Can’t Find Your WordPress Author In Mastodon Search? Here’s A Fix.

Working Solution as of July 2023.

If you’re a self hosted WordPress Admin using the ActivityPub plugin and having trouble finding your federated author & blog accounts in Mastodon Search – This is a possible fix for you (it worked for me).

After installing the ActivityPub Plugin & failing to find your WordPress account within the Fediverse – complete the following steps:

• Use https://webfinger.net/lookup/ to test for a successful or failed retrieval of your webfinger file – if failed or not working, continue with steps below.
• Log into your Hosting account > Cpanel > File Manager.
• Navigate to your root directory. Find (or create) folder “.well-known” 
• Open folder “.well-known” > Create a blank new file called “webfinger” (no file extension needed – just “webfinger”.)
• Open a second browser tab and navigate to https://YOURDOMAIN/?rest_route=/activitypub/1.0/webfinger&resource=acct:jouni@YOURDOMAIN (customize this URL to reflect your website address and author).
• Copy/paste the output of this second tab into file “/.well-known/webfinger.
• Save the “webfinger” file.
• Clear caching and search for your profile using Mastodon Search.
• If your profile appears in Mastodon Search. Re-open file “webfinger” & delete the contents you copied from your second browser tab (You’ll now have an empty “webfinger” file. Save & Close. This will allow ActivityPub Plugin to populate the file dynamically via the plugin’s settings. (You can return to the manually created contents if you need to – however ActivityPub will only be enabled for the author profiles you enter into the file manually.)

Notes: Further instructions can be found here: https://github.com/Automattic/wordpress-activitypub/issues/188