Hey @revmook 👋
do you see the follower in your WordPress backend? The question is, is it blocked by the webserver already or is it an issue of a missing Accept response.
Normally the pending Follow request are because of firewall or mod_sec rules, that block certain requests.
Hi @pfefferle , Thanks for your reply! So, I see 9 followers in the WordPress backend, but those were from when the plugin previously worked. If I run the following (recommended by an AI)
$ wp eval '
global $wpdb;
$results = $wpdb->get_results("
SELECT p.ID, p.post_title, p.post_date, pm.meta_value as follower_of
FROM wp_posts p
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta pm ON p.ID = pm.post_id
AND pm.meta_key = \"_activitypub_user_id\"
WHERE p.post_type = \"ap_actor\"
ORDER BY p.ID DESC
LIMIT 50
");
print_r($results);
I see 34 users who are stuck. Here are the first 5;
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 5625
[post_title] => Eugen Rochko
[post_date] => 2026-03-02 21:51:48
[follower_of] =>
)
[1] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 5598
[post_title] => me
[post_date] => 2026-02-23 18:10:30
[follower_of] =>
)
[2] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 5484
[post_title] => JDS
[post_date] => 2026-01-30 01:47:28
[follower_of] =>
)
[3] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 5483
[post_title] => JDS
[post_date] => 2026-01-30 01:47:28
[follower_of] =>
)
[4] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 5447
[post_title] => David
[post_date] => 2025-11-17 22:21:16
[follower_of] =>
)
So, it seems like the Follow requests are arriving and creating actor records. I would think that [follower_of] would have some sort of value. I’m totally stuck at this point. Thoughts?
Okay, after several months of wrenching on this I’ve figured it out. The Activitypub plugin checks against WordPress’s comment disallowed list. My list contained .com and .ru, since it was receiving 100’s of spam comments attempting to sell discount pharmaceuticals for men ~15 years ago when I first started blogging. Removing “.com” from my list fixed the plugin. I can now receive and process follows, and it’s now federating out. Thanks for your help @pfefferle
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This reply was modified 2 weeks, 4 days ago by
revmook.