This post was originally on The Fulcrum.
Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.
It's your weekly review of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. We aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.
IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), the Fediverse, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.
The second best strategy is to have accounts on the Fediverse and use the hell out of them.
We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.
There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.
Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ´em.
We are taking next week off, so we’ll see you on the 20th.
Featured Item(s)
Euronews reports:
Europe unites to build sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure to stop reliance on US
The keyword to note here is federation.
Open Media Network Site CMSs
Ghost shares:
FAIR has:
Second star to the right and straight on till morning…
Eleventy is becoming Build Awesome:
Looks promising.
WordPress
Make WordPress has:
Call for Testing – Pattern editing and content-only interactivity in WordPress 7.0
Iframed Editor Changes in WordPress 7.0
What’s new in Gutenberg 22.6? (25 February)
WordPress has a great case study:
Human Made shows us:
How WordPress solves visual editing without the complexity tax
The Repository opines:
WordPress Faces an Event Horizon, Not a Sunset
Unfortunately, WordPress and Drupal are too big not to integrate with AI. At least it is opt in (for now).
Delicious Brains explores:
Database Indexing: The Missing Manual for WordPress
Learn WP Theme Dev has:
Building a Custom Block Part 8: Restricting Inner Blocks
Building a Custom Block Part 9: Adding Block Toolbar Controls
Gutenberg Times examines:
14 ways to add Custom CSS in WordPress Block Editor
Good overview of overly complex system.
Haurand has:
Danny van Kooten looks at:
Using phpactor as a language server for WordPress development
Ghost
Ghost announces:
Improved editor for welcome emails
Spectral Web Services has:
Customizing theme text in Ghost
Drupal CMS
Drupal Odyssey continues a series:
The Automated Librarian: Part 6 - Building a System That Feeds Itself
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
The Guardian says:
Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more
9to5Linux reports:
Calibre 9.4 Adds “Reading Stats” to the E-Book Viewer to Show Reading Progress
F-Droid shares:
The NLnet Foundation has:
44 Digital Commons Projects Selected for NGI Zero Grants
This an exciting one along with ActivityPub for Drupal.
Chat
Signal has:
Signal introduces member labels for groups
Signal brings sending view-once photos and videos to Signal Desktop
Browsers
Servo has an update:
January in Servo: preloads, better forms, details styling, and more!
I feel this has advanced enough that I can start experimenting with it. Great progress!
Cloud
Nextcloud has a video:
Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter design update. 🎨 QR code login, intuitive icons, enhanced filters, and more!
Techzine reports:
Nextcloud doubles down on sovereign message with latest release
Creative
GIMP announces:
GIMP 3.2 RC3: Third Release Candidate for GIMP 3.2
Inkscape has:
Inkscape is hiring: Developers and Administrator (2026)
Linux
Tinker says:
In prep for the Windows 12 rollout, get ready for your town's Linux Install Parties
Modal shares:
Towards a Sovereign Mobile Stack
This looks fucking awesome.
And this seems like the closest phone (now available) to what Modal envisions.
Use this to turn it into a desktop or server. 🤯
PostmarketOS announces:
postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels
Motorola has:
Hosting / Serving
SecureDrop asks:
This week's featured OMN tool
Bunny Fonts
Push your privacy to the next level. Prevent your users from being tracked by 3rd party websites and simplify GDPR compliance.
OMN Programming
Smashing Frames has:
Ben Werdmueller asks:
The Register reports:
Open source devs consider making digital hogs pay for every Git pull
Markdown
David Duymelinck asks:
Markdown pages, are they a good solution?
HTML
And CSS Tricks asks:
Popover API or Dialog API: Which to Choose?
CSS
They also share:
Yet Another Way to Center an (Absolute) Element
Useful and easier.
The Different Ways to Select < html > in CSS
Frontend Masters shares:
The Odometer Effect (without JavaScript)
The Big Gotcha of Anchor Positioning
Web Components
And:
Post Mortem: Rewriting AgnosticUI with Lit Web Components
JavaScript
AI
Other
XWIKI has:
Building a knowledge base that lasts: How to structure, maintain, and scale documentation
Redefining enterprise collaboration with open-source solutions: XWiki and Spectrum Groupe
Clemi Potiers explores:
EMI et Forge : les indispensables!
This week's featured programming tool
ATProto
The Authenticated Transfer Protocol, aka atproto, is a decentralized protocol for large-scale social web applications.
ActivityPub
ActivityPub for WordPress shares:
8.0.0 — Smash That Like Button
Terence Eden examines:
Adding "Log In With Mastodon" to Auth0
Very cool.
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
Emissary
Emissary is a Fedi server built for end users, developers, and admins.
Fediverse
Matt Duggan says:
Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse
Fediforum shares:
Growing the Open Social Web un-workshop 2026/03/02
My Bad Take Space expounds:
On Meeting Users Where They Are
Maho Pacheco is working on:
Connected Places has:
FR155 – Where Does Community Live – updates
Roberta Fidora reports:
Animation Array is a new animation programme on The Indie Beat Television
HolosSocial has:
The next Holos release will use Bloom filters
What if every phone could contribute to the #Fediverse, not just consume it?
In the next #Holos release: post expiration
Mastodon announces:
Bonfire
Elixir (the language used to build Bonfire) explores:
Lazy BDDs with eager literal intersections
POST AS HTML
Back to top 👆🏼
More
Ricardo Mendes takes a:
Deep Dive into Wafrn: How One Platform Self-Hosts Both ActivityPub and Bluesky Identities
Very, very cool.
The European Commission announces:
Commission registers European Citizens' Initiative calling for a European social media platform
Hmmm.
RSS
NetNetNewswire says:
Testing help for NetNewsWire 7.0.1 beta needed — runs on macOS 15
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
Blacksy announces:
Rish explores:
Daniel has:
Permissioned Data Diary 2: Buckets
Blaine says:
pckt shares:
Building Our Corner of the Open Social Web: pckt.cafe and More
From WhiteWind to pckt.blog in Just One Click
If you have the misfortune to be on the non-maintained Whitewind plaform you can migrate to pckt.
EuroskySocial announces:
You can now use our new tool EU-HAUL
I guess this moves you from Bluesky to Eurosky. That would be fantastic.
Tyler Fisher shows us how to:
Sync your WordPress posts to standard.site records on your PDS
In a few weeks I think will get a Eurosky account and connect it to the Fulcrum backup site. And start cross-posting from there. And maybe to pckt as well.
I have to admit ATProto is coming into its own. But Bluesky is still 100% doomed to enshittification. It's not the code. It's the company.
eMail / Newsletters
Tuta has:
Blocking Gmail ads is possible! Here's how in 2026.
Buttondown shares:
Filter sent emails by engagement rate
CTAs
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