Ghost is joining the Fediverse and adding ActivityPub

[joseph]

@jrl-abstract27 Does the cloudron ghost package need anything special to support this? If it's part of Ghost, it probably already works.

[jdaviescoates]

@joseph it's due in Ghost 6.0 so presumably once that's released and on Cloudron we'll be ready to roll.

[jdaviescoates]

The latest here https://activitypub.ghost.org/ramping-up-for-expansion/ (via the excellent https://selfh.st newsletter)

[jrl-abstract27]

The Ghost V6 is live. This is a big update guys @jdaviescoates @girish -> https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/releases/tag/v6.0.0

And the doc -> https://www.notion.so/ghost/Ghost-6-0-Self-Hosting-Guide-20751439c030802aab77e7da43e0eb43

[samuk]

Has anyone got this working on cloudron yet? I just get an error

I see this in the logs
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/feed/reader/" 404 19ms
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/account/me/" 404 50ms
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/account/me/follows/following/" 404 55ms
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/users/index/" 404 55ms
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/blocks/accounts/" 404 55ms
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/blocks/domains/" 404 54ms
Aug 17 16:41:45 [2025-08-17 15:41:45] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/notifications/unread/count/" 404 51ms

It seems Pikapods got it working with a caddyfile snippet and an env variable https://forum.ghost.org/t/activitypub-on-pikapods/59510/14

When restarting the container I see this in the logs

Aug 17 16:58:55 [2025-08-17 15:58:55] INFO Explore Response 200 OK
Aug 17 16:58:55 [2025-08-17 15:58:55] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/site/" 404 147ms
Aug 17 16:58:55 [2025-08-17 15:58:55] ERROR Could not get webhook secret for ActivityPub FetchError: invalid json response body at https://news.transitionnetwork.org/.ghost/activitypub/v1/site/ reason: Unexpected token '<', "<!DOCTYPE "... is not valid JSON
Aug 17 16:58:55 [2025-08-17 15:58:55] ERROR No webhook secret found - cannot initialise
Aug 17 16:59:00 [2025-08-17 15:59:00] INFO "GET /" 301 8ms

I also see this one

Aug 17 17:02:01 [2025-08-17 16:02:01] INFO "GET /.ghost/activitypub/v1/site/" 404 32ms

Update: found this https://forum.ghost.org/t/activitypub-on-pikapods/59510/30

[jdaviescoates]

@samuk said in Ghost is joining the Fediverse and adding ActivityPub:

Has anyone got this working on cloudron yet? I just get an error

I get the same thing over on https://uniteddiversity.coop :

But on https://nzts.info and https://westdorset.news I see this:

And I can click through all of the Next buttons telling me what it's all about and then land here:

But if I search for myself either using https://mastodon.uniteddiversity.coop/@josef or @josef@uniteddiversity.coop it doesn't find me

And then after clicking on Profile it says Profile now found:

And after clicking on Preferences it just ends up here again:

So, was a bit more promising/ hopeful, but ultimately the same

[nebulon]

So @girish did some investigation on this and it turns out this is implemented in some other project for ghost https://github.com/TryGhost/ActivityPub and with the lack of upstream documentation it is not super clear yet how to deploy this and if this should be within the current ghost app package or as a standalone one. I think he can give a more detailed explanation later though.

[firmansi]

I am actually disappointed with latest major release of Ghost, it's not even better than previous one, not just for the Activitypub which I experience issues like discussed in this thread, also in this last version, if we don't have Tinybird installed, we can't use the analytics properly, previously i can see those who clicks our newsletter, but now we can only see numbers of click without knowing which members. I really hope someone from Ghost blog can see this thread and see how the latest update is a disappointment to some loyal users

[girish]

ActivityPub integration should work in the latest package.

[samuk]

Amazing! Can't wait to try it out.

[jdaviescoates]

Seems to work!