Webfinger(?/APub?) problem with WP in subfolder

  • Resolved TheVoidTLMB

    (@thevoidtlmb)


    1 year, 10 months ago

    Hi,

    I have a website, and a WordPress install on it in a subfolder. I’m hosted on Dreamhost.
    I installed ActivityPub and set it up okay, but can’t find the account @[email protected] via Mastodon.
    I installed webfinger. Site Health shows an error: “WebFinger endpoint is not accessible”.
    My site has a /.well-known/ folder in the root. There is no /.well-known/ folder in the subfolder (the root of the WP install).

    I’ve searched and read quite a few threads around this problems, but I’ve found it confusing, and I don’t know if it’s a problem with .well-known, or with Dreamhost, or with .htaccess or some combination or something else. (I also don’t know if this should be in the ActivityPub forum or the Webfinger forum. Apologies it’s in the wrong place.)

    I have another site (entirely different URL), also on Dreamhost, with a WP which is hosted on a subdomain, and ActivityPub (without webfinger) gets that one on to the fediverse fine.

    Given that I don’t want to move the problem WP to a subdomain, but leave it in its subfolder, can you please advise how to get this WP to appear on the fediverse?
    Thanks.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author Matthias Pfefferle

    (@pfefferle)

    1 year, 10 months ago

    Hey @thevoidtlmb 👋

    the problem here is, that WebFinger (the .well-known path) always has to be at the root level of your domain. If you want to get it to work, you have to configure your Webserver to forward the requests from the root /.well-known/webfinger path, to your subfolder /your-subfolder/.well-known/webfinger .

    Maybe this helps you with the configuration: https://github.com/Automattic/wordpress-activitypub?tab=readme-ov-file#what-if-you-are-running-your-blog-in-a-subdirectory

    Thread Starter TheVoidTLMB

    (@thevoidtlmb)

    1 year, 10 months ago

    Hi Matthias,
    Thanks for the reply. I added the rewrite rule to my root .htaccess file

    RedirectMatch "^\/\.well-known/(webfinger|nodeinfo|x-nodeinfo2)(.*)$" /blog/.well-known/$1$2

    ..making sure to change /blog/ to my /b/ (my WP subfolder). My Site Health now no longer has the error message for webfinger. Thanks. But, I still can’t see @thebka via a Mastodon search (either with or without @kendama.co.uk afterwards). Maybe I just need to wait a while, but I want to write out exactly why (still) I’m unclear about things:

    1. After installing webfinger, I can see /.well-known/ in my root folder. There’s nothing in it apart from an empty folder “acme-challenge”. (I think acme-challenge is to do with Dreamhost’s implementation of Let’s Encrypt. Actually, maybe the folder root/.well-known/ was already there before I installed webfinger?)
    2. Having added the rewrite rule, I expect any requests for the webfinger file to be redirected to look for /.well-known/ in my subdirectory, right? But there is no such folder in my subdirectory. Should I create one manually? Or should I copy the one in my root folder there?
    3. I also think there ought to be a file called “webfinger” , with no extension, in the /.well-known/ folder, right? There isn’t such a file in my root/.well-known/ folder. Should there be? If so, why isn’t it there?
    4. If there should be such a file, where do I get it? Or do I just create one in a text editor and remove the .txt extension? I can do that, but I don’t know what the contents of the file need to be.
    5. Assuming I create such a file, should it go *only* in /subfolder/.well-known/ , or should I put it in root/.well-known/ too? (I assume not, given the re-write rule above.)

    Thanks for your patience.,
    Void

    Thread Starter TheVoidTLMB

    (@thevoidtlmb)

    1 year, 10 months ago

    Update: After doing nothing else but waiting a while, the account is now showing up in a search for @thebka in my Mammoth app, although not (yet?) via a web interface search. I guess that means the .htaccess rewrite rule did the trick. (I’m still confused though! 🙂 )

    Plugin Author Matthias Pfefferle

    (@pfefferle)

    1 year, 10 months ago

    I can see your account in the WebUI of Mastodon.social, so maybe Mastodon has the wrongly configured site in the cache and it takes some time.

    You already have 3 followers btw. 🎉

    Thread Starter TheVoidTLMB

    (@thevoidtlmb)

    1 year, 10 months ago

    🙂 Thanks.

    wimpelgrim

    (@wimpelgrim)

    1 year, 9 months ago

    I added a .htaccess file to my root folder and pasted the code by @thevoidtlmb. I also installed the Webfinger plugin. But still Site Diagnostics keeps telling me Webfinger isn’t accessible. Any suggestions?

    I host my website on my Synology NAS with Wordpres 6.6.1.

    Plugin Author Matthias Pfefferle

    (@pfefferle)

    1 year, 9 months ago

    @wimpelgrim can you share some more details? Site domain or WebFinger handle for example?

    wimpelgrim

    (@wimpelgrim)

    1 year, 9 months ago

    I host my WordPress at http://www.wimpelgrim.nl/persoonlijk. I installed the Webfinger plugin and Activitypub Plugin and have added the line by TheVoidTLMB to my root htaccess. But still got Webfinger endpoint not accessible in Site Diagnosis.

    And I can’t find a .well-known anywhere in my WordPress folders.

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by wimpelgrim.
    • This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by wimpelgrim.
    Thread Starter TheVoidTLMB

    (@thevoidtlmb)

    1 year, 8 months ago

    Hi, I’m back. I made a new blog post on Sep 9th, but I only just realised that I hadn’t seen it anywhere on Masto. I searched for the user on both moth.social and mastodon.social, finding it okay, but not with the latest post showing. Refreshed several times, waited a few hours, but no sign of it. I made another test post on the blog earlier today (Classic “Test, please ignore” 🙂 ), and that didn’t show up either. (I’ve since deleted that one.) I’m pretty sure I haven’t changed anything on the set-up since my post of 12th August, barring updating to 3.2.5.

    So I came back here, and saw your post here, Matthias, suggesting the “cheat” of searching for the post’s URL in Masto (moth.social). It worked, yay! But it would be nice not to have to do that every time. It’s not likely to be a very active blog – I don’t know if that would be relevant. Any ideas on why my Sep 7th post didn’t show up?

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by TheVoidTLMB. Reason: wrong date
Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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