FAQ
What does it mean to distribute a site?
When you integrate Distributed Press to your site, it's distributed (published) onto new web protocols. This means that your site can be accessed via HTTPS but also through peer-to-peer protocols like Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) and Hypercore (a.k.a. Holepunch). Publishing through multiple protocols ensures greater accessibility, reduces reliance on a single point of failure, and increases content longevity across diverse networks. Distributing your site can guarantee that your content never goes offline, even in the face of technical failures or even political pressure — no authority can simply pull the plug.
What protocols does Distributed Press publish to?
We currently publish onto IPFS and Hypercore. If you’re part of a community that does P2P file transfer and would like to see your protocol integrated, open up an issue on our GitHub repo with information about your protocol and we can chat about integration from there!
Who controls the copies when I distribute my site?
There are several aspects to consider regarding control of the information published on the DWeb.
Deletion: you can undo the choice of distributing a site, and an empty version of the site will be shared in its place. However, it is possible that nodes on the distributed storage network may continue retaining copies of the data you originally shared indefinitely. This is not so different from the traditional web, where people can also take screenshots or archive your site. It is nearly impossible to know if someone may have a copy or photo of sites, even if it has been taken down from its host server. However, the censorship-resistance of DWeb protocols depends on multiple copies of your data being made across the network, and so it is harder to remove this data once it is distributed.
Availability and integrity: in the distributed web, other nodes can assist in distributing your website, enhancing availability and redundancy. By using a P2P browser, you can also contribute to the distribution of data. Within these protocols, we ensure that the integrity of the content remains intact, allowing only the site owner to make changes. However, it's important to note that public proxies or gateways could potentially manipulate the content, such as by inserting ads, since they act as intermediaries.
Which browsers are distributed-web-friendly?
Do your offer integrations with static site generators?
Yes!
If you wish to build your site in Sutty CMS, it already has Distributed Press integrated and you enable it by simply switching a toggle in the Configuration Panel.
If you are using Jekyll, there are a series of Jekyll plugins we developed to upload the site to Distributed Press and publish to the Social Inbox.
https://rubygems.org/gems/jekyll-activity-pub
https://rubygems.org/gems/distributed-press-api-client
You can also use our auto-onboarding options: connect to play with our API through a token or see our documentation to self-host your own instance and then deploy via Github Actions.
If you don't have the time or resources to do it yourself, we offer consulting services to integrate DWeb hosting and publishing to existing static site generators and content management systems. Our consulting services also cover dApps, Peer-To-Peer applications, use of cryptographic verification, ActivityPub integrations... check out our scope here or contact us directly.
How does Distributed Press interact with social media?
We have built the Social Inbox, which allows people to integrate their website with the Fediverse and engage with readers there. Any site working with Distributed Press' workflows obtains their own account on the Fediverse, allowing it to automatically send out new posts to followers at the time of publication. When other users reply to your posts, you can approve them to be published to the site as comments. The Social Inbox allows readers to directly engage with your posts where they already are, and gives publishers the ability to incorporate public dialogue and interactions like boosts, favs and retoots into their websites.
The account that's automatically created by Social Inbox for your site on the Fediverse can be customized. The integration with the Fediverse is enriched with moderation features: receiving and moderating comments on your site and posts, managing instance-level allowlists and blocklists, allowlist/blocklist individual users regardless of their instance, and supporting Fediblock blocklists (blocking known bad instances by default). Learn more in this article.
Why publish to the Fediverse instead of 'Big Tech' social media?
Big social media platforms like X/Twitter and Instagram control all data, content, and interactions with little transparency. They censor posts and accounts without explanation and constantly surveil users' actions. This data fuels their algorithms to maximize ad influence and profitability. In the face of these failures, interesting alternatives have arisen, and one of the most thriving networks is what is collectively called the Fediverse — an ecosystem of social media platforms that rely on the ActivityPub social data standard.
Instead of having a platform contain the accounts, messages, and interactions concentrated on one website, ActivityPub allows users with accounts on different websites to communicate with each other. This is similar to how email works: you can send an email to someone else regardless of what email service they use. By enabling anyone to set up their own “instance” or social media server, ActivityPub allows people to decide whom to delegate control over their data. As a result, the Fediverse continues to grow in its potential as a diversified network of interoperable social media applications, with more than 10 million users and counting!
Is there a difference between DWeb and Web3?
We see the DWeb as a movement related to the umbrella of Web3 projects but ethically oriented to the digital commons. You can explore similarities and differences in this great article by Mai Ishikawa Sutton.
What's the cost of your service?
We have free options and paid services, you can check both on our Pricing section