Pterotype
Pterotype expands your audience by giving your blog an ActivityPub stream, making it a part of the Fediverse.
Consider an alternative
Pterotype shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 8 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (10+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 7 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 5.1 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & supportDaily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Pterotype stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| activitypub | #27 |
| federation | #41 |
| fediverse | #33 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About Pterotype
From the official readme · v1.4.3Description
Pterotype expands your audience by giving your blog an ActivityPub stream, making it a part of the Fediverse. Users of Mastodon, Pleroma, and other Fediverse services will be able to follow and share your posts from the platform of their choice.
Changelog
1.4.3
- Fix the error from 1.4.2 the right way ¯_(ツ)_/¯
1.4.2
- Fix an error where array_key_exists was being called on an argument that wasn’t always an array
1.4.1
- This is a no-op version bump because I screwed up updating the WordPress plugin repository version info
1.4.0
- Compact the actor field before delivering activities
- Fix an issue where the post global wasn’t properly set when trying to get the post excerpt
1.3.1
- Don’t do inbox forwarding to the local instance or for any activities whose object is an actor
1.3.0
- Fully support PHP 5.x
1.2.13
- Change some syntax that was only supported for PHP >= 5.5
1.2.12
- Revert the change made in 1.2.12, as it turns out .well-known can only be at the domain root
1.2.11
- Account for blogs not hosted at the root domain for WebFinger discovery
1.2.10
- Fix a PHP error where $wpdb->prepare was being called with only one argument
1.2.9
- Add opengraph metadata to site if it doesn’t already have it
- Handle invalid actor slugs
- Improve handling of upserting objects into the DB
1.2.8
- Show Fediverse icons as comment avatars for comments from the Fediverse
- Advertise that followers get automatically approved via the manuallyApprovesFollowers field
1.2.7
- Fix a bug where an invalid DB state broke post federation
1.2.6
- Add admin dashboard where users can update the site’s Fediverse identity – site name, description, and icon
1.2.5
- Add functionality to clean up database and tell federated servers when Pterotype is unintalled
- Hydrate actor and object fields of activities before delivery
1.2.4
- Fix a SQL error when initializing the plugin for the first time
1.2.3
- Send an Update activity when the site logo changes
- Log out activity delivery errors to the server error log
1.2.2
- Fix a bug where actor public keys were getting truncated before being delivered to other servers
- Fix the way icons are represented in the actor JSON
1.2.1
- Send an Update activity when blog details (name, tagline) change
- Fix a bug in where activities posted to the outbox had their data compacted before it was persisted
1.2.0
- Fix a bug where incoming ActivityPub replies were getting duplicated if comment moderation was disabled
- Stop leaking guest (non-user) commenter email addresses in their ActivityPub usernames
- Remove the JSON column in the pterotype_objects table to allow sites running older MySQL versions to install Pterotype
- Optimize Pterotype’s data storage by never storing more than one copy of the same ActivityPub object
- Optimize Pterotype’s network usage by checking for local copies of objects before requesting them from their host
- Use the ActivityPub Article type for posts
- Lower the delay between receiving a Follow and sending an Accept to 2 seconds (from 5)
1.1.2
- Disable comment syncing for posts which have comments closed
1.1.1
- Implement comment syncing between WordPress and the ActivityPub feed. This allows allows people to reply to posts from Mastodon et al. and have those replies reflected as comments in the WordPress site, and vice-versa (WordPress comments become Mastodon et al. replies).
- Fix a bug involving delivering to more than 2 ActivityPub inboxes.
1.0.0
- Publish WordPress blog posts to an ActivityPub feed, allowing them to show up in Mastodon et al.
For developers
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Best Pterotype alternatives
All activitypub plugins →FAQ
Pterotype: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 29, 2026
Is Pterotype free?
Yes. Pterotype is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Pterotype safe to use in 2026?
Pterotype shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 8 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Pterotype?
Pterotype is active on 10+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 2,998 times since it launched in October 2018. It was downloaded 55 times in the last 30 days.
Does Pterotype work with WordPress 7.1?
Pterotype is officially tested up to WordPress 5.1.26, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
What PHP version does Pterotype need?
Pterotype requires PHP 5.6.0 or higher. Most hosts run PHP 8.x today, so it works on any modern WordPress hosting.
When was Pterotype last updated?
The latest version, 1.4.3, was released on March 15, 2019 (8 years ago).
Who makes Pterotype?
Pterotype is developed and maintained by jdormit.
What are the best alternatives to Pterotype?
The most popular alternatives to Pterotype are ActivityPub (6K+ installs), WebFinger (1K+ installs) and NodeInfo(2) (900+ installs).
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