Bug? Posts by Authors without ActivityPub privilege are not shared by Blog Profile

[cdevroe]

Quick summary

(I'm not sure if this should be considered a bug or if it is working exactly how it is designed.)

My goal is that I have a WordPress Author that I'd prefer not to have an ActivityPub profile, but still want the Blog Profile to share posts by that Author. If I turn Disable ActivityPub for that WordPress Author, but have the Blog Profile turned on in the ActivityPub plugin's settings, the Blog Author does not share/post posts by that WordPress Author.

Steps to reproduce

1. In the ActivityPub plugin's settings: Enable Author-Profiles
2. In the ActivityPub plugin's settings: Enable Blog Profile
3. In Users panel in WordPress Admin, disable ActivityPub for a single user
4. Publish a post by that user

What you expected to happen

The Blog Profile would still share the post via ActivityPub.

What actually happened

It did not.

Impact

All

Available workarounds?

No but the platform is still usable

Logs or notes

Perhaps the user expectation is that this is working properly. If I disable an Author from ActivityPub, perhaps it is reasonable to conclude I don't want posts authored by the user to be shared at all. So perhaps this would need to be a new setting?

[cdevroe]

Examples:

• My blog profile: https://cdevroe.com/@colin
• My author profile (which I do not want) https://cdevroe.com/@cdevroe

Browser pub link: https://browser.pub/https://cdevroe.com/@colin

(I currently have the author profile for "cdevroe" disabled for ActivityPub.)

[pfefferle]

@cdevroe one question: Why have you not simply disabled author-profiles completely, if you do not use them?

[cdevroe]

Because I was experimenting with having multiple authors based on some of my side projects.

I think if I could have done anything... I would allow me to rename my author's profile name. So, many moons ago I setup my WordPress Author as "cdevroe". But I don't want my ActivityPub profile to be @cdevroe@cdevroe.com -- but there is no way to specify that I'd prefer to use "colin". If I was able to do that, I wouldn't need a blog profile at all.

[pfefferle]

But the question is still: why don't you simply disable all author profiles?

[cdevroe]

I will do so and just forgo the desire to have multiple profiles powered by my blog. Thank you!

[pfefferle]

Oh no, you don't have to, the PR will fix your issue and you can keep your settings as they are!!!

This questions are not meant to force you to change something, I simply want to understand the needs of every user, to improve the plugin and to maybe rework some things!

[cdevroe]

OK Matthias! 😄

So, I could eventually see having as many as 3 profiles powered by my blog. So, that is why I hadn't disabled all author profiles. Does that make sense?

[pfefferle]

Totally! ... and I know at least one other blog owner who is interested in that feature!

Sorry if my question was a bit misleading!

[cdevroe]

No worries! For now, I'll turn profiles off and just keep the blog profile so that posts are shared through that. Perhaps my specific case cannot be fixed since I have a username I wish I didn't. That is totally fine.