(updated ) by

Add WebFinger to your site

WebFinger lets other services discover information about your site or identity across the internet. It’s a key component of federated networks like Mastodon and essential for cross-site interactions.

WebFinger is used to discover information about people or other entities on the Internet that are identified by a URI using standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) methods over a secure transport.

WebFinger.net

How discovery works

  • Someone looks up you@yourdomain.com
  • Their client requests https://yourdomain.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:you@yourdomain.com
  • Your server responds with your WebFinger JSON
  • The client uses the links to display your profile, avatar, or other resources
  • profile-page: Your main profile or about page
  • avatar: Your profile picture
  • alternate: RSS feeds or other formats
  • self: Your ActivityPub endpoint (for federation)

Implementation example

Let’s look at the davelage.com WebFinger on this site.

{
  "subject": "acct:dave@davelage.com",
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
      "type": "text/html",
      "href": "https://davelage.com/about"
    },
    {
      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/avatar",
      "type": "image/jpeg",
      "href": "https://davelage.com/face-640.jpg"
    },
    {
      "rel": "alternate",
      "type": "application/rss+xml",
      "href": "https://davelage.com/posts/index.xml"
    }
  ]
}

The listed links are of relation profile-page, avatar and alternate RSS feed. See Link Relations for more info.

Conclusion

Adding WebFinger gives clients the ability to view info on you, showing your avatar and profile page. View your WebFinger on ActivityPub social networking sites like Mastadon to see how it’s working.

Find more information on the WebFinger spec.

Further reading