Mastodon is an alternative social media platform to Twitter. The posts you make to Mastodon are known as 'toots' and can be up-to 500 characters long. You can include words, pictures, links or video clips.
What’s nice about Mastodon is that it presents a TweetDeck style user interface of multiple columns, a chronological timeline of ‘toots’, no advertising or promoted content, no nasty tracking and mostly a higher user intellect. Scheduled posting is supported and toots can include basic content like images, video clips and links - potentially making this platform appealing to micro bloggers. Mobile apps exist too.
Most people joining Mastodon for the first time signup to the mastodon.social instance. Anybody can create and host their own instance of the Mastodon software, but lots of people prefer to join an existing instance. This open source and distributed approach means Mastodon has a strong future. It is not a platform owned by anyone particular private individual or company - at risk of being taken over or shutdown.
If you are new to Mastodon, you can probably find lots of informative tutorials online, like on YouTube. Feel free to friend me too!
This is a real working example of the MastoStack. The number of 'toots' was set to 10 and the embed has a maximum height of the embed has been set to 800px.
MastoStack is treated as an 'app' and therefore you need an API key to use this stack. Generating a new API is is very simple. There is either an automated tool you can use or a more manual approach, depending on what you are more comfortable using.
Go to your Mastodon page (in a desktop web browser).
Fill in the form fields with the name of your application (e.g. 'RapidWeaver MastoStack') and your website address. In the Scopes area, just enable 'read' and leave everything else unchecked. Click Submit when done.
On the resulting page, click your application name. Make a note of the Access Token (a long string of letters and numbers).
One other piece of information you need is your Account ID. This is a numerical value (not your @username). The easiest way to get this is to go to your Mastodon webpage (e.g. https://mastodon.social/@my_username). In the top-left (when you normally compose a new 'toot') click on your @handle link, as indicated in the picture below.
That number shown at the end of the link is your Mastodon Account ID number. In this example it would be 224910.
Now whatever number is shown after the https://mastodon.social/api/salmon/ URL is your numerical account ID, to use in the MastoStack settings.
This stack connects to your Mastodon social media account, and embeds your timeline within your RapidWeaver website. No ugly widgets or iFrames! It loads quickly and the content is mobile responsive. No harmful tracking, promoted content or adverts either. Just like Mastodon, this stack is free to download and use. Mastodon is a fresh, young, new social media platform to enjoy.