Beschreibung

WebFinger allows you to be discovered on the web using an identifier like you@yourdomain.com — similar to how email works, but for your online identity.

Why is this useful?

Fediverse & Mastodon: WebFinger is essential for federation. It allows Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered platforms to find and follow your WordPress site.
Decentralized Identity: People can look you up using your WordPress domain, making your site the canonical source for your online identity.
Works with other plugins: This plugin provides the foundation that other plugins (like the ActivityPub plugin) build upon.

How it works:

When someone searches for @you@yourdomain.com on Mastodon or another federated service, their server asks your WordPress site: „Who is this person?“ WebFinger answers that question by providing information about you and links to your profiles.

Technical details:

WebFinger is an open standard (RFC 7033) that enables discovery of information about people and resources on the internet. It works by responding to requests at /.well-known/webfinger on your domain.

Installation

From WordPress.org (recommended)

Go to Plugins Add New in your WordPress admin
Search for „webfinger“
Click Install Now, then Activate
Make sure pretty permalinks are enabled (Settings Permalinks — select any option except „Plain“)
Visit Tools Site Health to verify everything is working

Manual Installation

Download the plugin from WordPress.org or GitHub
Upload the webfinger folder to /wp-content/plugins/
Activate the plugin in Plugins Installed Plugins
Enable pretty permalinks if not already active
Check Tools Site Health to confirm the setup

FAQ

How do I customize my WebFinger identifier?

Go to Users Profile in your WordPress admin and scroll down to the „WebFinger“ section. There you can set a custom identifier (the part before the @) and see all your WebFinger aliases.

How do I check if WebFinger is working?

Visit Tools Site Health in your WordPress admin. The plugin adds checks that verify your WebFinger endpoint is accessible and properly configured. If there are any issues, you’ll see guidance on how to fix them.

Does this work with Mastodon?

Yes! WebFinger is the standard that Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms use to discover users. When someone searches for @you@yourdomain.com, WebFinger tells them where to find your profile.

Do I need pretty permalinks?

Yes. WebFinger requires pretty permalinks to be enabled. Go to Settings Permalinks and select any option other than „Plain“.

For developers: How do I add custom data to the WebFinger response?

Use the webfinger_data filter to add your own links or properties:

add_filter( 'webfinger_data', function( $data ) {
  $data['links'][] = array(
    'rel'  => 'http://example.com/rel/profile',
    'href' => 'http://example.com/profile',
    'type' => 'text/html',
  );
  return $data;
} );

For developers: How do I add alternate output formats?

Use the webfinger_render action to output custom formats (like XRD):

add_action( 'webfinger_render', function( $webfinger ) {
  // Set custom headers and output your format
  // ...
  exit;
}, 5 );

See https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-webfinger-legacy for a complete example.

Where can I learn more about WebFinger?

WebFinger specification: RFC 7033
Community resources: http://webfinger.net

Rezensionen

Khürt Williams 11. November 2023

I installed Webfinger and typed in the domain for my website into Mastodon instance photog.social. Mastodon immediately found ky ActivityPub endpoints.

ffpf 20. Januar 2023

Adding this plugin adds handling for the WebFinger protocol for your existing users. For example, when someone searches for you on Mastodon, your server will be queried for accounts using an endpoint that looks like this: GET ${MASTODON_DOMAIN}/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:${MASTODON_USER}@${MASTODON_DOMAIN} So, if you have a WordPress blog with the URL blog.domain and that blog has a user (you can see users in the Users admin panel) named user1, then the webfinger URL for that user would be: blog.domain/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:user1@blog.domain This plugin implements handling for such requests for any user on the WordPress site without any additional configuration.

sunriselane 15. Januar 2023 1 Antwort

There’s no admin panel and the documentation isn’t clear about how to configure the plugin.

Alle 3 Rezensionen lesen

Mitwirkende und Entwickler

„WebFinger“ ist Open-Source-Software. Folgende Menschen haben an diesem Plugin mitgewirkt:

Übersetze „WebFinger“ in deine Sprache.

Interessiert an der Entwicklung?

Durchstöbere den Code, sieh dir das SVN Repository an oder abonniere das Entwicklungsprotokoll per RSS.

Änderungsprotokoll

Project maintained on github at pfefferle/wordpress-webfinger.

4.0.1

Fixed: Handle WP_Error objects in filter_by_rel to prevent errors when WebFinger lookup fails

4.0.0

Added: Site Health integration to check your WebFinger setup status directly in WordPress
Added: User profile settings to customize your WebFinger identifier
Added: Verification links to easily test your WebFinger aliases
Improved: Security hardening for URI parsing and input validation
Improved: Modernized codebase for PHP 7.2+ with namespace support
Improved: Better organized code structure with separate classes
Updated: Development infrastructure with GitHub Actions for automated testing

3.2.7

Added: better output escaping
Fixed: stricter queries

3.2.6

remove E-Mail address

3.2.5

fix typo

3.2.4

update requirements

3.2.3

fixed acct scheme for discovery

3.2.2

fixed typo (thanks @ivucica)
use acct as default scheme

3.2.1

make acct protocol optional

3.2.0

global refactoring

3.1.6

added user_nicename as resource
fixed WordPress coding standard issues

3.1.5

fixed PHP warning

3.1.4

updated requirements

3.1.3

add support for the ‚aim‘, ‚ymsgr‘ and ‚acct‘ protocol

3.1.2

fixed the legacy code
added feeds

3.1.1

fixed ‚get_user_by_various‘ function

3.1.0

Added WebFinger legacy plugin, because the legacy version is still very popular and used by for example OStatus (Mastodon, Status.NET and GNU Social)
Added Webfinger for posts support

3.0.3

composer support
compatibility updates

3.0.2

get_avatar_url instead of custom code
some small code improvements
nicer PHP-docs

3.0.1

updated version informations
support the WordPress Coding Standard

3.0.0

added correct error-responses
remove legacy support for XRD and host-meta (props to Will Norris)

2.0.1

small bugfix

2.0.0

complete refactoring
removed simple-web-discovery
more filters and actions
works without /.well-known/ plugin

1.4.0

small fixes
added „webfinger“ as well-known uri

1.3.1

added „rel“-filter (work in progress)
added more aliases

1.3

added host-meta resource feature (see latest spec)

1.2

added 404 http error if user doesn’t exist
added jrd discovery for host-meta

1.1

fixed an odd problem with lower WordPress versions
added support for the https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/extended-profile/ (thanks to Singpolyma)

1.0.1

api improvements

1.0

basic simple-seb-discovery
json support
some small improvements

0.9.1

some changes to support http://unhosted.org

0.9

OStatus improvements
Better uri handling
Identifier overview (more to come)
Added filters
Added functions to get a users webfingers

0.7

Added do_action param (for future OStatus plugin)
Author-Url as Webfinger-Identifier

0.5

Initial release

Does as expected.

No config easy way to add webfinger for your existing users

Didn’t work.