After singing up for Tumblr and being sad that they’re not yet (and might never) federate with Activitypub I started digging around fedidb.org and found out about micro.blog.
It’s very similar to Tumblr but federates with Mastodon allowing you and Mastodon users to follow each other. You show up as, my example, [email protected] to ActivityPub users (I had to reset my profile after switching to a custom domain so if you check it now there won’t be any posts. Before I reset my blog was federating perfecly). If you make a blog post of 300 characters or less it gets tossed right into your federated profile page with no click through necessary. Longer posts will be shown along with the rest on your blog domain proper (I.E https://micro.blog/jezebelley)
The catch? It’s not free. $5 gets you basic membership which allows blogging and photo uploads. Non animated only. $10 gets you premium which allows for video/gif hosting along with podcast features if you’re so inclined.
You’re also allowed to bring your own domain, in my case https://thefrequency.blog, to host directly to your custom corner of the web. It’s very simple to setup. If you want to go the super easy route you can sign up directly for a domain in the micro.blog settings with a major downside being you get no registration privacy meaning your URL is subject to WHOIS indexing. A major nono for privacy. I recommend name.com registration independent of micro.blog as you can pay $5 for their privacy package and then import it.
Anyway thought I’d give you all a heads-up for a great Tumblr style option right here on the fediverse!
A little tweak to the max post length setting and you can do that with Mastodon too. I wish it was that way by default.
The nice thing about blogging is the customization of your website. Lots of theming and plugin options. It feels more expressive!