Friends
Follow others via RSS and ActivityPub and read their posts on your own WordPress.
5(6 reviews)
·1.0K+ active installs·Updated 3 days agoAs of April 2026, Friends is a WordPress rss plugin with 1.0K+ active installations and a 5/5 rating from 6 reviews. It has been downloaded 82K+ times in total. Requires WordPress false+ and PHP 7.4+. Available on WordPress.org since 2018. Actively maintained — updated within the last month. Downloads are up 30% this week. Support resolution rate: 0%. Top alternative: RSS Importer.
5/56 reviews
1.0K+active installs
0%resolved
8 yearssince 2018
Overview
The Friends plugin allows you to follow content from other WordPress sites, and interact with them on your own site. You can follow friends and others via RSS. If you also have the ActivityPub plugin installed, you can follow people on Mastodon and other ActivityPub-compatible social networks.
Since version 2.6.0, no users will be created for subscriptions.
Combine this plugin with the ActivityPub plugin to make your own WordPress your own Mastodon instance. Use the Enable Mastodon Apps to use mobile and desktop Mastodon apps with your own site.
The Friends Plugin also has a “friend request” function which allows blogs to become friends with each other. This then allows private publishing on your blog while each of their friends has their own blog but will be able to see your…
Screenshots
Ratings & Reviews
56 reviews
5 ★
6
4 ★
0
3 ★
0
2 ★
0
1 ★
0
Recent Reviews
I love it, what a very cool plugin!
by Vondelphia.com·3 months ago·1 reply
Perhaps something like this should be enabled by default on all WordPress plugins, it really hits home… the idea is brilliant!
Excellent!
by vuorijoki·1 year ago
This is really an excellent app. It’s possible to bridge to Bluesky with it and it’s really easy to reblog etc. I really like the email alerts. The only difficulty is finding sites to follow. A list of sites would be nice.
You can use to bridge to BlueSky too!
by solarbird·1 year ago
I decided to try to use this to bridge my self-hosted ActivityPub-enabled WordPress blog to BlueSky as well, using the opt-in BridgyFed service which connects BlueSky to the Federation. I found a problem and went to both Friends and BridgyFed to see if we could get it working – and over a weekend(!), got it sorted out and now people are following my blog from BlueSky via Friends and it’s pretty dang seamless!
Federation is amazing, this plugin is great, and thanks devs getting this whole fleet of connectors working this quickly was awesome. 😀
really excited about the possibilities with this plugin
by kennethrg·1 year ago·1 reply
I started using this plugin in combination with the ActivityPub plugin. ActivityPub broadcasts my posts to Mastodon and other services across the Fediverse; the Friends plugin allows my followers to interact with my posts. Together the result is that my WordPress site acts (sort of) as a Fediverse instance. Very cool!
After seeing the possibilities here, I am working on creating a small network of WordPress sites using the Friends plugin. Each of the sites represents an organization working on related community advocacy projects, and I am excited about the possibilities for connecting and sharing information in this way.
While far from perfect this is an astoundingly good idea
by lordmatt·2 years ago·1 reply
I’ve got a few blogs running friends and I love it.
Download Trends
Today: 68Yesterday: 243This week: 3KPeriod total: 24K
Compatibility
| WordPress | false+ requiredTested up to 7.0 |
| PHP | 7.4+ required |
Version Adoption
v4.0
62.0%
v3.6
38.0%
Top Alternatives to Friends
Frequently Asked Questions
Changelog
View full changelog on WordPress.org
Contributors
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.