3 wk. ago • 97%

Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress

techcrunch.com Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress | TechCrunch

Tumblr is making the move to WordPress. After its 2019 acquisition by WordPress.com parent company Automattic in a $3 million fire sale, the new owner has

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

Technology @lemmy.zip Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress

Technology @lemmy.world Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress

48 comments

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.

119
- 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.
  
  32
  
  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?
  
  6
  
  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.
  
  5
- 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.
  
  31
  
  But also, considering that at one point in Tumblr's history, you could edit other people's posts, maybe it is an improvement.
  
  What 😭
  
  6
- It makes sense.
  
  Supporting Tumblr backend with patches vs building on top of stable WP and improving it seems like a win win.
  
  10
- Tumblr's backend has been passed between several companies* for several decades, it's a miracle it still works and can be updated
  
  *some of which don't even know what tumblr is
  
  8
- Could you elaborate?
  
  5
  
  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.
  
  30
Remember when Verizon paid a billion dollars to ruin Tumblr and get a fraction of that back for it?

46
- Ruin it by removing porn?
  
  23
  
  That was the whole purpose of tumblr so yeah. I kid, as I did get started on there at like 14 as a part of various Fandoms, but by the time I was 18 I had been using it for porn for quite some time, largely because fandom is also mostly for porn.
  
  19
This could indeed potentially lead to a future with tumblr on the fediverse. I don't see why not 🤷

25
- Give it to meee
  
  29
- Tumblr announced they were gonna integrate with ActivityPub years ago. It’s been silence on the topic since then, hopefully this move to Wordpress is a step towards joining the Fediverse.
  
  The link to the original TechCrunch article doesn’t seem to be working, but here’s a mirror on Slashdot: https://m.slashdot.org/story/407458
  
  14
- 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.
  
  5
Wordpress federation is pretty one directional, you can follow a blog from mastodon, but you can't use your blog to follow other people.

22
- 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.
  
  6
  
  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.
  
  4
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 — as I understand it. Or has the WP-ActivityPub plugin been rolled into core WP without me noticing?

12
- The AP plugin isn't in core but it's developed by Automattic.
  
  6
  
  True. All I'm saying is, it's not a given that a WPified Tumblr will use it as a default.
  
  2
Oh boy my tumblr will be now 518% more hackable!

6
- How so?
  
  5
  
  By being moved to the main Wordpress branch, where everything has been known to be hackable since 1999, rather than staying in Tumbr's however-modified branch where probably some exploits don't work or have unexpected results.
  
  1
I believe there is already plans in the timeline to bring Tumblr to the fediverse.

5

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