Simple Mastodon Verification

Provides a General Settings menu option to define a rel=\”me\” in metatags for the whole site and also individual contributors.

Admin verification

The plugin will add a field at the bottom of the General Settings page (Admin Dashboard > Settings>General Settings), labelled “Verify Mastodon URL”. The field should accept any valid mastodon user URL up to three sub-domains deep. i.e. https://mastodon.social/@user to https://my.mastodon.del.icio.us/@user The plugin does not accept Mastodon addresses (@[email protected])

When a valid URL has been saved, a tag containing a rel=”me” link pointing to the Mastodon user profile will be added near the top of the site’s metadata (between elements). If a link to the WordPress instance is added as one of that user’s profile metadata, the Mastodon instance will validate the ownership of the URL and add a green “verified” banner to the URL.

Author verification

If an Administrator enables the “Verify Authors’ profiles” option on the General Settings page (Admin Dashboard > Settings>General Settings), a field labelled “Mastodon URL” will be added to users’ profile pages (under “contact info”).

When a valid URL has been saved, a tag containing a rel=”me” link will be added to the metadata (between elements) on the Author’s archive page only. If a link to the WordPress Author archive is added as one of that’s user’s profile metadata, the Mastodon instance will validate the ownership of the URL and add a green “verified” banner to the URL.

Plugin Development

Simple Mastodon Verification development is managed on GitHub, with official releases published on WordPress.org. The GitHub repo can be found at https://github.com/mckinnon/simple-mastodon-verification.

Install the plugin from the WordPress store and enable in the Plugin menu. Configure on the General Settings page, then on User profile pages.

Note for WordPress.com users
1. Installing this plugin on WordPress.com requires a paid subscription.
2. Configuring and enabling this plugin requires entering ‘Classic View’ from the dashboard Screen (top right). The ‘Default View’ is Auttomatic’s in-house UI and is not compatible with many WordPress plugin APIs.

Note on fediverse:creator meta tags
Mastodon v4.3 added support for Open Graph (“Twitter Cards”) by adopting a <meta name="fediverse:creator"... tag. I initially intended to support this tag in SMV v.2 but will not be doing that. Doing so requires implementing Open Graph support, and that takes this plugin away from the “Simple” philosophy I promised in the name.

Project maintained on GitHub at https://github.com/mckinnon/simple-mastodon-verification

2.0.3

• WP standards require adding CSS to the head instead of inline. Rather than enqueue a .css containing only input:invalid{}, I have removed the style.

2.0.2

• Improved escaping and headers to comply with WP standards.

2.0.1

• Remove support for fediverse:creator meta tag. See Installation page for details.

2.0.0

• Add support for fediverse:creator meta tag

1.1.3

• Improve I18N Issue

1.1.2

• Remove closing PHP tag

1.1.1

• Site-wide Mastodon URL restricted to https to match changes to Mastodon v4.0.

1.1.0

• Added support for users to verify using Author’s page

1.0.2

• Initial commit to WordPress plugin store