madblog/README.md

TOC

A minimal but capable blog and Web framework that you can directly run from a Markdown folder.

Features:

• No database required: just a folder with your Markdown files. An Obsidian vault, a Nextcloud Notes folder or share point, a git clone, a folder on your phone synchronized over SyncThing...it can be anything.

• LaTeX support: support for rendering LaTeX equations in your Markdown files.

• Mermaid support: support for rendering Mermaid diagrams in your Markdown files.

• Webmentions support: native support for Webmentions. Get mentioned by other blogs or link aggregators, and receive notifications and replies rendered on your own blog.

• ActivityPub support: native support for ActivityPub. Get mentioned by other ActivityPub servers, get followers for your blog from Mastodon and other Fediverse instances, and receive notifications and replies rendered on your own blog. It also comes with a sensible implementation of the Mastodon API.

• File-based syndication: no intermediate APIs, databases or services. No heavy polling nor synchronization. Everything is based on plain text files and file system events. Updating your articles is as simple as editing a Markdown file on your server. Wanna mention someone? Just put their website or ActivityPub handle in your file, and they'll get a notification. Wanna clean up your ActivityPub events? Just remove a JSON file.

• Guestbook mode: a dedicated page that aggregates public mentions to your website and interactions from across the web.

• Aggregator mode: render external RSS or Atom feeds directly in your blog. Great for affiliated blogs, or even self-hosted news readers.

• Flexible moderation: smart moderation rules can be set on domains, usernames, URLs, with support for regular expressions.

• Tags and categories: organize your content with hashtags in your articles. Folders on the filesystem are categories.

Demos

This project powers the following blogs:

• Platypush
• My personal blog

Quickstart

mkdir -p ~/madblog/markdown
cat <<EOF >~/madblog/markdown/article-1.md
# My first article

This is my first article!

Welcome to [Madblog](https://git.fabiomanganiello.com/madblog)!
EOF

docker run -it \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v "$HOME/madblog:/data" \
  quay.io/blacklight/madblog

Then open http://localhost:8000

Installation

Local installation

A base installation includes everything (including Webmentions and ActivityPub support) except LaTeX and Mermaid.

pip install madblog

Full local installation

• Latex support: requires any installation that provides latex and dvipng (and preferably some good math fonts) on your system.
• Mermaid support: requires mermaid-cli on your system, or npx so Madblog can install it for you.

Docker installation

Minimal Docker installation

A minimal installation doesn't include extra plugins (but it still include support for Webmentions and ActivityPub), and it aims to always be less than 100 MB in size.

Pre-built image (recommended)

docker pull quay.io/blacklight/madblog
docker tag quay.io/blacklight/madblog madblog

Build from source

git clone https://git.fabiomanganiello.com/madblog
cd madblog
docker build -f docker/minimal.Dockerfile -t madblog .

Full Docker installation

Includes all plugins - including LaTeX and Mermaid; > 2 GB in size.

git clone https://git.fabiomanganiello.com/madblog
cd madblog
docker build -f docker/full.Dockerfile -t madblog .

Usage

# The application will listen on port 8000 and it will
# serve the current folder
$ madblog
usage: madblog [-h] [--config CONFIG] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--debug] [dir]

Recommended setup (for clear separation of content, configuration and static files):

.
  -> config.yaml [recommended]
  -> markdown
    -> article-1.md
    -> article-2.md
    -> ...
  -> img [recommended]
    -> favicon.ico
    -> icon.png
    -> image-1.png
    -> image-2.png
    -> ...

But the application can run from any folder that contains Markdown files (including e.g. your Obsidian vault, Nextcloud Notes folder or a git clone).

Running Madblog from a uWSGI wrapper

Running Madblog directly from the command-line is fine for tests and very low-traffic use-cases, but for production you should run it from a uWSGI wrapper.

Running it in Gunicorn:

# Note that a custom configuration file is passed via environment variable
# in this case, to prevent clashes with gunicorn's own `--config` option.
# In this case we bind to 127.0.0.1:8000, with 8 workers and a 5s timeout
MADBLOG_CONFIG=/your/config.yaml \
  gunicorn -w 8 -b 127.0.0.1:8000 madblog.uwsgi \
  /your/content

Running Madblog in Docker

To run it from Docker:

docker run -it \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v "/path/to/your/config.yaml:/etc/madblog/config.yaml" \
  -v "/path/to/your/content:/data" \
  madblog

If you have ActivityPub federation enabled, mount your private key and (optionally) the ActivityPub data directory for persistence:

docker run -it \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v "/path/to/your/config.yaml:/etc/madblog/config.yaml" \
  -v "/path/to/your/content:/data" \
  -v "/path/to/your/private_key.pem:/etc/madblog/ap_key.pem:ro" \
  -v "/path/to/your/activitypub-data:/data/activitypub" \
  madblog

Or pass the configuration directory where config.yaml lives as a volume to let Madblog create a key there on the first start:

docker run -it \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v "/path/to/your/config:/etc/madblog" \
  -v "/path/to/your/content:/data" \
  -v "/path/to/your/activitypub-data:/data/activitypub" \
  madblog

Set activitypub_private_key_path: /etc/madblog/ap_key.pem in your config.yaml. The key file must be readable only by the owner (chmod 600).

Markdown files

Metadata for articles is stored directly in the Markdown files, as comments in the format:

[//]: # (key: value)

Supported metadata:

Key	Type	Default
title	String	Inferred either from the first heading or the filename
description	String	Inferred from the second heading, if present
image	String	—
author	String	Inherited from the configured author
author_photo	String	Inherited from the configured author_photo
language	String	Inherited from the configured language or en-US
published	Date	Inferred from the creation time of the file
tags	List of strings	—

Example Markdown header:

[//]: # (title: Title of the article)
[//]: # (description: Short description of the content)
[//]: # (image: /img/some-header-image.png)
[//]: # (author: Author Name <https://author.me>)
[//]: # (author_photo: https://author.me/avatar.png)
[//]: # (language: en-US)
[//]: # (published: 2022-01-01)

...your article goes here...

Or, if you want to pass an email rather than a URL for the author:

[//]: # (author: Author Name <mailto:email@author.me>)

Optional:

[//]: # (title: Title of the article)
[//]: # (description: Short description of the content)
[//]: # (image: /img/some-header-image.png)
[//]: # (author: Author Name <https://author.me>)
[//]: # (author_photo: https://author.me/avatar.png)
[//]: # (language: en-US)
[//]: # (published: 2022-01-01)

You can also tag your articles:

[//]: # (tags: #python, #webdev, #tutorial)

Tags declared in the metadata header are shown in the article header as links and contribute to the tag index available at /tags. Hashtags written directly in the article body (e.g. #python) are also detected and rendered as links to the corresponding tag page.

Configuration

See config.example.yaml for an example configuration file, and copy it to config.yaml in your blog root directory to customize your blog.

All the configuration options are also available as environment variables, with the prefix MADBLOG_.

For example, the title configuration option can be set through the MADBLOG_TITLE environment variable.

Server settings

Option	Env var	Default	Description
host	MADBLOG_HOST	0.0.0.0	Listening address for the built-in web server.
port	MADBLOG_PORT	8000	Listening port for the built-in web server.
content_dir	MADBLOG_CONTENT_DIR	.	Path to the directory containing blog posts and assets.

Site metadata

Option	Env var	Default	Description
title	MADBLOG_TITLE	—	Title of the blog (strongly recommended).
description	MADBLOG_DESCRIPTION	—	Short description of the blog.
link	MADBLOG_LINK	—	Public base URL of the blog (required for Webmentions and ActivityPub).
home_link	MADBLOG_HOME_LINK	unset (uses link)	URL for the "Home" link in the header, if different from link.
logo	MADBLOG_LOGO	—	URL to a logo image for the blog.
language	MADBLOG_LANGUAGE	en-US	Default language for the blog (can be overridden per article).
header	MADBLOG_HEADER	true	Whether to show the blog header in generated pages.

Author settings

Option	Env var	Default	Description
author	MADBLOG_AUTHOR	—	Default author name when not specified in article metadata.
author_url	MADBLOG_AUTHOR_URL	—	Default author URL (supports mailto: links).
author_photo	MADBLOG_AUTHOR_PHOTO	—	Default author photo URL.
author_email	MADBLOG_AUTHOR_EMAIL	—	Author email address for mention notifications.

External links

You can add external profile links that will be rendered as <link rel="me"> on each page, useful for profile verification:

external_links:
  - https://mastodon.social/@myprofile
  - https://github.com/myprofile

Or via environment variable (comma-separated):

export MADBLOG_EXTERNAL_LINKS="https://mastodon.social/@myprofile,https://github.com/myprofile"

Feed settings

Option	Env var	Default	Description
short_feed	MADBLOG_SHORT_FEED	false	If true, feeds contain only article descriptions instead of full content.
max_entries_per_feed	MADBLOG_MAX_ENTRIES_PER_FEED	10	Maximum number of entries returned by RSS/Atom feeds.
feeds_cache_expiry_secs	MADBLOG_FEEDS_CACHE_EXPIRY_SECS	300	Cache duration for external feeds (in seconds). Set to 0 to disable caching.

Email notifications

Madblog can send email notifications when new Webmentions or ActivityPub interactions are received. Configure SMTP settings to enable this:

Option	Env var	Default	Description
smtp_server	MADBLOG_SMTP_SERVER	—	SMTP server hostname.
smtp_port	MADBLOG_SMTP_PORT	587	SMTP server port.
smtp_username	MADBLOG_SMTP_USERNAME	—	SMTP authentication username.
smtp_password	MADBLOG_SMTP_PASSWORD	—	SMTP authentication password.
smtp_starttls	MADBLOG_SMTP_STARTTLS	true	Use STARTTLS for SMTP connection.
smtp_enable_starttls_auto	MADBLOG_SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS_AUTO	true	Automatically enable STARTTLS if supported.

Webmentions

Webmentions allow other sites to notify your blog when they link to one of your articles. Madblog exposes a Webmention endpoint and stores inbound mentions under your content_dir.

Madblog uses Webmentions to handle Webmentions (blog article), a Python framework I build originally for Madblog itself but that can be used to easily enable support for Webmentions on any Python Web application.

NOTE: It is advised to explicitly disable Webmentions (set enable_webmentions: false, or MADBLOG_ENABLE_WEBMENTIONS=0) if you run Madblog on e.g. your local machine or a development environment. Otherwise each time a Markdown file is saved some notifications to an invalid URL may actually be dispatched to real Web sites.

Webmentions configuration options:

• Enable/disable

  • Config file: enable_webmentions: true|false
  • Environment variable: MADBLOG_ENABLE_WEBMENTIONS=1 (enable) or 0 (disable)

• Site link requirement

  • Set link (or MADBLOG_LINK) to the public base URL of your blog.
  • Incoming Webmentions are only accepted if the target URL domain matches the configured link domain.

• Endpoint

  • The Webmention endpoint is available at: /webmentions.

• Storage

  • Inbound Webmentions are stored as Markdown files under: content_dir/mentions/incoming/<post-slug>/.

Additional Webmentions options:

Option	Env var	Default	Description
webmentions_hard_delete	MADBLOG_WEBMENTIONS_HARD_DELETE	false	If true, deleted Webmentions are removed from disk; otherwise they are marked as deleted.
webmentions_default_status	MADBLOG_WEBMENTIONS_DEFAULT_STATUS	confirmed	Default status for incoming Webmentions (confirmed or pending). Pending mentions require manual approval.

Moderation

Madblog supports moderation rules that apply to both incoming Webmentions and ActivityPub interactions. There are two mutually exclusive modes:

• Blocklist mode (blocked_actors): actors matching patterns are rejected.
• Allowlist mode (allowed_actors): only actors matching patterns are permitted; all others are rejected.

You cannot enable both modes at the same time. The application will raise an error at startup if both blocked_actors and allowed_actors are configured.

Each entry in either list can be:

• Domain: e.g. trusted.example.com — matches all URLs/actors from that domain.
• Full URL: e.g. https://mastodon.social/users/friend — matches that exact actor.
• ActivityPub FQN: e.g. @friend@mastodon.social or friend@mastodon.social — matches that federated identity by domain + username in the actor URL.
• Regular expression: delimited by /, e.g. /trusted\.example\..*/ — matched against the full source URL or actor ID.

Blocklist mode

Block specific actors while allowing everyone else:

# config.yaml
blocked_actors:
  - spammer.example.com
  - "@troll@evil.social"
  - /spam-ring\.example\..*/

Or via environment variable (comma- or space-separated):

export MADBLOG_BLOCKED_ACTORS="spammer.example.com,@troll@evil.social"

Allowlist mode

Allow only specific actors while blocking everyone else:

# config.yaml
allowed_actors:
  - trusted-friend.example.com
  - "@friend@good.social"
  - /.*\.trusted-org\.com/

Or via environment variable:

export MADBLOG_ALLOWED_ACTORS="trusted-friend.example.com,@friend@good.social"

Moderation behavior

Interactions already stored before a moderation rule was added are also filtered at render time, so they will no longer appear on your pages.

For ActivityPub, moderation also affects outgoing delivery: followers not permitted by the current rules are excluded from fan-out (they will not receive new posts) and are hidden from the public follower count. The follower records are kept on disk with a "blocked" marker so they can be restored automatically:

• Blocklist mode: if you remove a blocklist entry that matched a follower, the follower is reinstated on the next application start.
• Allowlist mode: if you add an allowlist entry that now matches a previously blocked follower, or if you remove the allowlist entirely, the follower is reinstated.

The moderation lists are cached in memory with a 5-minute TTL to avoid filesystem round-trips during publish.

Guestbook

The guestbook feature provides a dedicated page (/guestbook) that aggregates public mentions and interactions from across the web, serving as a "guest registry" for your blog.

Guestbook entries are collected from two sources:

• Webmentions targeting the home page (when enable_webmentions is enabled)
• ActivityPub mentions of your blog actor that are not replies to articles (when enable_activitypub is enabled)

The guestbook is enabled by default. To disable it:

# config.yaml
enable_guestbook: false

Or via environment variable:

export MADBLOG_ENABLE_GUESTBOOK=0

When enabled, a "Guestbook" link appears in the navigation menu. The page displays messages chronologically (most recent first). Blocked actors (via blocked_actors) are automatically filtered out.

How visitors can leave a message:

• Via Webmention: Send a Webmention with your blog's home page URL as the target.
• Via Fediverse: Mention your blog's ActivityPub handle (e.g. @blog@example.com) in a public post that is not a reply to one of your articles.

View mode

The blog home page supports three view modes:

• cards (default): A responsive grid of article cards with image, title, date and description.
• list: A compact list — each entry shows only the title, date and description.
• full: A scrollable, WordPress-like view with the full rendered content of each article inline.

You can set the default via config file or environment variable:

# config.yaml
view_mode: cards  # or "list" or "full"

export MADBLOG_VIEW_MODE=list

The view mode can also be overridden at runtime via the view query parameter:

https://myblog.example.com/?view=list
https://myblog.example.com/?view=full

Invalid values are silently ignored and fall back to the configured default.

Aggregator mode

Madblog can also render external RSS or Atom feeds directly in your blog.

Think of cases like the one where you have multiple blogs over the Web and you want to aggregate all of their content in one place. Or where you have "affiliated blogs" run by trusted friends or other people in your organization and you also want to display their content on your own blog.

Madblog provides a simple way of achieving this by including the external_feeds section in your config file:

# config.yaml
external_feeds:
  - https://friendsblog.example.com/feed.atom
  - https://colleaguesblog.example.com/feed.atom

Tags

Madblog provides a tag index at /tags that lists all tags used across your articles. Each tag links to /tags/<tag>, which shows all articles tagged with that hashtag.

Tags are extracted from:

• The tags metadata field (comma-separated)
• Hashtags in the title, description, or body text
• Hashtags in incoming Webmentions for the article

Raw Markdown

You can retrieve the raw Markdown source of any article by appending .md to the article URL:

https://myblog.example.com/article/my-post.md

Folders

You can organize Markdown files in folders. If multiple folders are present, pages on the home will be grouped by folders.

Images

Images are stored under img. You can reference them in your articles through the following syntax:

![image description](/img/image.png)

You can also drop your favicon.ico under this folder.

LaTeX support

LaTeX support requires the following executables available in the PATH:

• latex
• dvipng

Syntax for inline LaTeX:

And we can therefore prove that \(c^2 = a^2 + b^2\)

Syntax for LaTeX expression on a new line:

$$
c^2 = a^2 + b^2
$$

Mermaid diagrams

Madblog supports server-side rendering of Mermaid diagrams. Both light and dark theme variants are rendered at build time and automatically switch based on the reader's system color scheme preference.

Installation

Option A: pip extra (recommended)

No pre-existing system dependencies required beyond what pip provides:

pip install "madblog[mermaid]"

This installs a bundled Node.js runtime via nodejs-wheel. The Mermaid CLI is downloaded automatically on first use via npx. The first render of a Mermaid block will be slower; subsequent renders are cached.

Option B: System Node.js

If you already have Node.js installed:

npm install -g @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli
pip install madblog

If neither mmdc nor npx are available at runtime, Mermaid blocks are rendered as syntax-highlighted code instead.

Usage

Use standard fenced code blocks with the mermaid language tag:

```mermaid
graph LR
    A --> B --> C
```

ActivityPub federation

Madblog supports ActivityPub federation, allowing your blog posts to appear on Mastodon, Pleroma, and other fediverse platforms. Followers receive new and updated articles directly in their timelines.

It uses Pubby (also developed by me, and initially developed for this project) to easily add ActivityPub bindings to the Web application. Pubby follows the same principles and patterns as Webmentions, and it aims to make it easy to enable support for ActivityPub on any Python Web application.

Enable ActivityPub in your config.yaml (it's disabled by default):

enable_activitypub: true
# It will be created if it doesn't exist
activitypub_private_key_path: /path/to/private_key.pem

Or via environment variables:

export MADBLOG_ENABLE_ACTIVITYPUB=1
export MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH=/path/to/private_key.pem

Using a different domain for your ActivityPub handle

Madblog uses the configured link as the public base URL for ActivityPub.

That means:

• The actor handle advertised through WebFinger will be: @activitypub_username@<domain from link>.
• Actor/object IDs (e.g. /ap/actor, /article/<slug>) will also be built from link.

Madblog provides two optional overrides:

• activitypub_link: Overrides where the ActivityPub actor and objects live (canonical IDs like https://<...>/ap/actor). This is what remote instances like Mastodon will typically treat as the authoritative identity.
• activitypub_domain: Overrides only the WebFinger acct: domain advertised for the handle (i.e. acct:user@domain). This controls how people discover the actor when they type @user@domain.

In the simplest case, activitypub_domain can be inferred from activitypub_link and you only need activitypub_link.

If you want the blog to be browsed at https://blog.example.com and keep link unchanged, but you want the fediverse handle to be @blog@example.com, set:

# Keep your canonical blog URL
link: https://blog.example.com

# Publish the ActivityPub actor and objects on a different base URL
activitypub_link: https://example.com

# Optional: if omitted, the handle domain defaults to the hostname of
# activitypub_link
activitypub_domain: example.com

# Optional: what the UI header “Home” link points to
home_link: https://blog.example.com

enable_activitypub: true
activitypub_username: blog

And then serve the same Madblog instance on both hostnames (typical setup is a reverse-proxy with two server names pointing to the same upstream).

In this configuration, example.com must serve WebFinger for the handle. You can keep serving example.com with a different application and only delegate the discovery endpoints to Madblog (or implement them yourself). At minimum, example.com must serve:

• /.well-known/webfinger (required for @user@example.com discovery)

Some remote software may also query:

• /.well-known/nodeinfo

In this split-domain setup:

• link remains the blog’s canonical base URL.
• activitypub_link determines the actor/object IDs.
• activitypub_domain determines the WebFinger acct: domain.
• Requests to https://example.com/.well-known/webfinger and https://example.com/ap/ should be routed to the Madblog instance.

Example (nginx, simplified):

upstream madblog {
    server 127.0.0.1:8000;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name example.com blog.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://madblog;
    }
}

Notes:

• If example.com does not route to Madblog, remote instances will try to fetch https://example.com/.well-known/webfinger, https://example.com/ap/actor, etc., and federation/discovery will fail.
• If you prefer example.com to redirect browsers to blog.example.com, keep the federation endpoints working on example.com (no redirect) and only redirect other routes (or do it at the CDN layer while exempting at least /.well-known/*).

Example (nginx, split-domain: proxy only discovery endpoints on example.com):

upstream madblog {
    server 127.0.0.1:8000;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name example.com;

    # Your main site continues to serve everything else
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://your_main_site;
    }

    # Delegate fediverse discovery to Madblog
    location = /.well-known/webfinger {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://madblog;
    }

    location /ap/ {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://madblog;
    }

    location = /.well-known/nodeinfo {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://madblog;
    }

    # The well-known endpoint above links to /nodeinfo/2.1 on this domain;
    # proxy the actual document so crawlers can follow the link.
    location /nodeinfo/ {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://madblog;
    }

    # Required for URL-based article search on Mastodon.
    # When someone searches for an article URL on the blog domain, Madblog
    # redirects AP clients to the canonical object URL on the AP domain.
    # This proxy rule lets Mastodon follow that redirect and fetch the
    # article's AP representation.
    location /article/ {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://madblog;
    }
}

Note on article URL search: When activitypub_link differs from link, ActivityPub object IDs live on the activitypub_link domain (required by Mastodon's origin check during inbox delivery). When an AP client fetches an article from the blog domain, Madblog automatically redirects to the canonical URL on the activitypub_link domain. The /article/ proxy rule above is needed so that Mastodon can follow the redirect and resolve the article.

If you can’t/won’t proxy, you can also implement WebFinger in your main site: respond to GET /.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:blog@example.com with a JSON document that links to the actor URL hosted on blog.example.com (the rel="self" link is the important one).

Mentions

You can mention fediverse users in your articles using the @user@domain syntax. Mentions are rendered as links and delivered as proper ActivityPub mentions — the mentioned user will receive a notification on their instance.

Great article by @alice@mastodon.social about federation!

Configuration options

Option	Env var	Default	Description
activitypub_private_key_path	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH	—	Path to RSA private key PEM file. Auto-generated on first start if not set. Must be readable only by owner (chmod 600).
activitypub_username	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_USERNAME	blog	Fediverse username for the blog actor.
activitypub_name	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_NAME	(falls back to author or title)	Display name for the ActivityPub actor.
activitypub_summary	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_SUMMARY	(falls back to description)	Summary/bio for the ActivityPub actor.
activitypub_icon_url	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_ICON_URL	(falls back to author_photo)	Avatar URL for the ActivityPub actor.
activitypub_link	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_LINK	unset (uses link)	Base URL used for ActivityPub actor/object IDs (e.g. actor id is <base>/ap/actor). Set this if you want the canonical ActivityPub identity to live on a different hostname than link.
activitypub_domain	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_DOMAIN	unset (uses activitypub_link hostname, else link hostname)	Domain used in WebFinger acct: handle discovery (e.g. acct:blog@example.com). This affects discovery/handle only, not where ActivityPub endpoints are hosted.
activitypub_object_type	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_OBJECT_TYPE	Note	ActivityPub object type (Note or Article). Note renders inline on Mastodon; Article shows as a link preview.
activitypub_description_only	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_DESCRIPTION_ONLY	false	Only send the article description instead of the full rendered content.
activitypub_posts_content_wrapped	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_POSTS_CONTENT_WRAPPED	false	If true, the article title is sent as the ActivityPub "summary" field (Content Warning). When false, title and description are rendered inline.
activitypub_profile_field_name	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_PROFILE_FIELD_NAME	Blog	Label used for the primary ActivityPub profile field that points to your blog URL (link).
activitypub_profile_fields	N/A	empty mapping	Additional profile fields to advertise on the ActivityPub actor as a name->value mapping. If a value is an http(s) URL it will be rendered as a rel="me" link.
activitypub_manually_approves_followers	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_MANUALLY_APPROVES_FOLLOWERS	false	Require manual approval for new followers.
activitypub_quote_control	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_QUOTE_CONTROL	public	Quote policy for ActivityPub posts. Mastodon will refuse quote-boosts unless set to public.
activitypub_auto_approve_quotes	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_AUTO_APPROVE_QUOTES	true	Automatically send QuoteAuthorization when a remote actor quotes your posts. Without this, Mastodon keeps quotes in "pending" state.
activitypub_email_notifications	MADBLOG_ACTIVITYPUB_EMAIL_NOTIFICATIONS	true	Send email notifications for ActivityPub interactions (requires SMTP configuration and author_email).

Mastodon-compatible API

When ActivityPub is enabled, Madblog exposes a read-only subset of the Mastodon REST API so that Mastodon-compatible clients and crawlers can discover the instance, look up the blog actor, list published statuses, and search content.

No additional configuration is needed — the API is automatically registered alongside the ActivityPub endpoints and derives all settings from the existing config.yaml.

Method	Path	Description
GET	/api/v1/instance	Instance metadata (v1)
GET	/api/v2/instance	Instance metadata (v2)
GET	/api/v1/instance/peers	Known peer domains
GET	/api/v1/accounts/lookup	Resolve acct:user@domain to Account
GET	/api/v1/accounts/:id	Account by ID (1 = local actor)
GET	/api/v1/accounts/:id/statuses	Paginated statuses
GET	/api/v1/accounts/:id/followers	Paginated followers
GET	/api/v1/statuses/:id	Single status by ID
GET	/api/v1/tags/:tag	Tag entity with 7-day usage history
GET	/api/v2/search	Search accounts, hashtags, and statuses
GET	/nodeinfo/2.0[.json]	NodeInfo 2.0 aliases
GET	/nodeinfo/2.1.json	NodeInfo 2.1 .json alias

Feed syndication

Feeds for the blog are provided under the /feed.<type> URL, with type one of atom or rss (e.g. /feed.atom or /feed.rss).

By default, the whole HTML-rendered content of an article is returned under the entry content.

If you only want to include the short description of an article in the feed, use /feed.<type>?short instead.

You can also specify the ?limit=n parameter to limit the number of entries returned in the feed.

For backwards compatibility, /rss is still available as a shortcut to /feed.rss.

If you want the short feed (i.e. without the fully rendered article as a description) to be always returned, then you can specify short_feed=true in your configuration.

Guestbook feed

When the guestbook is enabled, a separate feed is available at /guestbook/feed.<type> (e.g. /guestbook/feed.atom or /guestbook/feed.rss).

This feed contains guestbook entries (Webmentions and ActivityPub mentions) and supports ?limit=n (default 25) and ?offset=n query parameters for pagination.

PWA

The application is also available as a Progressive Web App (PWA), allowing readers to install it on their devices for offline access and native-like experience.

When combined with ActivityPub federation, followers (will soon) receive notifications of new articles directly in their fediverse timelines (WIP)