Friends — WordPress RSS Feed Plugin
by Alex Kirk · WordPress.org page · Website
Friends has 900+ active installs on WordPress.org and 93,484 downloads all time. We have tracked it since September 4, 2026; download trends appear after 30 days of data. The last update was on September 4, 2026, tested up to WordPress 7.0.4.
Friends at a glance
Is Friends well maintained?
Features
The feature list from the plugin's own readme on WordPress.org, trimmed to the essentials.
- You use the WordPress infrastructure (Gutenberg or Classic Editor, what you prefer) to create your posts
- Followed people are stored as taxonomy terms, their posts are cached as a custom post type — delete the term to unfollow
- No extra tables: The Friends plugin just uses a post type, options, and some taxonomies to store its data. When you delete the plugin, your WordPress will be…
Friends reviews and ratings
7 reviews on WordPress.org, with the most recent ones as their authors posted them.
7 reviews
- 5★
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Fantastic!
Seems to do what it says well. Have been scrolling it for weeks and cant be happier with what you can find on the Fediverse. This one WP plugin and Activitypub ofc, has taken a lot of my social media use, it just does it good enough. This way of being on the Fediverse is so slick. If you know WP you need to try it. For some reason the /friends page is overriding my theme header but that it probably my fault. Doesn't stop me from going there like every day!
Peter Roe -
I love it, what a very cool plugin!
Perhaps something like this should be enabled by default on all WordPress plugins, it really hits home... the idea is brilliant!
Vondelphia.com -
Excellent!
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.
vuorijoki -
You can use to bridge to BlueSky too!
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. :D
solarbird -
really excited about the possibilities with this plugin
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.
kennethrg -
While far from perfect this is an astoundingly good idea
I've got a few blogs running friends and I love it.
lordmatt
Where Friends ranks on WordPress.org
The rankings we track that Friends appears in, and how its position changed over 30 days.
| Ranking | WordPress.org placement | Position | 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best RSS Feed Plugins | #38 by tag, not in search | #66 | – |
Details
A self-hosted social reader for WordPress: follow people via RSS and ActivityPub, with multiple themes and a plugin ecosystem.
The full description, screenshots and every review live on the WordPress.org page.
Rankings Friends competes in
Tags
- decentralized
- friends
- own-your-data
- rss
- social network
More from Alex Kirk
-
Enable Mastodon Apps 500+ installs -
startpage 40+ installs -
Factolex Glossary fewer than 10 installs -
Family Wiki fewer than 10 installs
- Version
- 4.3.1
- Last updated
- Sep 4, 2026
- First published
- May 6, 2018
- Requires WordPress
- –
- Tested up to
- 7.0.4
- Requires PHP
- 7.4
- Pricing
- Free, community plugin
Friends FAQ
What does Friends do?
According to its WordPress.org readme, Friends offers You use the WordPress infrastructure (Gutenberg or Classic Editor, what you prefer) to create your posts, Followed people are stored as taxonomy terms, their posts are cached as a custom post type — delete the term to unfollow and No extra tables: The Friends plugin just uses a post type, options, and some taxonomies to store its data. When you delete the plugin, your WordPress will be.
How many active installs does Friends have?
WordPress.org reports 900+ active installs for Friends as of September 7, 2026.
Is Friends still maintained?
Yes. The last release was on September 4, 2026 and it is tested up to WordPress 7.0.4.
Does Friends have good support?
On the WordPress.org forum, 0 of 1 recent support threads for Friends are marked resolved. That is the developer's free support; a paid version usually comes with its own channel.
Is Friends free?
Friends is free and listed as a community plugin on WordPress.org, with no commercial upgrade.
Where does Friends rank among RSS Feed Plugins?
Friends is #66 in the WordPress.org RSS Feed Plugins ranking.