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I have written several posts with tips for various aspects of blogging. This post curates those posts and bits from the #IndieWeb wiki into a linear progression, from why, to what, and how to post. This post assumes you already have a blog — if you don’t have one and wonder why you should, that’s a different blog post.
Why Post
There is a whole wiki page on the topic:
* https://indieweb.org/why_post — which could use some gardening
Here is a summary of reasons why to post:
1. Wean yourself off social media. Post to your own site instead of social media. If you already post on social media, into someone else’s garage¹, then you already have reason enough to post. So post on your own site first, and optionally syndicate² to that silo, only if you have friends who still use it to read posts.
2.
What to Post
* Post positive things promptly: https://tantek.com/2018/357/t3
* … from that day first: https://tantek.com/2018/364/t1
* … in time order: https://tantek.com/2018/364/t5
* Make and share lists. People like lists
How to Post
* Use a local text editor
* Capture first, edit & publish later: https://tantek.com/2023/365/t1/
* Do something positive (in-person), then post about it: https://tantek.com/2018/002/t1
* Single topic post
* Short and to the point. Edit and remove anything distracting from the main point.
* Quotable post title
* Summary opening paragraph
* Put tangents aside
* Quotable sentences and multi-sentence paragraphs
* Subheadings help cluster related paragraphs
* Use a footer for updates, terminology, previous writings, additional reading, and citations.
* Move definitions, citations, etc. to the footer unless including them inline either provides little risk of distraction or significantly helps reading flow.
* Use footer subsections: Previously, Post Glossary, References, Additional Reading
* Check your references
Each of these points could be its own blog post.
Glossary
silo
https://indieweb.org/silo
social media
https://indieweb.org/social_media
References
¹ https://tantek.com/2023/001/t1/own-your-notes
² https://indieweb.org/POSSE
This is post 29 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/306/t1/simple-embeds
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Day 1 of #IndieWebCamp #Berlin 2024¹ was very well attended!
* 20 participants, more than 3x the previous one in 2022, and second highest (2019 had 22).
* 18 introduced themselves² and their personal sites or aspirations for one
Collectively we proposed and facilitated 11 breakout sessions³ on many timely #indieweb topics covering #syndication, #inclusion, #longevity, #federation / #fediverse, how to best use #Mastodon with your personal site, #privacy and #security concerns of being online, #writing, how can we design better user interfaces for text authoring, and personalized reading #algorithms for staying connected with friends.
Session titles (and hashtags)
* How to #POSSE
* How to make the web queerer / stranger. #queer
* Online presence after our #death
* Threat modeling #threatmodeling
* Non-technical collaboration on the internet. #collab
* Locations and #places check-in
* Writing with images. #imagewriting
* Text authoring UX. #textUX
* #SSR, organizing CSS/JS
* Website design without being a designer. #designfordummies
* Timeline algorithms. #timelines
Etherpad notes from sessions have been archived to the wiki, with session recordings to follow!
Day 2 also had 20 in-person participants, the highest IndieWebCamp Berlin day 2 attendance ever! Most everyone from day 1 came back to hack, and three new people showed up. We also had several remote participants.
References
¹ https://indieweb.org/2024
² https://indieweb.org/2024/Berlin/Intros
³ https://indieweb.org/2024/Berlin/Schedule#Saturday
This is post 28 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
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Last week at a #HomebrewWebsiteClub session¹ I pointed out that I was working on implementing a “simple” way to support embeds of my notes, that is, make my short notes embeddable, like how people embed tweets or toots.
I noted that to keep it as simple as possible while being flexible to implementation changes, I planned to implement three things:
1. A separate “embed” version of my post permalinks, with just the entry information (no header, nav, search, sidebar, footer etc.), embeddable via copy/paste or an iframe.
2. A way to “Follow Your Nose” discover that separate embed version
3. A way to discover the original post from the embedded version
For (1) a minimal h-entry, with perhaps a little bit of inline CSS would suffice.
For (2) I proposed using “rel=embed” which I’ve subsequently written up briefly².
For (3) The obvious existing answer is rel=canonical link from the embed version to the canonical post permalink.
Soon thereafter, several folks in the #IndieWeb community went ahead and implemented such embeds for their own sites, and even the https://libre.fm/ open scrobbling service!
https://indieweb.org/embed#IndieWeb_Examples
I have yet to implement it myself, and that’s fine. This is one of the things I appreciate about the community, we can share our plans and ideas for improving things on our own sites, and if someone else does it first, that's great! We celebrate it and explore the solution space together.
Got other ideas for simple embeds? Want to implement them on your own site?
Join us in the #indiewebdev chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
UPDATE: What about oEmbed? tl;dr: oEmbed requires JS and backend code, more work and unsuitable for embeds from static site hosting (like GitHub pages).
A simple HTML method is accessible to many more independent publishers and easier to implement. More: https://tantek.com/2024/306/t2
Glossary
embed
https://indieweb.org/embed
Follow Your Nose
https://indieweb.org/follow_your_nose
h-entry
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
oEmbed
https://indieweb.org/oEmbed
rel-canonical
https://indieweb.org/rel-canonical
static site hosting
https://indieweb.org/static_web_hosting
References
¹ https://indieweb.org/events/2024-10-23-hwc-europe#embedding
² https://indieweb.org/rel-embed
This is post 27 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
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No I did not block you on the #fediverse / #Mastodon / #Misskey etc.
If you were following me @tantek.com on your client/server/instance of choice but noticed you were no longer doing so, that was due to a recent software bug in my fediverse provider which accidentally caused everyone’s #ActivityPub servers to unfollow me (bug details below).
No it’s absolutely not your fault, you did nothing wrong.
We need a variant of Hanlon’s Razor¹ like:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a software bug.”
Take another look at my posts if you want (directly on @tantek.com or try searching for that on your instance) and if you like what you see or find them otherwise informative and useful, feel free to refollow. If not, no worries!
Also no worries if you ever unfollow/refollow for any reason. I mean that.
I always assume people know best how to manage their online reader/reading experiences, everyone’s priorities and likes/dislikes change over time, and encourage everyone to make choices that are best for their mental health and overall joy online.
Bug details:
This was due to a #BridgyFed bug² that deleted my profile (“ActivityPub actor”) from (nearly?) all instances, making everyone’s accounts automatically unfollow me, as well as remove any of my posts from your likes and reposts (boosts) collections. It also removed my posts from any of your replies to my posts, leaving your replies dangling without reply-contexts. Apologies!
The bug was introduced accidentally as part of another fix about a month ago³, and was triggered within the following week⁴.
Anyone following me before ~2024-09-22 was no longer following me. A few folks have noticed and refollowed. Any likes or reposts of my posts before that date were also undone (removed).
Ryan (@snarfed.org) has been really good about giving folks a heads-up, and apologizing, and quickly doing what he can to fix things.
Bugs happen, yes even in production code, so please do not post/send any hate.
I’d rather be one of the folks helping with improving BridgyFed, and temporary setbacks like this are part of being an early / eager #IndieWeb adopter.
This bug has also revealed some potential weaknesses in other ActivityPub implementations. E.g. deleting an “actor” should be undoable, and undoing a delete should reconnect everything, from follows to likes & reposts collections, to reply-contexts. Perhaps the ActivityPub specification could be updated with such guidance (if it hasn’t been already, I need to double-check).
To be clear, I’m still a big supporter of #BridgyFed, #ActivityPub, #Webmention, and everyone who chooses to implement these and other #IndieWeb related and adjacent protocols as best fits their products and services.
All of these are a part of our broader open #socialWeb, and making all these #openStandards work well together (including handling edge-cases and mistakes!) is essential for providing #socialMedia alternatives that put users first.
References:
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
² https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1379
³ https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/commit/4df76d0db7b87cabbd714039546c05b3221169be
⁴ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-09-22#t1727028174623700
This is post 26 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/285/t1/io-domain-suggested-steps
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I have put a lot of thought into deliberately shifting¹ metaphors², often in the context of the #indieweb³. One goal is to replace use of violent or divisive metaphors with actively constructive, cooperative, or joyful alternatives, like:
* gardening/farming e.g. digital garden⁴
* biology/ecology/nature e.g. digital ecosystem⁵
* cooking/baking e.g. eat your own cooking⁶
* toolmaking, clothing making, other useful crafts e.g. sew what you want⁷
* music, dancing, painting, and other expressive crafts e.g. remixing⁸
* travel, navigation, maps e.g. information superhighway⁹
* games, sports, running, e.g. surfing the net¹⁰
Some of these areas are well developed (sports metaphors), others are obvious or emergent from various IndieWeb efforts like our principles¹¹, and others could use brainstorming and experimentation.
Thoughts and words, whether spoken or written, influence each other in reinforcement feedback loops. Consciously choosing one can impact the other and vice versa.
Especially in messages to others or our even future selves, words and metaphors communicate and reinforce our values and thus merit care in their invention¹² and usage.
What are metaphors you have found constructive, cooperative, or joyful?
References:
¹ https://tantek.com/2023/132/t1/agenda-gardening-metaphors
² https://tantek.com/2023/023/t3/
³ https://tantek.com/2023/022/t1/indieweb-eat-what-you-cook
⁴ https://indieweb.org/digital_garden
⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_ecosystem
⁶ https://indieweb.org/cook_what_you_want
⁷ https://indieweb.org/events/2020-08-19-hwc-west-coast#sewing
⁸ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_culture#Analog_era
⁹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway
¹⁰ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_metaphors#Functional_metaphors
¹¹ https://indieweb.org/principles
¹² https://tantek.com/2024/180/b1/responsible-inventing
This is post 24 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
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Happy October!
For some reason this month has a plethora of daily blogging or other creativity prompts. Here’s a list of the ones I found so far:
* #Blogtober (consider this post my first for this, retroactively day 1)
* Inktober — https://inktober.com/
* LOLtober - https://weblog.anniegreens.lol/2024/10/loltober-2024
* Looptober — https://looptober.com/
* Mathober - https://mathober.com/
* Viztober — https://www.instagram.com/evalottchen/p/DAiNm3ZtuTj/
Having found so many for the month I created an “October” page on the #IndieWeb wiki to document them all (and in case folks find others to add):
* https://indieweb.org/October
October is also a very popular month for seasonal blog styling:
* https://indieweb.org/Halloween
Do you have a custom Halloween theme for your personal site? Add it to the wiki!
This is post 23 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
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Tip: use the W3C Link Checker and fix any errors before federating with Bridgy Fed.
https://validator.w3.org/checklink
If you are using Bridgy Fed to federate your posts from your personal site, I highly recommend you first run the W3C Link Checker on a post, and verify there are no “red” errors (or fix any you find), before pinging Bridgy Fed to federate the post.
The reason is that if your post contains broken links, especially broken https: links as part of an @-mention, a weird set of timeout interactions will occur between #BridgyFed and #Mastodon that will cause any Mastodon instances following your posts to drop your federated posts as if they had not been received.
Further, those instances will also ignore any UPDATES to that post.
More discussion here:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-09-04#t1725421768496000
More bug details here:
* https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/884#issuecomment-2327861883
#IndieWeb #federate #fediverse #interoperability
This is post 22 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/246/t1/adventures-indieweb-activitypub-bridgy-fed
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Adventures in IndieWeb / ActivityPub (AP) bridging:
While in general my posts are being successfully federated by https://fed.brid.gy/ (#BridgyFed), my most recent three posts, and two more earlier this year, were delivered successfully to multiple #Mastodon instances AP inboxes (returned 202), however the posts do not show up if you look-up my profile on those instances (and thus followers never saw them).
These most recent posts:
* https://tantek.com/2024/245/t1/read-write-suggest-edit-web
* https://tantek.com/2024/242/t1/indiewebcamp-portland
* https://tantek.com/2024/238/t3/indiewebcamp-auto-linking
and these earlier this year:
* https://tantek.com/2024/173/t1/years-posse-microformats-adoption
* https://tantek.com/2024/044/t1/twenty-years-microformats
were all delivered to over 300 instances, which returned "202" codes, however none of them show up in profile views on those instances, e.g.
* https://indieweb.social/@tantek.com@tantek.com
* https://mastodon.social/@tantek.com@tantek.com
* https://social.coop/@tantek.com@tantek.com
* https://w3c.social/@tantek.com@tantek.com
(My most recent post on all of these is the same 2024-08-25 post starting with “All setup here at IndieWebCamp Portland!”)
Why would a Mastodon instance respond with a 202 to an AP inbox delivery and then not show that post on the local profile view?
GitHub tracking bug in case you can help narrow/track this down or have
* https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/884
Let’s see if this post makes it to your Mastodon (or other #fediverse) reader/client.
#indieweb #ActivityPub
This is post 21 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
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✏️ I want the Read Write Suggest-Edit Accept-Edit Update Web.
The consumer Infinite Scroll Web leaves us feeling empty.
Too few of us participate in the Read Write Web, whether with personal sites or Wikipedia.
A week ago when we wrapped up #IndieWebCamp Portland and I was reading Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks@indieweb.social) live-tooting of the demos¹, I noticed a few errors, typos or miscaptures, and pointed them out in-person.
Kevin was able to quickly edit his toots and update them for anyone reading, thanks to #Mastodon’s post editing feature and its support of #ActivityPub Updates. But this shouldn’t require being in the same room, whether IRL or chat.
We should be able to suggest edits to each other’s posts, as easily as we can reply and add a comment.
13 years ago I wrote²:
“The Read Write Web is no longer sufficient. I want the Read Fork Write Merge Web.”
Now I want the Read Write Suggest-Edit Accept-Edit Update Web.
The ↪ Reply button is fairly ubiquitous in modern post user interfaces (UIs).
Why not also a ✏️ Suggest Edit button, to craft a fix for a typo, grammar, or other minor error, and send the author for their review, and acceptance or rejection? Perhaps viewable only by the suggester and the author, to avoid "performative" suggested edits.
If the author’s posts provide revision histories, when a suggested edit is accepted, a post’s history could show the contributor of the edit.
Instead of asking Kevin in-person, what if I could have posted special "Suggested Edit" responses in reply to his toots, for which he would receive special notifications, and could choose to one-click accept and update (or further edit) his toots?
To enable such UIs and interactions across servers and implementations, we may need a new type of response³, perhaps with a special property (or more) to convey the edits being suggested.
There is documentation of this and similar use-cases, prior art / UIs, as well as some brainstorming on the #IndieWeb wiki:
* https://indieweb.org/edit
Our interaction after IndieWebCamp has inspired me to take another look at how can we design and prototype solutions to this problem.
For now, if you host your blog and posts as static files on GitHub (or equivalent), you could add a button like this to your posts alongside Like, Reply, Repost buttons:
✏️ Suggest Edit
and link it to an edit URL for the static file for the post.
I don’t use GitHub static files myself for posts, but here’s an example of such an edit link for one of my projects:
https://tantek.com/github/cassis/edit/main/README.md
This will start the process of creating a “pull request”, GitHub’s jargon⁴ for a “suggested edit”.
After completing GitHub’s ceremony of entering multiple text fields (summary & description), and multiple clicks to create said “pull request”, it’ll be sent to the author to review. Presuming the author likes the suggested edit, they can perform the other half of GitHub’s jargon-filled ceremonies to “Merge” or “Squash & Merge”, “Delete fork”, etc. to accept the edit.
It’s an awkward interaction⁵, however useful for at least prototyping a ✏️ Suggest Edit button on sites that store their posts as files in GitHub. Certainly worthy of experimenting with and gathering experience to design and build even better interactions.
We can start with the shortest path to getting something working, then learn, iterate, improve, repeat.
#readWriteWeb #editableWeb #suggestEdit #acceptEdit
References:
¹ https://indieweb.social/@kevinmarks/113025295600067213
² https://tantek.com/2011/174/t1/read-fork-write-merge-web-osb11
³ https://indieweb.org/responses
⁴ The phrase “pull request” was derived from the git command: “git request-pull” according to https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/nvahcp/comment/h12hzj7/
⁵ “edits” in GitHub require taking far more steps, and navigating far more jargon, then say, Wikipedia pages, which come down to “Edit” and “Save”. We should aspire to Wikipedia’s simplicity, not GitHub’s ceremonies.
This is post 20 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/242/t1/indiewebcamp-portland
→ https://tantek.com/2024/246/t1/adventures-indieweb-activitypub-bridgy-fed
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✏️ I want the Read Write Suggest-Edit Accept-Edit Update Web.
The consumer Infinite Scroll Web leaves us feeling empty.
Too few of us participate in the Read Write Web, whether with personal sites or Wikipedia.
A week ago when we wrapped up #IndieWebCamp Portland and I was reading @KevinMarks.com (@kevinmarks@indieweb.social @kevinmarks@xoxo.zone @kevinmarks) live-tooting of the demos¹, I noticed a few errors, typos or miscaptures, and pointed them out in-person.
Kevin was able to quickly edit his toots and update them for anyone reading, thanks to #Mastodon’s post editing feature and its support of #ActivityPub Updates. But this shouldn’t require being in the same room, IRL or chat.
We should be able to suggest edits to each other’s posts, as easily as we can reply and add a comment.
13 years ago I wrote²:
“The Read Write Web is no longer sufficient. I want the Read Fork Write Merge Web.”
Now I want the Read Write Suggest-Edit Accept-Edit Update Web.
The ↪ Reply button is fairly ubiquitous in modern post user interfaces (UIs).
Why not also a ✏️ Suggest Edit button, to craft a fix for a typo, grammar, or other minor error, and send the author for their review, and acceptance or rejection? Perhaps viewable only by the suggester and the author, to avoid "performative" suggested edits.
If the author’s posts provide revision histories, when a suggested edit is accepted, a post’s history could show the contributor of the edit.
Instead of asking Kevin in-person, what if I could have posted special "Suggested Edit" responses in reply to his toots, for which he would receive special notifications, and could choose to one-click accept and update (or further edit) his toots?
To enable such UIs and interactions across servers and implementations, we may need a new type of response³, perhaps with a special property (or more) to convey the edits being suggested.
There is documentation of this and similar use-cases, prior art / UIs, as well as some brainstorming on the #IndieWeb wiki:
* https://indieweb.org/edit
Our interaction after IndieWebCamp has inspired me to take another look at how can we design and prototype solutions to this problem.
For now, if you host your blog and posts as static files on GitHub (or equivalent), you could add a button like this to your posts alongside Like, Reply, Repost buttons:
✏️ Suggest Edit
and link it to an edit URL for the static file for the post.
I don’t use GitHub static files myself for posts, but here’s an example of such an edit link for one of my projects:
https://tantek.com/github/cassis/edit/main/README.md
This will start the process of creating a “pull request”, GitHub’s jargon⁴ for a “suggested edit”.
After completing GitHub’s ceremony of entering multiple text fields (summary & description), and multiple clicks to create said “pull request”, it’ll be sent to the author to review. Presuming the author likes the suggested edit, they can perform the other half of GitHub’s jargon-filled ceremonies to “Merge” or “Squash & Merge”, “Delete fork”, etc. to accept the edit.
It’s an awkward interaction⁵, however useful for at least prototyping a ✏️ Suggest Edit button on sites that store their posts as files in GitHub. Certainly worthy of experimenting with and gathering experience to design and build even better interactions.
We can start with the shortest path to getting something working, then learn, iterate, improve, repeat.
#readWriteWeb #editableWeb #suggestEdit #acceptEdit
References:
¹ https://indieweb.social/@kevinmarks/113025295600067213
² https://tantek.com/2011/174/t1/read-fork-write-merge-web-osb11
³ https://indieweb.org/responses
⁴ The phrase “pull request” was derived from the git command: “git request-pull” according to https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/nvahcp/comment/h12hzj7/
⁵ “edits” in GitHub require taking far more steps, and navigating far more jargon, then say, Wikipedia pages, which come down to “Edit” and “Save”. We should aspire to Wikipedia’s simplicity, not GitHub’s ceremonies.
This is post 20 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
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Had a great time at IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 this past Sunday — our 10th IndieWebCamp in Portland!
https://events.indieweb.org/2024/08/indiewebcamp-portland-2024-8bucXDlLqR0k
Being a one day #IndieWebCamp, we focused more on making, hacking, and creating, than on formal discussion sessions.
Nearly everyone gave a brief personal site intro with a summary of how they use their #IndieWeb site and what they would like to add, remove, or improve.
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Portland/Intros
There were lots of informal discussions, some in the main room, on the walk to and from lunch, over lunch in the nearby outdoor patio, or at tables inside the lobby of the Hotel Grand Stark.
We wrapped up with our usual Create Day¹ Demos session, live streamed for remote attendees to see as well. Lots of great demos of things people built, designed, removed, cleaned-up, documented, and blogged! Everyone still at the camp showed something on their personal site!
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Portland/Demos
Group photo and lots more about IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 at the event’s wiki page:
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Portland
Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help organize IndieWebCamp Portland 2024! Thanks especially to Marty McGuire (@martymcgui.re) for taking live notes during both the personal site intros and create day demos, to Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks@indieweb.social @kevinmarks@xoxo.zone @kevinmarks) for the IndieWebCamp live-tooting, and Ryan Barrett (@snarfed.org) for amazing breakfast pastries from Dos Hermanos.
The experience definitely raised our hopes and confidence for returning to Portland in 2025.²
References:
¹ https://indieweb.org/Create_Day
² https://indieweb.org/Planning#Portland
This is post 19 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #2024_238
← https://tantek.com/2024/238/t3/indiewebcamp-auto-linking
→ https://tantek.com/2024/245/t1/read-write-suggest-edit-web
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Had a great time at IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 this past Sunday — our 10th IndieWebCamp in Portland!
https://events.indieweb.org/2024/08/indiewebcamp-portland-2024-8bucXDlLqR0k
Being a one day #IndieWebCamp, we focused more on making, hacking, and creating, than on formal discussion sessions.
Nearly everyone gave a brief personal site intro with a summary of how they use their #IndieWeb site and what they would like to add, remove, or improve.
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Portland/Intros
There were lots of informal discussions, some in the main room, on the walk to and from lunch, over lunch in the nearby outdoor patio, or at tables inside the lobby of the Hotel Grand Stark.
We wrapped up with our usual Create Day¹ Demos session, live streamed for remote attendees to see as well. Lots of great demos of things people built, designed, removed, cleaned-up, documented, and blogged! Everyone still at the camp showed something on their personal site!
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Portland/Demos
Group photo and lots more about IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 at the event’s wiki page:
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Portland
Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help organize IndieWebCamp Portland 2024! Thanks especially to Marty McGuire (@martymcgui.re) for taking live notes during both the personal site intros and create day demos, to @KevinMarks.com (@kevinmarks@xoxo.zone @kevinmarks @kevinmarks@indieweb.social) for the IndieWebCamp live-tooting, and Ryan Barrett (@snarfed.org) for amazing breakfast pastries from Dos Hermanos.
The experience definitely raised our hopes and confidence for returning to Portland in 2025.²
References:
¹ https://indieweb.org/Create_Day
² https://indieweb.org/Planning#Portland
This is post 19 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #2024_238
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Nice #IndieWebCamp discussion session with Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks@indieweb.social @kevinmarks@xoxo.zone @kevinmarks) on the topic of auto-linking¹.
I’ve implemented an auto_link function² that handles quite a few use-cases of URLs (with or without http: or https:), @-name @-domain @-domain/path @-@-handles, hashtags(#), and footnotes(^).
Much of it is based on what I’ve seen work (or implemented) on sites and software, and some of it is based on logically extending how people are using text punctuation across various services.
It may be time for me to write-up an auto-link specification based on the algorithms I’ve come up with, implemented, and am using live on my site. All the algorithms work fully offline (none of them require querying a site for more info, whether well-known or otherwise), so they can be used in offline-first authoring/writing clients.
I have identified three logical chunks of auto-linking functionality, each of which has different constraints and potential needs for local to the linking context information (like hashtags need a default tagspace). Each would be a good section for a new specification. Each is used by this very post.
* URLs, @-s, and @-@-s
* # hashtags
* ^ footnotes
#IndieWeb #autoLink #hashtag #hashtags #footnote #footnotes
Previously, previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2024/070/t1/updated-auto-linking-mention-use-cases
* https://tantek.com/2023/100/t1/auto-linked-hashtags-federated
* https://tantek.com/2023/043/t1/footnotes-unicode-links
* https://tantek.com/2023/019/t5/reply-domain-above-address-and-silo
References:
¹ https://indieweb.org/autolink
² https://github.com/tantek/cassis/blob/main/cassis.js
This is post 18 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/238/t1/indiewebcamp-portland
→ https://tantek.com/2024/242/t1/indiewebcamp-portland
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Nice #IndieWebCamp discussion session with @KevinMarks.com (@kevinmarks@xoxo.com @kevinmarks) on the topic of auto-linking¹.
I’ve implemented an auto_link function² that handles quite a few use-cases of URLs (with or without http: or https:), @-name @-domain @-domain/path @-@-handles, hashtags(#), and footnotes(^).
Much of it is based on what I’ve seen work (or implemented) on sites and software, and some of it is based on logically extending how people are using text punctuation across various services.
It may be time for me to write-up an auto-link specification based on the algorithms I’ve come up with, implemented, and am using live on my site. All the algorithms work fully offline (none of them require querying a site for more info, whether well-known or otherwise), so they can be used in offline-first authoring/writing clients.
I have identified three logical chunks of auto-linking functionality, each of which has different constraints and potential needs for local to the linking context information (like hashtags need a default tagspace). Each would be a good section for a new specification. Each is used by this very post.
* URLs, @-s, and @-@-s
* # hashtags
* ^ footnotes
#IndieWeb #autoLink #hashtag #hashtags #footnote #footnotes
Previously, previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2024/070/t1/updated-auto-linking-mention-use-cases
* https://tantek.com/2023/100/t1/auto-linked-hashtags-federated
* https://tantek.com/2023/043/t1/footnotes-unicode-links
* https://tantek.com/2023/019/t5/reply-domain-above-address-and-silo
References:
¹ https://indieweb.org/autolink
² https://github.com/tantek/cassis/blob/main/cassis.js
This is post 18 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/238/t1/indiewebcamp-portland
→ 🔮
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All setup here at IndieWebCamp Portland!
https://events.indieweb.org/2024/08/indiewebcamp-portland-2024-8bucXDlLqR0k
Good crowd of participants from #XOXO #XOXOConf (@xoxofest.com @xoxo@xoxo.zone @xoxo) here to work on their personal website(s), domains, or other independent social media setups!
As encouraged by Andy Baio (@waxy.org @andybaio@xoxo.zone @waxpancake)
“Every one of you should have a home on the web not controlled by a billionaire.”
If you’re in #Portland and want help, encouragement, or camaraderie in getting setup or doing more with your personal site, come on by! We’ll be having a mix of discussion sessions and create/hack sessions.
Personal site and hack demos at 16:00 PDT!
#indieweb #fediverse #ActivityPub #decentralized #socialMedia
This is post 17 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/237/t1/people-over-protocols-platforms
→ 🔮
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People over protocols over platforms.
inspired by today’s #indieweb #fediverse #ActivityPub #decentralized #socialMedia lunch meetup at #XOXO #XOXOConf (@xoxo@xoxo.zone)
This is post 16 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/173/t1/years-posse-microformats-adoption
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Happy 12 years of https://indieweb.org/POSSE #POSSE and
19 years of https://microformats.org/ #microformats! (as of yesterday, the 20th)
A few highlights from the past year:
POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) has grown steadily as a common practice in the #IndieWeb community, personal sites, CMSs (like Withknown, which itself reached 10 years in May!), and services (like https://micro.blog) for over a decade.
In its 12th year, POSSE broke through to broader technology press and adoption beyond the community. For example:
* David Pierce’s (@pierce@mas.to) excellent article @TheVerge.com (@verge@mastodon.social): “The poster’s guide to the internet of the future” (https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon):
“Your post appears natively on all of those platforms, typically with some kind of link back to your blog. And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet.
Done right, POSSE is the best of all posting worlds.”
* David also recorded a 29 minute podcast on POSSE with some great interviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-posters-guide-to-the-new-internet/id430333725?i=1000632256014
* Cory Doctorow (@craphound.com @doctorow@mamot.fr) declared in his Pluralistic blog (@pluralisticmamot.fr) post: “Vice surrenders” (https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/):
“This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere [sic]), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control”
* And none other than Molly White (@mollywhite.net @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io) of @web3isgoinggreat.com (@web3isgreat@indieweb.social) built, deployed, and started actively using her own POSSE setup as described in her post titled “POSSE” (https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/202403091817) to:
"… write posts in the microblog and automatically crosspost them to Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky, while keeping the original post on my site."
Congrats Molly and well done!
In its 19th year, the microformats formal #microformats2 syntax and popular vocabularies h-card, h-entry, and h-feed, kept growing across IndieWeb (micro)blogging services and software like CMSs & SSGs both for publishing, and richer peer-to-peer social web interactions via #Webmention.
Beyond the IndieWeb, the rel=me microformat, AKA #relMe, continues to be adopted by services to support #distributed #verification, such as these in the past year:
* Meta Platforms #Threads user profile "Link" field¹
* #Letterboxd user profile website field²
For both POSSE and microformats, there is always more we can do to improve their techniques, technologies, and tools to help people own their content and identities online, while staying connected to friends across the web.
Got suggestions for this coming year? Join us in chat:
* https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
* https://chat.indieweb.org/microformats
for discussions about POSSE and microformats, respectively.
Previously: https://tantek.com/2023/171/t1/anniversaries-microformats-posse
This is post 15 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/151/t1/minimum-interesting-service-worker
→ 🔮
Post glossary:
CMS
https://indieweb.org/CMS
h-card
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-card
h-entry
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
h-feed
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed
microformats2 syntax
https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2-parsing
rel-me
https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
SSG
https://indieweb.org/SSG
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention
Withknown
https://indieweb.org/Known
References:
¹ https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
² https://indieweb.org/rel-me#Letterboxd
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Yesterday I proposed the idea of a “minimum interesting service worker” that could provide a link (or links) to archives or mirrors when your site was unavailable as one possible solution to the desire to make personal #indieweb sites more reliable by providing at least a user path to “soft repair” links to your site that may otherwise seem broken.
Minimum because it only requires two files and one line of script in site footer template, and interesting because it provides both a novel user benefit and personal site publisher benefits.
The idea occurred to me during an informal coffee chat over Zoom with a couple of other Indieweb community folks yesterday, and afterwards I braindumped a bit into the IndieWeb Developers Chat channel¹. Figured it was worth writing up rather than waiting to implement it.
Basic idea:
You have a service worker (and “offline” HTML page) on your personal site, installed from any page on your site, that all it does is cache the offline page, and on future requests to your site checks to see if the requested page is available, and if so serves it, otherwise it displays your offline page with a “site appears to be unreachable” message that a lot of service workers provide, AND provides an algorithmically constructed link to the page on an archive (e.g. Internet Archive) or static mirror of your site (typically at another domain).
This is minimal because it requires only two files: your service worker (a JS file) and your offline page (a minimal self-contained static HTML file with inline CSS). Doable in <1k bytes of code, with no additional local caching or storage requirements, thus a negligible impact on site visitors (likely less than the cookies that major sites store).
User benefit:
If someone has ever visited your personal site, then in the future whenever they click a link to your pages or posts, if your site/domain is unavailable for any reason, then the reader would see a notice (from your offline page) and a link to view an archive/mirror copy instead, thus providing a one-click ability for the reader to “soft-repair” any otherwise apparently broken links to your site.
Personal site publisher benefits:
Having such a service worker that automatically provides your readers links to where they can view your content on an archive or mirror means you can go on vacation or otherwise step away from your personal site, knowing that if it does go down, (at least prior) site visitors will still have a way to click-through and view your published content.
Additional enhancements:
Ideally any archive or mirror copies would use rel=canonical to link back to the page on your domain, so any crawlers or search engines could automatically prefer your original page, or browsers could offer the user a choice to “View original”. You can do that by including a rel=canonical link in all your original pages, so when they are archived or mirrored, those copies automatically include a rel=canonical link back to your original page or post.
The simplest implementation would be to ping the Internet Archive to save² your page or post upon publishing it. You could also add code to your site to explicitly generate a static mirror of your pages, perhaps with an SSG or crawler like Spiderpig, to a GitHub repo, which is then auto-served as GitHub static pages, perhaps on its own domain yet at the same paths as your original pages (to make it trivial to generate such mirror links automatically).
If you’re using links to the Internet Archive, you can generate them automatically by prefixing your page URL with https://web.archive.org/web/*/ e.g. this post:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://tantek.com/2024/151/t1/minimum-interesting-service-worker
Possible generic library:
It may be possible to write this minimum interesting service worker (e.g. misv.js) as a generic (rather than site-specific) service worker that literally anyone with a personal site could “install” as is (a JS file, an HTML file, and a one-line script tag in their site-wide footer) and it would figure everything out from the context it is running in, unchanged (zero configuration necessary).
This is post 14 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/072/t1/created-at-indiewebcamp-brighton
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Post glossary:
GitHub static pages
https://indieweb.org/GitHub_Pages
HTML
https://indieweb.org/HTML
JS
https://indieweb.org/js
rel-canonical
https://indieweb.org/rel-canonical
service worker
https://indieweb.org/service_worker
Spiderpig
https://indieweb.org/Spiderpig
SSG
https://indieweb.org/SSG
References:
¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-05-29#t1717006352142600
² https://indieweb.org/Internet_Archive#Trigger_an_Archive
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What I created while remotely participating at #IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024: wiki-gardened day 1’s BarCamp sessions notes pages, and documented my @-mention @-@-mention autolinking coding improvements I built the Sunday before.
Day 2 of IndieWebCamps is Create Day, where everyone is encouraged to create, make, or build something for their personal website, or the IndieWeb community, or both.
At the start of day 2, everyone is encourage to pick things to make¹. What to make at an IndieWebCamp² can be anything from setting up your personal website, to writing a blog post, redesigning your styling, building new features, helping other participants, or contributing to shared IndieWeb community resources, whether code or content.
Everyone is encouraged to at least pick something they consider easy, that they can do in less than an hour, then a more bold goal, and then perhaps a stretch goal, something challenging that may require collaboration, asking for help, or breaking into smaller steps.
For my "easy" task, I built on what another remote participant, @gregorlove.com completed the night before. gRegor had archived all the IndieWebCamp Brighton Sessions Etherpads onto the wiki, linked from the Schedule page³. gRegor had noted that he didn’t have time to clean-up the pages, e.g. convert and fix Markdown links.
I went through the 13 Session Notes archives and did the following:
* converted Markdown links to MediaWiki links
* converted indieweb.org (and some services) links to local wiki page links
* fixed (some) typos
With some help from @alexsirac.com (@alexture@todo.eu), I figured out how to create a MediaWiki Contributions summary link of my edits:
* https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Tantek.com&namespace=all&start=2024-03-10&end=2024-03-10&offset=20240310143900&limit=25
I point this out to provide an example of an IndieWeb Create Day project that is:
* incremental on top of someone else’s work
* community contribution rather a personal-focused project
* editing and wiki-gardening as valid contributions, not just creating new content
I point this out to illustrate some of the IndieWeb community's recognitions & values in contrast to typical corporate cultures and incentive systems which often only reward:
* new innovations (not incremental improvements)
* solo (or maybe jointly in a small team) inventions, designs, specs, or implementations
* something large, a new service or a big feature, not numerous small edits & fixes
In this regard, the IndieWeb community shares more in common with Wikipedia and similar collaborative communities (despite the #Indie in #IndieWeb), than any corporation.
For my "more bold" goal, I wrote a medium-sized post about the auto-linking improvements I made the Sunday before the IndieWebCamp to my personal website with examples and brief descriptions of the coding changes & improvements.
* https://tantek.com/2024/070/t1/updated-auto-linking-mention-use-cases
My stretch goal was to write up a more complete auto-linking specification, based on the research I have done into @-mention @-@-mention user practices (on #Mastodon, other #ActivityPub or #fediverse implementations, and even across #socialMedia silos), as well as how implementations link URLs, domains, and paths.
That stretch goal remains a goal, however I did collect a handful of prior posts on @-mentions which I plan to source for specifying auto-linking and @-mentioning:
* https://tantek.com/2023/011/t1/indieweb-evolving-at-mention
* https://tantek.com/2023/014/t4/domain-first-federated-atmention
* https://tantek.com/2023/018/t1/elevate-indieweb-above-silo
* https://tantek.com/2023/019/t5/reply-domain-above-address-and-silo
* https://tantek.com/2023/109/t2/years-ago-first-federated-indieweb-thread
#autoLink #atDomain #atPath #atMention #atMentions #atat #atAtMention
I was one of a few remote participants in addition to ~18 in-person participants, the overwhelming majority of overall attendees, who demonstrated something at the end of IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024 day 2. See what everyone else made & demonstrated on Create Day:
* https://indieweb.org/2024/Brighton/Demos
This is post 13 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/070/t1/updated-auto-linking-mention-use-cases
→ 🔮
Glossary:
Create Day
https://indieweb.org/Create_Day
IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024
https://indieweb.org/2024/Brighton
References:
¹ https://indieweb.org/IndieWebCamps/Attending#Day_Two
² https://indieweb.org/what_to_make_at_IndieWebCamp
³ https://indieweb.org/2024/Brighton/Schedule#Saturday
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Updated the auto-linking code¹ on my website last Sunday to handle a few more @-mention use-cases.
In particular:
* @-domains with dashes/hyphens like @sonja-weckenmann.de
* @-@ with (some) Unicode alphabetic characters like @briansuda@loðfíll.is
* @-domain-and-path for indicating @-mentions of silo profiles that don’t support @-@ syntax, like @flickr.com/people/tantek or @instagram.com/tantek
I also dropped auto-linking of URLs with user:password "userinfo", since they’ve been long abandoned and effectively deprecated because there’s fairly wide agreement that such "basic HTTP auth"^2 was poorly designed and should not be used (and thus should not be linked).
If you’re curious you can take a look at https://tantek.com/cassis.js, which has updated functions:
* auto_link_re() — regular expression to recognize URLs, @-mentions, @-@, and footnotes to link
* auto_link() — specifically the code to recognize different kinds of @-@ and @-mentions and link them properly to profiles, domains, and paths.
This code is only live on my website (testing in production³ as it were) for now, and you’re welcome to copy/paste to experiment with it. I plan to test it more over the coming weeks (or so) and when I feel it is sufficiently well tested, will update it on GitHub⁴ as well.
With this additional auto-linking functionality, I feel I have a fairly complete implementation of how to auto-link various URLs and @-mentions, and plan to write that up at least as a minimal “list of use-cases and how they should work” auto-linking specification.
This (blog post) is my contribution to today’s #IndieWebCamp Brighton⁵ #hackday!
This was originally a project I wanted to complete during IndieWebCamp Nuremberg last October, however I was pre-occupied at the time with fixing other things.⁶
#autolink #atmention #atmentions #atat #atatmention
This is post 12 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/047/t1/indieweb-major-update-design
→ 🔮
¹ https://tantek.com/cassis.js
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication
³ https://indieweb.org/test_in_production
⁴ https://tantek.com/github/cassis
³ https://indieweb.org/2024/Brighton
⁴ https://tantek.com/2023/302/t1/indiewebcamp-completed-projects
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