Has anybody gotten Mastodon to verify to their XF profile page?

[Kevin]

I've created an XF custom user field for members to post their Mastodon account links to so they can use their XF profile page to 'verify' their Mastodon profile links. The user field is straight-forward.

The problem I'm running into is getting the Mastodon site to successfully read the XF profile page to find the back-link to verify the profile link. I'm finding various references that it doesn't link to verify links that have a trailing slash (like all the XF pages do) or any pages that do a redirect but none authoritative.

I know, I know... I will likely need to come at this from the perspective of Mastodon, not XF, but before I go down that rabbit hole I'm hoping that since Mastodon has been rising lately that somebody else running an XF site has already gone down this path and found a solution that can be done on the XF side.

 

[Grant]

Are you using the attribute

rel="me"

in the mastodon link ?

 

[BassMan]

I'm not sure if that's possible. It's a nice idea, but I don't think it will work. I can confirm that Mastodon checks the link when you add it to the XF head (which makes sense). I've added it in this form: <link rel="me" href="mastodon_profile_link">.

But anyway, I had a problem on one of my sites (WP) that Mastodon didn't want to verify it. After two days I changed the instance and within a minute it was verified.

 

[Kevin]

I should have noted, my user field is outputting in format as wanted by Mastodon. Same format works fine when trying it in a non-XF page, just not from the XF powered site.

But anyway, I had a problem on one of my sites (WP) that Mastodon didn't want to verify it. After two days I changed the instance and within a minute it was verified

You changed Mastodon instances and the new one recognized it but not the old one or you changed which WP instance you had the link?

 

[BassMan]

You changed Mastodon instances and the new one recognized it but not the old one or you changed which WP instance you had the link?

I changed both. But I think the Mastodon instance was the issue.

 

[Kevin]

I changed both. But I think the Mastodon instance was the issue.

Did you ever get it to work pointing to an XF instance?

 

[BassMan]

Yes, I have a verified link for two of my XF forums (see this one for instance: https://www.synoforum.com/). But I didn't put the Mastodon link to XF profile page.

Maybe I'll add a Mastodon account also for customizeXF and it will work for sure.

 

[BassMan]

@Kevin
Here's one way, but not a solution. Also, the link will not point to the whole profile page.

Make sure the user adds a link to Mastodon like:

https://xenforo.com/community/members/bassman.55405/about

Note the /about. And not /#about.

I'm guessing it really is the trailing slash causing the issue.

 

[Kevin]

Note the /about.

That immediately worked! Thanks, that had been driving me crazy and I didn't think of specifying the explicit /about in the URL.

I'm guessing it really is the trailing slash causing the issue.

From what I've been reading and your findings I'll call it anecdotal confirmation.

May need to put a display on the XF side with the XF URL so members can copy & paste it to the Mastodon instance. On my test installs I've got some playing to do.

 

[thegx.ca/forum]

i had to settle for just verifying my homepage and not the /forum XenForo part which I really wanted to verify in the first place…if anyone can tell me how to verify my XenForo forum that’d be awesome…

 

[thegx.ca/forum]

i had to settle for just verifying my homepage and not the /forum XenForo part which I really wanted to verify in the first place…if anyone can tell me how to verify my XenForo forum that’d be awesome…

Just got help from @Chromaniac in this thread:

Mastodon integration

I haven't played with it yet but the overview is that it'll allow registering from a specific Mastodon instance, not all Mastodon accounts in general. Would come in handy for any communities that are control of both their XF installation and their own Mastodon instance. (At the moment I still...

xenforo.com

Installed the addon easily and everything working good