flatpak kit and give it a lick of CSS paint, but we can’t be trusted to build furniture we’d want to sit in ourselves.

The crunch points for alternatives are

• the ability to migrate an old, multi-user WP site without breaking too many canonical URLs and feeds,

• needing a somewhat familiar backend for most of the non-techie contributors to even post stuff, and

• the federation bit, which is why I post this to !fediverse first. I am aware that setting up an essentially new fedi instance at the same address as a previous one is disencouraged. I’ll be glad to hear how or if this can be avoided while preserving profile and post URLs…

So last month I mined the Mastodon hive mind for existing alternatives to WP with fediverse capabilities, and got a selection of qualified responses. I nixed WriteFreely and Plume early on, because while they are perfectly good, federated blog software, my impression is they lean toward a text focused minimalist layout that would be hard to deviate from, where our current site has a bit more pizzazz.

Going through the alternatives listed below, maybe that’s a superficial reason to throw some good options out with the bath water. Either way, I’m presenting you with the most frequent, feasible, and/or interesting offers. I’ve done some surface research and weighed pros and cons for our use case, but I hope there are people out there who can add their experience to the eventual decision:

ClassicPress

This should be a shoo-in, right? It’s basically Wordpress with some newer parts torn out (specifically the Gutenberg block editor), but most of the core architecture remains. Including many, many plug-ins. Plus, they’re said to have sworn off any “AI” nonsense. Migration would be relatively easy, and with a little bit of luck nobody would even know the difference.

Except apparently compatibility with the WP-activityPub plugin broke. So that’s out of the window.

Ghost

A lot of recommendations for Ghost! I believe it was originally another Wordpress fork, but was completely rewritten early on? Either way, a few things turn me off Ghost as an potential alternative:

• The insistent “we help you monetize your content” vibe on the project website. That’s a personal quibble; our site is just entirely non-commercial for the sake of everybody’s well-being. I’m told all of that stuff can be turned off in individual installs, though.

• Ghost’s ActivityPub implementation is reportedly not making great progress despite enthusiastic early announcements? If that’s not a deal breaker,

• the fact that the Ghost devs are relying on agentic LLMs to code the application is. Just nope.

Backdrop CMS/Drupal

From what I’m told, Drupal is a step up the CMS learning curve from Wordpress, but since they’re projects that have coexisted for a long time, there are established and tried migration methods from one to the other.

I’m not exactly on top of Drupal’s ActivityPub implementation, though. But even if that’s in a workable shape, Drupal is trying to pitch itself as “the best AI-powered Open Source CMS in the world”. Which, to me, is like saying you only put the sharpest razor blades available in kids’ Hallowe’en candy.

One user involved in the Backdrop CMS fork from Drupal 7 made convincing arguments for that over later Drupal versions, so here’s hoping they drank the right (ie., federated, not algorithmic) Kool Aid.

Hubzilla

Now, this may be the most exciting but also most challenging alternative. Hubzilla is a fairly advanced, and in some ways mold-breaking Fediverse application. From the same developer who made Friendica and (streams), and, if I understand correctly, based on the same core principles.

In contrast to Wordpress and Drupal, Hubzilla declares itself “a CMS which doesn’t use LLM / AI”. Can’t say I don’t appreciate that signalling! And of course the whole package revolves around federation. But wait.

The CMS part may be technically correct, but as far as I can tell making Hubzilla present as a plain blog or website requires some advanced stylesheet finagling — and the application only comes with one official, microblog-esque theme. I haven’t found any open projects trying to bridge that visual gap, but will appreciate your tips about them if they exist.

For Hubzilla to be a feasible alternative here, we will also need to be able to migrate existing posts, media, users and comments from Wordpress. Preferably in a way that doesn’t mess up permalinks too badly. A quick glance at Hubzilla urls indicate that the entire architecture is very different. I assume concepts like “channels” substitute “authors”(?) but I don’t know where we are with WP terms like taxonomies.

So there’s a challenge, and I’m hoping others have tried (and hopefully succeeded in) that particular migration… or at least have advice to offer.

Bonus: Bonfire

I’m putting this on the table because I expect somebody is going to suggest it in the comments. Like Hubzilla, Bonfire looks really interesting as a Swiss army knife for the Fediverse: You want to make a blog? Take these modules. A community forum? Try these other ones. It’s federated first, and it seems to make good headway toward its goals.

But there is no official CMS flavour is still in development; we have no idea about migration possibilities, and honestly? The more mature Hubzilla will be a challenge, I’m fairly certain this is a step further out of our comfort zone. This is totally an “us” problem, not a Bonfire one.

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So, thoughts? Specifically practical advice on Hubzilla and/or/versus Backdrop, which I think are the most realistic avenues right now. But there may be alternatives I just didn’t see even though they’re right in front of me.

I’m ready to have my mind changed on WriteFreely, or to hear about something completely new to me. Mostly though, I’m hoping for replies that consider the massive history of posts and comments that we look to import into the next generation of our site.

Thanks in advance!