Feature request: Recent Kinds Widgets and/or Now page aggregation

Filed an Issue Post Kinds Plugin for WordPress (GitHub)
adds support for responding to and interacting with other sites using the standards developed by the Indieweb Community - dshanske/indieweb-post-kinds

Recent Kinds Widget

It’s a reasonably frequent design/functionality pattern to see widgets from social media services. (Goodreads is an example that provides a widget for recent reads. Twitter does so for notes. There are countless others.) 

In an IndieWeb world, it would be nice to highlight what one has recently read, watched, or listened to (as examples). Towards this functionality, it would be nice if Post Kinds could provide the ability to add widgets for a variety of the post kinds to sidebars or footers.

As a baseline I could envision each widget having:

  • a configurable title (“Recently read”, “Food diary” for eats & drinks, “Microblog” for recent notes, bookmarks, etc.)
  • a chooser for one (or more) of the many various (enabled) kinds
  • a variable N to allow for display of the N most recent of the chosen kinds; 5 or 10 might be a reasonable default; a time-based variable to run across the post within a recent period (days, weeks, months) might be a an interesting alternative as well

For display of a single kind, the widget might default to displaying:

  • a heading made of the post kind icon along with “Recent [Post Kind Name plural]”
  • Response Property Name (wrapped with the original permalink if it exists) by Author name (if it exists)
  • An optional published date for the original content (if it exists) or the date the site owner published the post kind (if it exists) (the original content date would be better for context, I think)
  • A fleuron () or hash (#) which could be wrapped with the permalink of the original Post Kind post.

UI example: 

 

If the chooser in the widget allows for displaying multiple kinds at the same time, then one could have a widget for “Recent Media Consumed” or for displaying a sidebar microblog that could include Notes, bookmarks, reads, etc. (Making it similar to embedding one’s Twitter feed into a sidebar.

For encouraging outside consumption, the widget could also have a small RSS icon with a link to that Kind’s (or Kinds’) feed.

Naturally there could be some configuration for reasonable display defaults for some of the various Post Kinds./

Now archive page

Given some of the potential similarity of the widget work above, it would also be fun to have Post Kinds generate an archive page that shows by kind either the N most recent posts for each kind or all the posts within the last M days, O weeks, or P months.

This could be used to automatically generate the idea of a Now page that gives a quick overview of what a person has been up to over a relatively recent time period. A month of posts would be a good default.

One might also be able to use a solution like How to Add WordPress Widgets in Post and Page Content as a means of embedding the widgets into such a Now-type page, which could give the user the ability to pick and choose which order to place the particular kinds into based on the site owner’s discretion.

RSVPed Attending IndieWebCamp East 2020 pre-camp preparation

November 10, 2020 at 05:00PM - November 10, 2020 at 06:00PM

  • Are you new to the IndieWeb? (Hello and welcome if you are!)
  • Are you planning on attending IndieWebCamp East 2020 and aren't sure what to expect?
  • Not sure how to access, set up, or use any of the common community tools like chat, the IndieWeb Wiki, or Etherpad?
  • Do you have questions about brainstorming a potential session and how to facilitate it?

We'll do a quick overview of how camp works and what to expect. We'll provide a walk through of all the common technologies and some of the community cultural norms around using them so that when camp starts on Saturday morning, you'll feel more comfortable and be prepared and ready to go to have two fun and productive days of improving your website.

Users of all levels of ability are encouraged to attend this session. Bring all your camp-related questions and we'll do our best to answer them.

There's no need to RSVP for this session. It's completely acceptable to just show up at the appointed time.

I’ll be hosting this, so I’ll definitely be there!

A Session Proposal for IndieWebCamp East: A Domain of One’s Own LMS

IndieWebCamp East (Online) is coming up on the weekend of November 14-15, 2020, so I’ve tentatively proposed a session on creating an IndieWeb/Domain of One’s Own Learning Management System.

Proposal:

A Domain of One’s Own LMS

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly forced educators to flee online where there is a wealth of predatory, amoral, and questionable platforms for managing online pedagogy. Starting closer to first principles, how might we design and build an LMS (Learning Management System) based on IndieWeb principles or using the related ideas behind A Domain of One’s Own where the teacher and students own their own content, learning content, and personal learning network.

Can we dovetails ideas and principles from the Open Educational Resources (OER) space with this at the same time?

Let’s get together to look at some common patterns in our online coursework to leverage existing technologies that privilege ownership, agency, control, and privacy to see how we might build and use our own infrastructure rather than relying on unethical corporations.

Session hashtag:


Naturally anyone with a website is welcome to join us for the BarCamp-style IndieWebCamp that weekend, but I would specifically like to invite all the educators, teachers, course designers, and students who are using their own domains or who are in a Domain of One’s Own program to join us.

It would be great to see others either share their knowledge or experiences or even lead brainstorming sessions so we can all work at improving our websites and adding additional useful functionality to make them do the things we’d like them to. I’d love nothing more than to get enough people show up on Saturday to create an entire “Education” focused track to appear and then have everyone return on Sunday to help each other get our hands dirty in building or improving our sites to create something together.

You can RSVP for the weekend for free here: https://2020.indieweb.org/east.

If you have any questions about proposing sessions, either in advance or preparing to propose them the morning of camp, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Start Brainstorming Session Ideas for IndieWebCamp East 2020

IndieWebCamp East 2020 is scheduled for the weekend of November 14-15, 2020 and will be held entirely online this year. RSVPs are open now if you’d like to register for free.

If you’ve never been to an IndieWebCamp before, we’ve got some details about what to expect. It’s not on the schedule yet, but sometime the week before camp we hope to have one (or more) intro sessions about what to expect at camp geared toward first time attendees as well as overviews of the technology we’ll be using if you’d like to do some (entirely optional) advance technology set up to make your weekend more fun and productive.

Much like in-person camps, the program of sessions will be created on Saturday morning by the participants who show up to participate. 

To help facilitate scheduling sessions on the day of camp, we’re asking attendees (who feel inspired) to begin the process of thinking about what topics they’d like to discuss at camp. Perhaps you’ve got a topic you’d like to learn more about? Maybe you’re thinking about a new frontier to explore and want to facilitate a group discussion around. Maybe it’s a topic you’ve explored fully and you’d like to help others learn about? Maybe it’s something you’d like to design or build that weekend, but might need some help thinking about.

Sessions are the heart of a camp.

Unlike traditional conference formats, IndieWebCamps have a self-organizing character, relying on the passion and the responsibility of the participants who attend. Attendees schedule sessions typically by writing on a large Post-It note or piece of paper and then placing them on a ‘grid’ of sessions by timeslot and conference room or virtual space. This time, we’ll be creating sessions together online.

Session proposals typically contain the following:

  • A descriptive title;
  • A facilitator name for a session (usually, but not always, the person proposing the session);
  • A longer description about what might be discussed, brainstormed, or researched during a particular session; and
  • A unique short hashtag that will be used to create an etherpad and other possible related resources for a session.

Everyone who attends camp is encouraged to submit a session idea. There isn’t such a thing as a bad idea for a session. You don’t need to know something about a particular topic to propose it, it may be something you’d simply like to learn about.

If you’re not sure where to start for ideas, try asking yourself any of the following questions:

  • What would I like my website to be able to do?
  • How did xyz get their site to do something?
  • I’d like to quit using social silo X? What would I need to do to replace that functionality to do that on my own website?
  • What would I like to learn about this weekend?
  • What could I help others to learn based on my past experience?
  • Are there pages/ideas from the wiki that might benefit from a brainstorming session?

Past sessions are also a great source of ideas, and it can often be a good idea to revisit old session ideas to discuss new methods of approaching a problem, new design ideas, or new ideas that have come up since those prior sessions.

On the first morning of camp, once everyone has had the chance to write down one (or even more) session ideas, everyone will take turns one-at-a-time to place their ideas into slots on the session grid for particular time slots and Zoom rooms. Generally we give first-time/new attendees the chance to schedule their proposals first. If there are similar or overlapping session proposals, session facilitators can discuss concatenating them into a single session.

If you’d like to begin thinking about session ideas before camp begins, please do so. Hopefully this jump start will help us to more quickly organize the sessions on the first day of camp so we have more time for the sessions themselves.  We’ve set up an Etherpad at https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2020-East-Sessions to let people begin collaborating on and thinking about ideas before camp begins. If you like, in true IndieWeb fashion, we’d invite you to post your session ideas on your own website as a place to keep them until camp starts on Saturday, November 14th.

If you have questions before camp about the process or need help in any way, feel free to jump into the IndieWeb chat and ask anyone in the community for help or guidance.

To reiterate, we’d love everyone attending to propose at least one session and you’ve got an opportunity to begin thinking about it now so that you’re not as pressed for time on the day of camp.  Posting your session ideas ahead of time is entirely optional, but may help you (and others) out by beginning the brainstorming now. We will explain all of this again on the first morning of camp and you’ll have a little bit of time to make proposals then as well, so don’t sweat it if you’re not inspired to do something now.

We look forward to seeing you in November.

Replied to Jetpack 9.0 to Introduce New Feature for Publishing WordPress Posts to Twitter as Threads by Sarah Gooding (WordPress Tavern)
Jetpack 9.0, coming on October 6, will debut a new feature that allows users to share blog posts as Twitter threads in multiples tweets. A recent version of Jetpack introduced the ability to import and unroll tweetstorms for publishing inside a post. The 9.0 release will run it back the other way so the content originates in WordPress, yet still reaps all the same benefits of circulation on Twitter as a thread.
It’s awesome to see this feature added and that it expands the ability to do do this sort of workflow directly from one’s website instead of relying on posting to Twitter and relying on ThreadReaderApp to unroll a thread and post it to a WordPress site using the flexible Micropub specification. I’d love to see more POSSE (Post to your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) syndication set ups within WordPress.

I’m hoping that future versions of this provide the Twitter permalinks for the syndicated copies there to be returned to my WordPress site for storage. In my case, I’m using the simple Syndication Links plugin which has storage and/or finds the storage location in WordPress to allow for the display of those permalinks in my post to indicate where I’ve syndicated the copies. This does two things: it’s a reminder of where my content lives elsewhere on the web (especially if I later want to go back and delete them, or to delete them if I’m deleting or making the original post private/unpublished) and it allows services like Brid.gy to find my original post and backfeed replies to the Twitter versions back into the comments section of my post using the Webmention spec (via the Webmention plugin and the Semantic Linkbacks plugin).

Domain of One’s Own Meetup (October 2020)

I’ll be hosting a Domain of One’s Own meetup on Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at at 9:00 AM Pacific / 12:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM CEST. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to attend.

We expect there will be students, teachers, designers, web developers, technologists, and people of all ages and ranges of ability from those just starting out with a domain to those running DoOO programs at colleges or even people running their own hosting companies.

We’ll meet via Zoom for audio/video and will use an Etherpad for real-time chat and note taking for the event. Feel free to add your ideas and questions to the etherpad in advance if you like.

We will 

  • Have discussions about A Domain of One’s Own and the independent web;
  • Get to know others in the space;
  • Find potential collaborators for domains-related projects you’re working on;
  • Explore new and interesting ideas about what one can do or accomplish with a personal domain;
  • Create or update your domain
  • Ask colleagues for help/advice on problems or issues you’re having with your domain;

Agenda 

  • Welcome/Brief introductions
  • Main topic: To be determined. (Have a topic idea for discussion at the next session? Drop us a line by adding a comment to this post or one of the syndicated copies, ping me in chat, or track me down on your platform and means of communication of choice.)
  • Group photo for those who wish to participate
  • Demos, questions, problems: 
    Ideally everyone should bring a topic, short demonstration of something they’ve built or gotten working on their website, a question, or problem to discuss with the group. Depending on time and interest, we can try to spend 5-10 minutes discussing and providing feedback on each of these. If questions go over this time limitation, we can extend the conversation in smaller groups as necessary after the meetup.

RSVP

To RSVP to the meetup, please (optionally) do one of the following:

Invite your friends, colleagues, and students

Know someone who would be interested in joining? Please forward this event, or one of the syndicated copies to them on your platform or modality of choice.

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Just musing a bit: I can create an IFTTT recipe to create a webhook to target a Micropub endpoint on my website, but it would be cooler if I could directly add a recipe to target the Micropub endpoint directly. I want IFTTT: the micropub client.

cc: Zapier, Integromat, n8n

Quoted The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron (Mute)
We need to debate what kind of hypermedia suit our vision of society - how we create the interactive products and on-line services we want to use, the kind of computers we like and the software we find most useful. We need to find ways to think socially and politically about the machines we develop. While learning from the can-do attitude of the Californian individualists, we also must recognise that the potentiality of hypermedia can never solely be realised through market forces. We need an economy which can unleash the creative powers of hi-tech artisans. Only then can we fully grasp the Promethean opportunities of hypermedia as humanity moves into the next stage of modernity. 
As true today as it was 25 years ago.
Have you watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix? Curious what to do next to help solve the (your) problem? The IndieWeb’s Homebrew Website Club will be discussing just that at 6:30 Pacific tonight after The Social Dilemma Round Table.

Join us here: https://events.indieweb.org/2020/09/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-zwt9zal3H3DP

Dynamic range in social media and shovels versus excavators

A developer at today’s Homebrew Website Club mentioned that they didn’t want to have a website built on a particular language because they weren’t familiar with the language and felt uncomfortable trusting their data to it. What if something goes wrong? What if it breaks? How easy will it be to export and move their data over?

Compare this with the average social media user who doesn’t know any code. In their world, they’re making a choice, likely predicated upon social pressures, to post their data, content, and identity on one or more corporately controlled silos. Because of the ease-of-use, the platform is abstracted away from them even further than from the developer’s perspective thus making it even less apparent the level of trust they’re putting into the platform. What is the platform doing with their data? How is what they’re seeing in their feed being manipulated and controlled?

The problems both people are facing are relatively equivalent, just different in their dynamic range. The non-programmer is at an even greater disadvantage however as the silos are moving faster and can do more to take advantage of and manipulate them more seamlessly than the programmer who at least has more potential to learn the unfamiliar language to dig themselves out. This difference is also one of dynamic range as the developer may only need a simple shovel to dig themselves out whereas the non-coder will need a massive excavator, which may be unavailable and still need an operator with knowledge of how to use it.

Featured image: excavator flickr photo by mbecher shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

IndieWebCamp East 2020: Save the Date and Call for Volunteers

Hello IndieWeb friends and family! 

Save the Date

After some back-and-forth, several of us have carved out some time over the weekend of November 14-15 to co-host IndieWebCamp East 2020. We hope you’ll be able to join us.

If you’re interested in a weekend full of IndieWeb related activities, sessions, learning, creating, and coming together in a warm and inviting community of people who care about and help craft the web, please save the date.

As its title indicates, the camp will be organized around Eastern Standard Time in the Americas from the early morning  to the late afternoon over Saturday and Sunday that weekend. Because we’re hosting the camp completely free and online, people of all ability levels and locales across the world are welcome to and encouraged to attend.

We hope folks will help us plan some surrounding social activities on Friday night before camp launches and the evenings of camp, but those details will be announced at a later date and time.

Details relating to (free) tickets and the ability to RSVP will be announced and available shortly. If you comment on this post or like/repost the syndicated copy on Twitter, we’ll be sure to notify you as details progress. You can also optionally sign up for the IndieWeb Newsletter to receive weekly updates that will include information about upcoming camps and events.

If you’ve never attended an IndieWebCamp before, we’ve written up some details about what you can expect at an IndieWebCamp to whet your appetite. You can also browse our archive of past camps with archived session notes, posts, and videos.

Call for Organizers/Volunteers

IndieWebCamps and related events are completely volunteer driven. This means we’ll need your help not only in seeing your bright, shining faces in attendance and actively participating on the days of camp, but in actually putting together and organizing the camp.

If you have some time to volunteer as a co-organizer or an area volunteer, please drop us a note in the comments below or in the IndieWeb Meta Chat Channel.

No prior experience or expertise is necessary. There are many of us around who have put together one or more parts of camp and related events before, and we’re here to help you learn if you need it. There’s also some helpful wiki pages with details. Helping to volunteer can be a great way to give back to the community. It can also be helpful if you’ve wanted to become more involved, but don’t know how. Perhaps if you’ve wanted to begin organizing other events like Homebrew Website Clubs, this could be a great stepping stone.

There are a variety of areas we could use help in as well as ideas for things we could be missing or might also be doing. A diversity and plurality of voices and ideas can help us continue improving our camp experiences. Below are a handful of areas we could use help/volunteers for:

Pre-camp

  • General organizing
  • Keynote ideas/invitations
  • Sponsor wrangling
  • Wiki gardening
  • Creating the primary camp landing page: https://2020.indieweb.org/east
  • Accessibility
  • Family friendly planning/programming (Kids track anyone?)
  • Outreach
  • Marketing
  • Surrounding social events / pre-party / etc.
  • Others?

During camp

  • Co-hosts for Zoom rooms to help on the tech side and oversee
  • Code of Conduct point of contact(s)
  • Note taking during camp and sessions
  • Wiki gardening
  • Welcoming newcomers
  • Ideas that may need help/work: Planning Notes and Brainstorming
  • Others?

Remember more hands make light work and the camaraderie and your ideas, inspiration, and effort can make everyone’s experience at camp even better and more fruitful. 

You can start volunteering today, by saving the date and inviting a few friends to join you.

See you soon!

I and everyone else in the IndieWeb community look forward to seeing you at Camp in November or at upcoming events before then!

Bookmarked WordPress Theme Components (WP Theme Components)
Theme components are bite sized code snippets that can be reused across multiple themes, but are either too small or don’t make sense to be released as a plugin. Stop cluttering up your functions.php file and start using theme components! Who are theme components for? Th...
This looks interesting and useful. Perhaps a potential solution for adding small tidbits of microformats mark up to one’s theme at a more granular level than the mf2 plugin? I can see use cases for other snippets too like accepting Webmentions automatically, etc.
Replied to a tweet by @fourierfiend (Twitter)
Hello fellow mathematician!

There are lots of ways to syndicate content, some dependent on which platform(s) you’re using and where you’re syndicating to/from. Your best bet is to swing by the IndieWeb Dev chat and ask that very question.

Theorem: Syndication is easy.

Proof: “It’s easy to show” (I’m waving my hands here) that there are a lot of assumptions and baggage that go with the word “easiest.”   ∎

I’ve personally found there’s generally an inverse relationship between ease/simplicity of syndication and control over exact display for most platforms. You could go low-fi and pipe your feed into something like IFTTT/Zapier  for cross-posting all the way up to customized integration with available APIs for each platform. Many take a middle-of-the-road approach that I notice Jeremy recommended as I’m writing this.

The cross-posting wiki page will give you some useful terminology and definitions which may help you decide on how to syndicate what/where. Based on the context of the URL in your Twitter profile, the IndieWeb wiki pages for static site generator and syndication will give you some ideas and options to think about and explore. 

Some of the pages about specific static site generators will give you some code and ideas for how to implement syndication. For example Max Böck has an article Indieweb pt1: Syndicating Content to Twitter, which is Eleventy and Twitter specific, but which could likely be modified for your purposes. SSGs may have some specific peculiarities for syndication that I’m not as familiar with coming from the more dynamic side of the fence.

Since you indicate a language preference for your current site, there’s also a page for Flask with a few users noted there. You might ask Fluffy (usually around in chat) for some advice as I know she syndicates to a few platforms and may have some ideas or even tools/code to share from the Flask perspective.

Q.E.D., right!?

(p.s.: Great Twitter handle!)

Domain of One’s Own Meetup (September 2020)

I’ll be hosting a Domain of One’s Own meetup on Tuesday, September 22, 2020 at at 9:00 AM Pacific / 12:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM CEST. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to attend.

We expect there will be students, teachers, designers, web developers, technologists, and people of all ages and ranges of ability from those just starting out with a domain to those running DoOO programs at colleges or even people running their own hosting companies.

We’ll meet via Zoom for audio/video and will use an Etherpad for real-time chat and note taking for the event

We will 

  • Have discussions about A Domain of One’s Own and the independent web;
  • Get to know others in the space;
  • Find potential collaborators for domains-related projects you’re working on;
  • Explore new and interesting ideas about what one can do or accomplish with a personal domain;
  • Create or update your domain
  • Ask colleagues for help/advice on problems or issues you’re having with your domain;

Agenda 

  • Welcome/Brief introductions
  • Main topic: This summer Reclaim Hosting launched Reclaim Cloud, but for many new and established Domains users, the “cloud” has been a nebulous buzzword with unclear meanings. In this meeting we’ll talk about what it is and why it might be important for gaining greater control over your personal cyberinfrastructure.
  • Group photo for those who wish to participate
  • Demos, questions, problems: 
    Ideally everyone should bring a topic, short demonstration of something they’ve built or gotten working on their website, a question, or problem to discuss with the group. Depending on time and interest, we can try to spend 5-10 minutes discussing and providing feedback on each of these. If questions go over this time limitation, we can extend the conversation in smaller groups as necessary after the meetup.

RSVP

To RSVP to the meetup, please (optionally) do one of the following:

Future meetups

While the time frame for this meetup may work best for some in the Americas, everyone with interest is most welcome. If there are others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or other locales who are interested, do let us know what dates/times might work for you in the future and we can try to organize a time to maximize some attendance there. I’m happy to help anyone who’d like to take the leadership of other time zones or locales to leverage some of the resources of the IndieWeb community to assist in starting future meetings to cover other areas of the world. 

Have a topic idea for discussion at the next session? Drop us a line by adding a comment to this post or one of the syndicated copies, ping me in chat, or track me down on your platform and means of communication of choice.

Invite your friends, colleagues, and students

Know someone who would be interested in joining? Please forward this event, or one of the syndicated copies to them on your platform or modality of choice.

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license