Should you read in the Ghost Reader?

Update: Apparently it wasn't entirely clear what I was talking about. I'm talking about Ghost's new built-in Fediverse/ActivityPub reader, the tab for long-form content, shown below. This is a post about how that long-form content looks when clicked from within Ghost, within the Network tab. If you're reading from a different platform, your app/site may be giving you a preview of the content that takes you to the post on the publisher's webpage when you click it. This is a post about how Ghost doesn't do that.

OK, so maybe I'm being a little bit dramatic, but right now, the reader view isn't as good as the web view, and there are implications for ad-supported sites.

First, let me lead off by saying: I thought it was more broken than it actually is.

Self-hosting? Check for 404s.

I’ve been grumbling since getting my ActivityPub working that that the layouts of a lot of the cards were broken. Today, I discovered that it was me. 🤯 Yep. The reader was making requests to {myadmindomain}/public/cards.min.js and -css. Those aren’t served from the admin domain, so I had 404s in my browser's console, and none of the styles required for any of Ghost's cards were getting loaded. I got those requests correctly redirected over to the main site domain, and now things look better.

But, having said that...

The reader is not the full web experience

It's a neat idea, but the minimal style of the reader means it isn't loading any theme styling. What you get is the reader's interpretation of how posts should look, and the reader leans towards super minimal.

Javascript is stripped out. So are styles in html cards. No code injection occurs.

What does that mean you're missing, if you don't visit the website and just read their long-form in the content?

• Ads. Ok, yeah, I understand, this might be a perk, but sites running ads are presumably doing it was a way to fund their work. If everyone reads in the reader, that removes this source of income.
• Related posts, to encourage your reader to keep reading your content.
• Previous/next links to help you browse through that piece of serial fiction.
• Interesting embeds. You might be missing interactive charts, embedded weather widgets, fancy popover footnotes, or audio or video players from sources not directly supported by Ghost. All this stuff works fine when viewed on the web in any browser that runs Javascript. It doesn't run in the reader.
• Newsletter sign up forms, if provided the theme rather than directly in the post.
• Customized calls to action. The reader's default CTA may be less informative than the customized one.
• Bylines. The site gets credited, but not the specific author.
• Tags. Did you want to know how I categorized this content? You won't find it in the reader.

Here's a comparison of the two experiences, in my fairly minimalist theme:

Here's another example, from 404 Media:

Reading in the reader instead of on the web? Please, click the link!

Fortunately, every post viewed in the long-form reader includes a link back to the original content. Currently, I think that clicking it should be the first thing you do.

I'm adding a "subscribe to my newsletter" sign-up card below. I'm not sure how it'll look in the reader, which presumably doesn't know if you're already subscribed, since you aren't reading on my site, and I'm not sure the form will survive the trip, either. I suspect it's going to get stripped out, but you can always visit my website if you'd like to subscribe. Or hey, if you aren't already following me on the Social Web, please do! I'm @[email protected] .

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Epilogue: We need better visibility settings

I'd like to do what I do in email, and just tell ActivityPub readers to come read the real post. If there were toggles here for ActivityPub on the CTA and HTML cards, then I could handle missing functionality the same way I do with email, offering fallback content. Currently, ActivityPub readers get the "web" content, which really doesn't match the reader's capabilities.

OK, Cathy, so what do you want?

I think my first choice would be for Ghost sites to send out a preview, with a link to visit the website for full content. That's already the behavior on some Mastodon instances. (But apparently not all?) It could be a toggle, but it'd be nice to have the option of not sending full content.

I'd also like the option to be able to turn on social web without having all my posts go out automatically. Maybe that could be in the publish settings, just like I can choose if I want a post to go out by email? If I had the option, I might not auto-publish to ActivityPub but instead make a Note announcing the content, to bring readers back to the site.

It's still early days for ActivityPub (despite it being out of beta), so I'm optimistic there's a good fix in here somewhere.

Meanwhile, please. Click the link!