Pure Structure> by Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen via Flicker; CC BY 2.0

Website Philosophy & Structure

I use this website as my primary hub for online presence and communication. I try to follow the tenets of the IndieWeb movement in owning all of my own data and in publishing on my own site and syndicating elsewhere (POSSE), so most of my presence in various parts of social media typically originates from the BoffoSocko domain.

To a large extent I also use this site as my personal online commonplace book. This means I use it to collect a wide variety of content, some of it posted private and only view-able to me. I post everything I’ve read online, things I’ve bookmarked to revisit, things I like, my favorites, reposts, and wishes. It also includes photos and quotes as well as records of most things I’ve watched and read offline.

Content structure

My “Traditional Blog”

Most of my longer form writing/thinking appears under either the article or replies categories. When possible I try to provide some reply context as well as a link to the original. If you’re looking for a more traditional “blog” without all the other smaller tidbits and updates, I’d recommend subscribing to a feed of one or the other (or both) of these feeds.

If you want to read everything I post here in reverse chronological order it, it appears at my blog.

Microblog

There are several post types that might fit under the heading of a microblog. The first of these are typically status updates or notes. These are followed by photos, replies, checkins, listens, watches, jams, RSVPs, and plays which can be found individually or as an aggregation under my microblog or social stream.

Linkblog

Within my main blog stream here, I also maintain a link blog of sorts. This link blog crossposts, based on my judgement and the particular intended audience, to Twitter and/or Facebook. The link blog categories include: reads (things I’ve actually read), favorites, likes, wishes, reposts, and general bookmarks which don’t fit under the prior types. I’ve endeavored to provide means of subscribing to these individually or in groups for those who are only interested in subsections.

Microcast

It’s not a longform version, so I don’t call it a podcast, but I do have an occasional audio microcast that I post to from time to time. Feel free to subscribe via RSS in your favorite podcatcher.

If you’re only interested in specific post types, then you can navigate to them via the main menu above.

Syndication and Backfeed

This site syndicates (generally via POSSE, an acronym for post on your own site, syndicate elsewhere) to other social media platforms (most often Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr, though occasionally others). Some content like Instagram photos and Swarm/Foursquare checkins are syndicated via PESOS (post elsewhere, syndicate to your own site).

This site is connected through Brid.gy so that likes, favorites, replies, and public comments on posts in many of these social media platforms are back-fed onto the original post and archived there for future reference, or in case any of these ‘social silos’ disappears in the future.

It’s nice to have as much of the conversation and interaction appearing in one centralized place rather than distributed in multiple streams across the web.  It also means I don’t spend a lot of time directly in any of these social silos either. I’m happy to help others who are interested in setting up and utilizing the technology.

Fragmentions

As of July 2015, this site also supports fragmentions. This means that one can target sub-sections of this website in URLs to highlight or mention specific parts of pages. Details for highlighting and sharing portions of the content here on the blog can be found at BoffoSocko | Fragmentions.

Annotations and highlights

As of April 3, 2016, we support Hypothes.is annotations and highlights. Details can be found at Boffo Socko Now Supports Hypothes.is Annotations.

A Separate Social Stream

Shorter content including one-off status updates, short posts and quick replies to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and comments to other websites often flow through my social stream feed (courtesy of the opensource WithKnown platform). This technically separate site, like my primary site, is linked through Brid.gy so that comments, replies, and likes on these posts are back-fed into the stream and archived there. The stream there can likewise easily be sorted by post-type.

Subscribing

Since this is the home for the majority of my content, subscribing directly here is the quickest and easiest means of consuming everything without missing anything. Much of my material crossposts to other social media services as well, but if you don’t want to miss anything, subscribing via RSS is usually the easiest. For more details and help, visit the subscription page.

Subscribing via email will typically only get you the longer form posts as I don’t want to overwhelm legacy subscribers with the hundreds of posts a month I’m now pushing.

19 thoughts on “Website Philosophy & Structure”

  1. Pingback: T Michelle Moore
    1. Chris Aldrich says:

      If you find it useful/helpful, I and some others have been documenting some of this and similar sorts of patterns and use cases at https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book. Perhaps some of the examples may bring some further inspiration? (Belated happy birthday by the way!)

      Syndicated copies:

  2. Pingback: Mary L. Brandt

Comments are closed.