Webdeveloper

I started training Shotokan karate about four years ago.

A big part of our training is simple bodyweight workouts. Our sensei comes up with great exercises, but, as in many dojos, there isn’t really a written program you can follow at home. So when I trained outside the dojo, I constantly ran into the same problems:

  • Which exercises did we do last week?
  • What should I train today?
  • What was that variation again?

I looked for an app to just write down exercises and run through them during training. But most fitness apps tried to coach me, motivate me, or sell me programs. Lots of perfect bodies, lots of promises, but not much help if you already know what you want to train.

So I built Re:Do. It’s basically a simple tool to:

  • add exercises (often just a title is enough)
  • plan workouts across the week
  • start a workout and follow it while training
  • track what you actually did

No muscles on the screen. No fitness industry nonsense. Just your exercises and your training.

I’d love to hear what you think, especially if you do bodyweight training, martial arts, or similar disciplines.

Re:Do Workouts - A workout app for people who already know what they train. | Product Hunt

 

  

 

 

“Far Out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

A little solar system, far away, insignificant and quite an odd place to be. That’s how one of my favorite books describes where we all live. I think, despite the current rise in users, Mastodon and the Fediverse still look that way to many people.

My impression is that this is true for a significant part of my favorite community as well. Chris Wiegman wrote a powerful text on why WordPress should embrace the Fediverse, so that is covered. I want to focus more on how to migrate and not the “why”.

For everyone in the WordPress community who is just one last step away from leaving the commercialized and in many ways poisoned corporate social networks behind. Here is my guide to finding our little WordPress place on Mastodon in this huge collection of instances, blogs and applications we call the Fediverse.

Find an Instance

Mastodon is a decentralized network of instances (running the free Mastodon software) independently hosted, driven and funded by individuals with a wide range of intentions, goals and approaches. Sound familiar? Precisely! Working with WordPress or within the WordPress community, you should feel right at home. The WordPress blogging community and the Mastodon tooting community share much of the same foundation.

Take the same approach for finding an instance as for finding a blog you follow and ask yourself:

  • What is the instance about?
  • Who is running it?
  • What are the moderation rules?
  • Who else is here?

WordPress Mastodon Instances

If you want to consume a lot of WordPress content and/or intend to post some WordPress stuff yourself, a WordPress-related instance might be a good choice. The chances of finding a like-minded community and meaningful discourse are good. I host the WordPress instance wptoots.social; you’re welcome to join, but there are some other good choices:

  • wpbuilds.social (currently 47 active users) – hosted by Nathan Wrigley (@nathan@wpbuilds.social) maker of the WP Builds Podcast
  • dewp.space (currently 30 active users) – seems like a good choice if you feel at home in the German WordPress community
  • wp-social.net (currently 33 active users) – hosted by a WordPress hosting service
  • wptoots.social (currently 46 active users) – hosted by me
  • fosstodon.org (currently 26k active users) – if your interests are more about free software in general and you want a bigger instance
  • phpc.social (currently 2.1k active users) – if you see things more from the PHP side

To make your decision, I recommend starting by looking at the local timeline of an instance, if available without registration. That tells you what instance members have been up to. It also shows what you can expect regarding topics, posting frequency and tone of conversation. Take a look at the profile directory of each instance as well. And, of course, read the rules on the about page.

Many instances have more detailed community guides as well. These are interesting to learn more about how moderation works and what the instance’s members expect from you. For wptoots.social you can find our guide at community.wptoots.social.

Moving to another instance

A few words about moving to another instance. Perhaps you started on a more general instance and want to move to a WordPress-specific one. There is a documented process for moving, which works quite well. Moving works as follows:

  1. You keep your followers even on the new instance
  2. You can export a list of people you follow and re-follow all of them easily from the new instance
  3. Old posts stay on your old instance
  4. After you have moved, the old account from your previous instance (don’t delete it) will redirect to the new account

All in all, I think you can move without risks, especially if you don’t have a very large account.

Find people to follow

You’ve chosen your Fediverse home! Now you have to find people to follow and build a following. That can be tricky, because of the decentralized nature of Mastodon. The search function on your instance is limited to the content your instance “knows” about. That basically means what you can find in the federated timeline, which includes:

  • Content and users on your instance
  • Users followed by people on your instance, and their posts. These are the accounts they are are following
  • Posts and users from relayed instances

So if you search for WordPress, be aware that the search doesn’t show every WordPress post from across the entire Fediverse.

The WordPress community on Mastodon

If you are looking for WordPress folks to follow, I’ve got just the right thing for you. I’m curating a list of WordPress community members on Mastodon. Everyone on the list has at least one community badge on profiles.wordpress.org.

I’m always looking for new list members. There is a description of how to get onto the list on the website. Sharing is appreciated.

Follow #Hashtags

Additionally, another good way of keeping track of specific topics is following hashtags. First search for a hashtag on your instance (e.g. #wordpress). Then, follow by clicking the small follow icon to the right, above the hashtag content.

Find posts from users on unconnected instances

Every now and then (actually more and more) someone shares a Mastodon post or user with me in a chat or something. The problem is that following that link directs me to the user’s instance (not my own). So boosting, following and liking don’t work directly, because I don’t have an account on that instance. However, clicking on the boost icon of a post shows the following dialog:

Now, you only have to copy the value in the “On a different server” input field and paste it to your instance’s (or app’s) search field. The same works for following a user. Now you will see the post or user via your instance and can follow, boost, like and answer.

Find bots to fill your timeline with interesting things

If you are like me and use your social timeline as a source of news, blog-posts etc, you might be interested in finding some bots that post relevant content. Bots can be a really great way to keep track of new content, but clearly they can be very annoying as well. On wptoots.social we run a WordPress bot, watching sources curated by the community on GitHub, which I think is a great addition to my timeline!

Engage with the community

Now, you know how to do things, you just have to start doing them! The first step should be to set up a nice profile. You know the drill from every other social platform. Try to make it unique and ensure it says something about you. Write a short, informative bio and use hashtags in it to show your topics.

A nice way to make a statement and catch the eye of potential followers is an emoji in your nickname (where the birdsite’s verification badge is). On WordPress-related servers you might have a WordPress icon available. Here is an example on my profile:

Above you see that you can even use emojis in your bio, where we have a really special treat on wptoots.social. For every existing badge on profiles.wordpress.org we have a corresponding emoji. So I can integrate the icons from my WordPress profile page (and only those) in my Mastodon bio and show everyone what I stand for:

If you’re looking for real verification (not a blue verification icon everyone can use), you might want to verify your blog or website, as you can see in my Mastodon profile above. There are quite a few manuals for doing that, and some plugins as well.

Join the WordPress Community on Mastodon and the Fediverse

Finishing our small journey through the Fediverse for WordPress folks, I can only say: Please join us, it’s incredibly fun. In one Mastodon month I have connected and talked with more WordPress people than in several birdsite years. Concluding with Douglas Adams, of course:

The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.
– The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

 

Mastodon, a decentralized social media/microblogging platform, has become quite popular over the past weeks and months. There are many good reasons to consider a Mastodon migration, but for free software enthusiasts or WordPress lovers (like me), there are even more specific reasons to give Mastodon a try. I hope you find my reasons compelling, even if I’m biased because I run the WordPress-centered Mastodon instance wptoots.social.

1. You can choose a Mastodon instance relevant to the topics you are most interested in

Mastodon is decentralized and there are thousands of instances to choose from. So pick a home to start your Mastodon journey carefully! If you are specifically interested in WordPress, sign up on a WordPress-centered instance and become a part of its WordPress-centered community. You will instantly find people with the same interests!

Also take into account that little instances are more at risk of shutting down, while big instances can be hit by so many users that they might get slow at times. You can move your account, including followers, to another instance at any time (your posts will be left on the “old” instance, though).

2. The local timeline

On Mastodon you have three timelines. A home, local and federated timeline.

Mastodon timelines

If you have chosen a Mastodon instance, related to a topic you’re interested in, the local timeline might be the most interesting for you. Here you only see posts from users of your instance and, at least for the WordPress instances, they are right on topic most of the time. The home and federated timelines are a broader look into what’s going on with the people you follow and the people users on your instance follow.

3. Instance rules let you post, share and discuss in a safe environment

Every instance has its own rules. Everyone signing up agrees to them, and anyone violating them gets suspended (if moderators do their job, which they do in almost every case). So unlike many other platforms, you know what you’re signing up for and what you can expect. If you want to discuss WordPress professionally, you’ll just have to find an instance with a matching set of rules.

There is an argument that instances, and users choosing instances, can contribute to even stronger discourse and opinion bubbles. I think it’s too early to say if that’s true. But my hope is that there is a big difference between actively and consciously picking a community – and being influenced by an algorithm that makes you believe the whole world thinks like you.

4. Your content is not monetized

Content you produce and thoughts that you share shouldn’t be monetized without your active approval and only with the methods you have agreed to. Period.

5. Your content is not ranked by an algorithm optimized for engagement

Engagement, likes, shares and clicks are the daily bread and butter of commercial social media platforms. Of course their algorithms are optimized to encourage engagement which often favors polarized opinions and heated discussions.

They are not optimized, though, to favor more complex professional thoughts, balanced argumentation or input that broadens your professional point of view. But that’s what we can get on Mastodon with our WordPress postings.

6. Mastodon is built, owned, funded and driven by its community

The Mastodon Community is running Mastodon. It’s actually amazing that that’s working, if you think about it. But there are other examples, aren’t there? The WordPress project comes to mind and all the other FOSS projects! It would seem like there is no better fit for the WordPress Community than a Community-driven social network …

7. Mastodon is Free Software

You can’t argue with that one, can you?

8. Mastodon can’t be bought

Another obvious one, but there is more to it. Even if Mastodon could be bought (and single instances surely can), every admin in the community decides independently when to upgrade. If you don’t like the direction Mastodon is taking, you can fork it and run your own version. There is great power in that: Nothing can be changed without the explicit approval of the community. Democracy by design. And guess which other community can’t be bought either? You guessed right.

9. Most communities on Mastodon are actually nice

That might be changing over time, but for now I think this is true: Big parts of the community are positive, inclusive, accepting and open. Most people migrating are tired of the vibe of the big commercial platforms and actively working toward more constructive behavior on their new platform. And who knows? Maybe community-driven social networks are just nicer!

10. Meaningful exchange seems to be the rule not the exception on Mastodon

That’s more of a personal experience over the last weeks on my own instance. Everything I put out there (especially the WordPress and/or community-relevant stuff) is followed by meaningful comments, some good discussions, cheering and sharing. I’ve really learned a lot and find the response from my social network on Mastodon to be quite uplifting and enlightening. I’ve never felt that on the birdsite, to be honest.

Start your Mastodon migration

Convinced? Here are some starting points for your Mastodon migration:

Find an instance! If you’re looking for the WordPress community you are welcome to wptoots.social. Or try one of the other WordPress instances (I know of) wpbuilds.social or wp-social.net. If you are not only into WordPress, a bigger instance like fosstodon.org might be the right thing for you.

Find your community! That is incredibly difficult in the beginning and motivated me to make a list. Everyone on it has at least one community badge on profiles.wordpress.org and has agreed to be listed.

Enjoy!

Share!

While I’m at it, I thought a Mastodon WordPress instance for community members looking for a home on Mastodon would be cool.

https://wptoots.social

Mastodon as a decentralized social network seems like the perfect fit for a group as diverse and strong as the WordPress community. The instance should be able to handle a couple of hundred users, is actively maintained and has daily backups.

There is even a curated list of the WordPress Community on Mastodon.

And I promise: The instance will run indefinitely!

As a little extra you can add a WordPress badge in your nickname (like Twitter’s verified icon) and show the entire fediverse what you stand for.

I hope everyone out there who loves WordPress will share this and join! And follow me if you like:

@danielauener@wptoots.social