You may be one of those people who’s grown tired of mainstream social media—Facebook, Instagram, the endless noise—and in your search for something calmer and more human you’ve discovered Mastodon, the open‑source, decentralized social platform. If so, good for you. It’s a refreshing change of pace.
If you also happen to run your own website and want to link it in your Mastodon profile with proper verification, there are a few specific steps you’ll need to follow. This guide walks you through the simplest and most reliable method (for WordPress). If that applies to you, read on.
Verifying your Mastodon profile with your WordPress site is straightforward once you know exactly where to place the required HTML. Mastodon uses a simple open‑web mechanism: your Mastodon profile links to your website, and your website links back to your Mastodon profile using rel="me". When both sides match, Mastodon displays a verification checkmark next to your website address listed in your profile.
Below is the simplest, most reliable method using a Custom HTML block in WordPress that I was able to figure out (with one major mistake on my part – which cost me HOURS of troubleshooting).
1. Copy your Mastodon verification snippet
In Mastodon, click on your:
Profile name → Edit profile button → Verification tab
Mastodon will show you verification instructions plus a snippet similar to:
<a rel="me" href="https://your-instance/@yourusername">Mastodon</a>
Copy this snippet.
2. Edit the WordPress page you want to verify from
Open your WordPress dashboard and edit the page whose URL you will list on your Mastodon profile. This will likely be your website’s home page.
Most people use their homepage, but any public page works as long as the URL matches exactly. And I mean exactly (including www)
Pages → All Pages → [Your Page] → Edit
3. Add a Custom HTML block
Click anywhere in your page, then click on the Outline icon at the top Toolbar, then scroll to the bottom of the page (or anywhere in the main content area).
Add a new block (if it doesn’t pop up, just search for it):
+ → Custom HTML
Paste your Mastodon snippet into the block, but make it invisible bya dding a style, so it doesn’t appear on your site yet remains accessible to the Mastodon crawler. Here is an example of my own public Mastodon link:
<a rel="me" href="https://defcon.social/@jiri" style="display:none;">Mastodon</a>
This keeps the link in the raw HTML while hiding it from visitors. Click Update or click Save to publish the change to your page.
Note:
In some cases, you may need to publish an article or report an existing one, if your page is not refreshing even after you’ve saved the changes. WordPress can be sometimes quirky.
4. Confirm the link appears in your page’s HTML source
Open your site in a new browser tab using the exact URL you plan to verify.
Then view the page source:
Right‑click anywhere in your page → View page source
Search for:
rel="me"
You should see your invisible link exactly like this:
<a rel="me" href="https://defcon.social/@jiri" style="display:none;">Mastodon</a>
If it appears in the source, Mastodon will be able to detect it.
5. Add your website URL to your Mastodon profile
Return to Mastodon and open:
Preferences → Edit profile
Scroll to the Extra fields section which will contain two columns of multiple blank fields. Left column is a Label, right column is the actual value where you will put your website address.
In the first row:
Label: Website
Content: https://yourdomain.com
Click Save changes.
Mastodon will automatically crawl the URL in the content field and look for the rel="me" link you added.
Attention:
Don’t make the mistake I did and paste the URL into the Label column (if you don’t pay attention). It literally took me hours of troubleshooting to finally figure out the rookie mistake I had made.
Second: Mastodon will need your canonical address! So, if your site is using “www.” then you must include it. If your site is not using “www.”, like mine, do not include it. Example of my URL: https://goarcherdynamics.com. I included no www at the beginning, because that is my true address (directly in root and no www sub-folder).
6. Verification completes automatically
After saving, refresh your Mastodon profile.
Once Mastodon detects the matching link, it will display a green verification checkmark next to your website field and should look something like this:
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