198
Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress (techcrunch.com)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
46 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So... if the backend gets moved over to Wordpress, and Wordpress can already federate, I guess this means Tumblr is coming to the fediverse? ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

all 48 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] 119 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Given how crufty Wordpress is, I don't even dare to imagine how bad the Tumblr backend must be that this is seen as an improvement by the developers.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Right? At this point I'm just sticking with WordPress because I can't be bothered to migrate a bunch of sites off of it. Every year for the past decade it's felt jankier. Tumblr's backend has to be a dumpster fire for this to seem like a good idea.

    My criticism aside, WP still has the convenience factor of being the open source web platform that has a plugin for just about any need. Whether those plugins are gonna break for site or introduce interesting new vulnerabilities is a different discussion.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Same boat here. I had some good times with it but these days it seems to be a bloated mess. Are there any good, lightweight alternatives these days?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Depends on what exactly you want to host. If you want commercially-hosted stuff, I'd stick with wordpress or whatever your host offers, but if you're selfhosting I'd look in !selfhosted@lemmy.world or https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#blogging-platforms.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I suppose what I'm looking for is a lightweight, multi-user CMS, with support for both static pages and a blog. If the blog could support (at least one-way) federation that'd be a bonus. It should ideally be built to work with both desktop and mobile devices (so that I can customise the look rather than build it from scratch).

    It's something I could build from scratch but if I can do it then I'm sure lots of more skilled people have done it better!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago

    There are Fediverse blog platforms but, as this is about Tumblr, what about a Fediverse tumbleblog? You've got:

    • Wafrn
    • Loforo: "Another surprise is that Loforo is the second most active ActivityPub blog platform in the Fediverse, behind only WordPress."
    • Goblin - mentioned in the previous article. It's a FireFish fork from a former Tumblr employee.
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [โ€“] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wordpress is all of those except lightweight, though I wouldn't really say it's a bear to manage either. I believe they have initial activitypub support as well.

    You can check the selfhosted list for alternatives, but I don't think I've seen one that would be a better fit.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 2 points 2 years ago

    I mostly find the design of WP clunky as all hell. I'd like to add some features to my site and doing so feels tremendously awkward. Learning how to implement stuff in their way of doing things doesn't feel worthwhile to me, I guess.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [โ€“] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're not alone, I've still got clients with WP sites and it feels more and more patchworky every time I use it. The vulnerabilities may keep me up at night, but it would take a ton of effort to move them over, and my clients certainly don't want to pay for that.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I see this all the time. People complain about WP but think the alternatives are better, when they're just trading problems for others.

    WP core is stable AF. I've shared in many prior comments how I spend so many more dev hours fixing other CMSes over WP.

    And if you don't even need a CMS, fuck it all and switch to static hosting and markdown.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 31 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This smells to me like WordPress reducing their workload more than anything since they own Tumblr (unless maybe there's some sort of financial incentive to increasing the number of WordPress blogs?).

    But also, considering that at one point in Tumblr's history, you could edit other people's posts, maybe it is an improvement.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    But also, considering that at one point in Tumblr's history, you could edit other people's posts, maybe it is an improvement.

    What ๐Ÿ˜ญ

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 10 points 2 years ago

    So the way Tumblr works is that your account is basically a blog, with your home page on the site being populated with posts from the accounts that you follow. You can reblog posts onto your own account and comment on them to create individual conversation threads like this one. At one point, there was a bug in the edit post system that let you edit the entirety of a post when you reblogged it, including what other people had said previously, and even the original post. This would only affect your specific reblog of it, of course, but you could edit a post to say something completely different from the original and create a completely unrelated comment chain.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [โ€“] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Could you elaborate?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 30 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Wordpress is a pile of decades old php code* that is held together with string and tape pretty much.

    *php isn't the problem itself, modern php is actually pretty nice.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago

    WordPress core is pretty wild. But modern WordPress isn't working purely in that. The latest WP uses PHP primarily as a backend, and modern JS as a frontend and passing data through filters->DB.

    I won't call it elegant. But it's not the PHP experience from five years ago.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [โ€“] 46 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Remember when Verizon paid a billion dollars to ruin Tumblr and get a fraction of that back for it?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ruin it by removing porn?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Regardless, many of us who didn't use Tumblr for NSFW content left in solidarity with NSFW content creators, curators, and consumers. There was a very progressive attitude on Tumblr, and trying to impose puritan content restrictions to lure more advertisers didn't sit well with the culture that had been established on Tumblr.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [โ€“] 25 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    This could indeed potentially lead to a future with tumblr on the fediverse. I don't see why not ๐Ÿคท

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 5 points 2 years ago

    The question is whether or not Tumblr users would want such a thing.

    I feel like the same thing will happen like when WordPress introduced a (bad) TikTok/streaming clone called Tumblr Live. I think less than 10% of the userbase ever interacted with it, most of the community openly hated it, and the people who did use it largely didn't use Tumblr themselves.

    I could see Tumblr users actively finding a way to defederate their blogs from everything Fediverse related.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [โ€“] 22 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Wordpress federation is pretty one directional, you can follow a blog from mastodon, but you can't use your blog to follow other people.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    I understood you could, with the friends plugin:

    If you also have the ActivityPub plugin installed, you can follow people on Mastodon and other ActivityPub-compatible social networks.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Interesting, I didn't realise that.

    However I assume they will be migrating them to wordpress.com, which is their proprietary hosted solution, as opposed to wordpress.org, which is the open source software. Plugins don't work on wordpress.com free accounts, only paid ones. I believe outward federation is integrated into .com though.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [โ€“] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I guess this means Tumblr is coming to the fediverse?

    There has been some signs and rumours to that effect since Mastodon started taking off; I believe Automatttic specifically advertised for ActivityPub developers to work on Tumblr?

    But Tumblr moving on to a Wordpress base only opens for the option of federation, if that is even accessible in the Wordpress installation that will drive Tumblr โ€” as I understand it. Or has the WP-ActivityPub plugin been rolled into core WP without me noticing?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [โ€“] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Oh boy my tumblr will be now 518% more hackable!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [โ€“] 5 points 2 years ago

    I believe there is already plans in the timeline to bring Tumblr to the fediverse.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •