What is Known used for?

Known is a PHP social publishing platform for IndieWeb sites with Webmention, syndication and ActivityPub support. It is a good fit for running a personal IndieWeb site, publishing posts and syndicating them elsewhere, and taking part in the fediverse from your own domain.

Is Known open source?

Yes. Known is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at idno/idno and is written mainly in PHP.

Yes. Known is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

Can I self-host Known?

Yes. Known can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Known an alternative to?

Known is an open-source alternative to Medium, Tumblr and Micro.blog. Other open-source alternatives to Medium include Ghost, WriteFreely and HTMLy.

Is Known actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Known was on 9 September 2026, and the latest release is 1.6.4, published on 1 March 2026. The project has 1.1k stars on GitHub.

Known: open-source alternative to Medium, Tumblr, Micro.blog

About Known

Idno is a social publishing platform written in PHP, associated with the Known project and the IndieWeb movement. It lets people publish posts of different types on a site they own, and connect those posts to other services and sites, rather than posting only inside a third-party social network.

The README describes installation from packages, from Git or with Composer, and requires PHP 8.3 or newer with selected extensions and a supported database. By default events such as Webmention pings, syndication and ActivityPub delivery run inside the web request, but an asynchronous queue with a background worker can be enabled, and it is required for ActivityPub so that follow acceptance, post distribution and updates reach remote servers.

Idno is under active development, is self-hosted, and its repository lists the licence as other. Its topics tag it as both a CMS framework and a social network tool. It suits individuals and communities who want to own their publishing platform and take part in federated and IndieWeb protocols.

Key features

Social publishing of multiple post types
Webmention support
Syndication to other services
ActivityPub delivery
Optional asynchronous event queue
Install via Composer, Git, or packages

Good fit for

→Running a personal IndieWeb site
→Publishing posts and syndicating them elsewhere
→Taking part in the fediverse from your own domain

Built with: PHP
Tags: indieweb; social-publishing; cms; php; activitypub; webmention; blogging; self-hosted; fediverse

Known: questions and answers

What is Known used for?: Known is a PHP social publishing platform for IndieWeb sites with Webmention, syndication and ActivityPub support. It is a good fit for running a personal IndieWeb site, publishing posts and syndicating them elsewhere, and taking part in the fediverse from your own domain.
Is Known open source?: Yes. Known is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at idno/idno and is written mainly in PHP.
Is Known free?: Yes. Known is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
Can I self-host Known?: Yes. Known can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Known an alternative to?: Known is an open-source alternative to Medium, Tumblr and Micro.blog. Other open-source alternatives to Medium include Ghost, WriteFreely and HTMLy.
Is Known actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Known was on 9 September 2026, and the latest release is 1.6.4, published on 1 March 2026. The project has 1.1k stars on GitHub.