Connect Mastodon

Mastodon is not one website. It is thousands of independent servers that talk to each other, and your account lives on exactly one of them. That is the only thing that makes connecting it different from the other channels: you tell us which server before the permission screen, because there is no single Mastodon to send you to.

Connect it

1. In Publiz, open Settings then Accounts, click Connect account and pick Mastodon.

2. Type your server’s address — the domain, like fosstodon.org, or your full handle, @[email protected]. Either works.

3. Click Check server. We look it up and show you its name and character limit, so a typo comes back straight away instead of dropping you on a broken page.

4. Click Continue. Your server’s own permission screen opens. Approve it, and you land back in Publiz connected.

Which server is mine?

If your handle reads @[email protected], the part after the second @ is the server. It is also the domain you log in to. If you only ever used the app and never noticed, open your profile and look at the address.

Your character limit is not 500

It might be. 500 is the default Mastodon ships with, but every server sets its own, and plenty run 1,000 or more. The composer reads the real number from your server when you connect and counts against that — so if you moved from a 500-character server to a roomier one, the editor already knows.

Text over 500 characters goes out as a thread of posts up to 500 each, even on a server that allows more. A single post over your server’s own limit is blocked until you trim it.

Content warnings eat into the limit

Mastodon counts the content warning against the same budget as the post itself. An 80-character warning on a 500-character server leaves you 420 to write in.

Post options

Who can see this. Four choices, and they are not a sliding scale:

• Public — everyone, and it appears on the public timelines.
• Unlisted — still public and anyone with the link can read it, but it stays off the timelines.
• Followers only — only people who follow you.
• Only people mentioned — reaches just the accounts named in the text.

Content warning. Shown in place of your post until someone chooses to expand it. Used far more on Mastodon than elsewhere, for spoilers, heavy topics, or long posts on a shared timeline.

Mark media as sensitive. Blurs attachments until clicked. Independent of the content warning.

First comment. Posted as a reply from your account right after the post goes live, with the same visibility as the post.

Analytics

You get favourites, replies and boosts per post, plus your follower count.

There are no impressions and no view counts. That is not something we have yet to build: Mastodon does not count them anywhere, on any server, by design. Those show a dash rather than a zero.

Comments

Replies work both ways. Mastodon appears on the comments page, and you can read and reply without leaving Publiz. A reply keeps the audience of the post it answers, so replying to a followers-only post stays followers-only.

You cannot hide someone’s reply. Mastodon has no such feature — you can mute the conversation or block the person, but neither of those is the same thing, so the hide button is disabled.

Deleting

Deleting from Publiz really deletes the post on Mastodon. Copies already sent to other servers may take a moment to disappear, which is how federation works everywhere.

One account per workspace

The same rule every channel here follows. If you keep accounts on two servers, use a workspace for each. They are genuinely two identities with their own followers: posting from one does not create a post on the other. People on other servers can still follow you and see your posts — that is what federated means — but it is one post from one account, not a copy on every server.

When it doesn’t work

“That server could not be reached.” Check the spelling, and that you typed the server rather than your username. If the server is down, the check fails until it is back.

“That is not a Mastodon server.” The address answered, but not as Mastodon. Usually a personal site or a landing page rather than the server itself.

A video posted without its attachment. Large files are processed after upload, and we wait for your server to finish. If it takes longer than two minutes we stop waiting and report it rather than posting something broken. Try a smaller or shorter file.

Other software. Pleroma, Akkoma and GoToSocial speak the same API and may well work, but we have not tested them and do not support them yet.