I’ve been wanting to have a blog/personal website on the fediverse for a while, something close to neocities and I was wondering if you know of some platforms.
I see a lot of people recommend WordPress but recently I just discovered Hubzilla which seems like a good option but I don’t see anyone talk too much about it.
What’s the opinion on Hubzilla? and any other ideas? thanks :)
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Hubzilla is my number one daily driver (although I’m here as well). In fact, I’ve found this post on Hubzilla, forwarded by someone on Mitra, but I remembered just in time before commenting that I have a Lemmy account.
I guess the reason why hardly anyone seems to be talking about Hubzilla is that hardly anyone knows that it exists in the first place, and even fewer people know what it is and what it can do.
Let’s just say that whenever some other Fediverse server software is declared “the Swiss Army knife of the Fediverse”, then Hubzilla is the Leatherman Surge of the Fediverse by comparison. There’s just so much that you can do with it.
It has just about all the capabilities of a good blogging platform, up to and including its own WebDAV-enabled cloud file space that you can also use to upload images for your blog. Or for your webpages because, yes, Hubzilla can do that as well. In fact, the official Hubzilla website itself is a webpage on a Hubzilla channel.
In addition, it introduced nomadic identity to the wider Fediverse; or rather, an earlier incarnation of Hubzilla named Red did back in 2012. This also means that we aren’t talking about something that was cobbled together during or after the 2022 Mastodon hype, but something that’s actually older than Mastodon.
However, its learning curve is steep. For starters, that’s because it’s so powerful. It doesn’t dump features upon you; in fact, it’s very modular, and many features are actually add-ons that have to be activated. But that actually kind of adds to Hubzilla’s complexity. Besides, it isn’t and doesn’t try to be a clone of anything. It doesn’t mimic anything. It isn’t quite like anything else out there except maybe its other own family members.
At least Hubzilla probably has the best built-in help system in the Fediverse, and if that should fail, it has its own Hubzilla-based support forum.
Also, Hubzilla is very modular at hub (server) level. Not all features are available on all hubs. But there’s a way to check what optional features are available on which hub: Go to a hub that you’re interested in and add
/siteinfo/jsonto the domain. I’m not sure if that page lists installed third-party themes, though, because there certainly are third-party themes that make Hubzilla even better for blogging.I would not have known about it had OP not posted & you not commented, thank you.
Thanks for that reply! That was a great explanation :)
I was worried the project was being abandoned or something but seems it’s not. I’ll definitely use that then! Hopefully more people discover it and gets more attention!
Let’s just say that whenever some other Fediverse server software is declared “the Swiss Army knife of the Fediverse”, then Hubzilla is the Leatherman Surge of the Fediverse by comparison. There’s just so much that you can do with it.
It has just about all the capabilities of a good blogging platform, up to and including its own WebDAV-enabled cloud file space that you can also use to upload images for your blog.
Sorry I don’t get it. It does blogs, correct? How is that a swiss army knife on steroids?
I’m no expert, and I just now did quick research into hubzilla, but it looks like a fine option.
- MIT licensed FOSS, repo on gitlab, recently updated
- good for blogs and any size group of people in a social network
- supports activity pub, so connects to pleroma, friendica, mastodon, etc…
Yeah, good stuff. I also wonder why we don’t hear more about this?
Oh it didn’t occur to me to check it on gitlab! I was afraid of being abandoned or something but it seems it’s active and seems a good one. Hopefully more people discovers it since I think it deserves more attention!
Maybe because, at least in my experience, Hubzilla seems mainly used by grumpy old right wing bastards and European Nazis.
Ohhhhnoooo, really? Crap!
Maybe it’stime to make it be associated even more with good people then!
I’ve been playing with Emissary and having exactly the thought about that as GeoCities. No official instance or anything yet, but it seems to allow you to do just that. Has a WYSIWYG builder or HTML and CSS or markdown. Ben Pate, creator of Emissary, created bandwagon.FM with it.
I have experimented with microblog.pub in the past. It’s easy to set up, and federation worked just fine for me.
I put out a similar question a few months ago. For me, it’s getting an old multiuser blog off Wordpress.
I had a lot of good feedback that I’m still trying to collate, so I recommend you pour over the responses and crossposts for the full picture. As others have said here, though — despite the steep learning curve, Hubzilla looks really interesting.
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