Recently, I ran into a situation where I wanted to share a post AND have my friends be able to make comments on this post. If my friends were cool, they would also be using Hubzilla and this wouldn't be an issue. However, they are not Hubzilla members (not yet anyway...) Instead, they can be found on the NSA's social network that uses a big blue "F" for a logo.
So, the solution I came up with was to create the content on Hubzilla. Then, I would then just add the link to a Farcebuch post asking them to read the article. But once they read the article on my Hubzilla channel, how would they be able to respond? One method was introduced with the Hubzilla 2.6 patch.
This method allows any outside user to make a comment on your public posts in a similar fashion to a Wordpress site. Comments would then need to be approved in the moderator panel before they show up. While easy to set up, I didn't want to open
every public post up to comments. And so, I looked into a second method of achieving my goal.
The solution I settled on uses Hubzilla's Guest Access Token feature. It allows me to create a link to an article that can be posted anywhere. The link includes a token that will allow those who follow it to like/post comments without waiting for moderation. On a per-post basis!
Here is how this can be achieved: First, you will need to create your Guess Access Token. This can be done by clicking Settings on your channel, and then on Guess Access Tokens. The field "Login Name" can be anything you wish. In this example, I am using "FacebookRefugee". The login password field should already be populated by a random string. You may leave it as-is, or change it as you see fit. After this, click the Submit button to create the token. Towards the bottom of the screen, you will now see the login name for the token you created. Clicking the token name will change the example links to include the password of the token you created.
Make note of the red text in the link example. We will need this later.
Next, create your post. Before you hit "Share", click the Permission Settings button. In the pull down list, we are going to choose "Custom Selection". Here, you can add any Hubzilla group or individual user. You should also see the login name of the Access Token you created. If it is not in your list, you may use the search field. Be sure click the "Show" button (turning it green) to give your token login name access to the post. Click the Share button when you are finished.
After creating your post, take a look at it in your feed. Click the options button in the lower right hand corner of the post and select "Link to source". This will give us a view that contains only the post you created.
Look at the web address of the post in your browser. It should appear like something below:
https://hubz.secretlair.me/channel/nsoddity/?f=&mid=d2ef0495f3550b03d79455978adfc4853fe43d981d0c3a613a4a8c7faf9dedcd@hubz.secretlair.me&zid=nsoddity%40hubz.secretlair.me
At the end of the link, you may discard the section that begins with "&zid", and continues on with your ZOT ID.
The next part we are interested in is towards the beginning of the link, just after your channel address. Remember the red text from the example link on the Guess Access Token Page? We will need that for this next step.
The red highlighted text from the Guest Access Token page will be substituted in place of the yellow highlighted text below.
https://hubz.secretlair.me/channel/nsoddity/[hl]?f=[/hl]&mid=d2ef0495f3550b03d79455978adfc4853fe43d981d0c3a613a4a8c7faf9dedcd@hubz.secretlair.me&zid=nsoddity%40hubz.secretlair.me
Your final link should be similar to the structure of the one below:
https://hubz.secretlair.me/channel/nsoddity/[color=red]?f=&zat=gresteb[/color]&mid=d2ef0495f3550b03d79455978adfc4853fe43d981d0c3a613a4a8c7faf9dedcd@hubz.secretlair.me
You may now copy this link, and try it in a private browser window, or a another browser where you are not logged into Hubzilla. If everything worked, you should see that you have been authenticated with a generic Hubzilla user image and the post should be visible. Those who use this link will be able to click the like button, and add replies. Note that all replies will show the User Name you chose as the author. In this example, the replies would be posed by "FacebookRefugee".
And there we go! Hopefully this will get a few outsiders to ask questions about what Hubzilla is, and what they can do with it.
Cheers!
Update 1: A like can be set on a post only once by a guess access token.
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