Somewhere in Russia, a man calls for a car. Somewhere in New York City, a stranger’s phone buzzes.
I keep hearing about these guys. They’re alright and have an interesting banter and style, but the overall topic was just painfully uninteresting to me. Meh…
One of my favorite things about the indieweb is how much less time I spend on silo sites like Facebook and Twitter. In particular, one of my favorite things is not only having the ability to receive comments from many of these sites back on the original post on my own site, but to have the ability for people to @mention me from Twitter to my own site.
Yes, you heard that right: if you @mention me in a tweet, I’ll receive it on my own website. And my site will also send me the notification, so I can turn off all the silly and distracting notifications Twitter had been sending me.
Below, I’ll detail how I set it up using WordPress, though the details below can certainly be done using other CMSes and platforms.
On my homepage, using a text widget, I’ve got an h-card with my photo, some basic information about me, and links to various other sites that relate to me and what I’m doing online.
One of these is a link to my Twitter account (see screenshot). On that link I’m using the XFN’s rel=“me” on the link to indicate that this particular link is a profile equivalence of my identity on the web. It essentially says, “this Twitter account is mine and also represents me on the web.”
Here’s a simplified version of what my code looks like:
<a href="https://twitter.com/chrisaldrich" rel=“me">@chrisaldrich</a>
If you prefer to have an invisible link on your site that does the same thing you could alternately use:
<link href="https://twitter.com/twitterhandle" rel=“me">
Similarly Twitter also supports rel=“me”, so all I need to do there is to edit my profile and enter my website www.boffosocko.com into the “website” field and save it. Now my Twitter profile page indicates, this website belongs to this Twitter account. If you look at the source of the page when it’s done, you’ll see the following:
<a class="u-textUserColor" title="http://www.boffosocko.com" href="https://t.co/AbnYvNUOcy" target="_blank" rel="me nofollow noopener">boffosocko.com</a>
Though it’s a bit more complicated than what’s on my site, it’s the rel=“me” that’s the important part for our purposes.
Now there are links on both sites that indicate reciprocally that each is related to the other as versions of me on the internet. The only way they could point at each other this way is because I have some degree of ownership of both pages. I own my own website outright, and I have access to my profile page on Twitter because I have an account there. (Incidentally, Kevin Marks has built a tool for distributed identity verification based on the reciprocal rel=“me” concept.)
Next I downloaded and installed the Webmention plugin for WordPress. From the plugin interface, I just did a quick search, clicked install, then clicked “activate.” It’s really that easy.
Webmention is an open internet protocol (recommended by the W3C) that allows any website to send and receive the equivalent of @mentions on the internet. Unlike sites like Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Google+, Instagram, etc. these mentions aren’t stuck within their own ecosystems, but actually work across website borders anywhere on the web that supports them.
The other small difference with webmention is instead of using one’s username (like @chrisaldrich in my case on Twitter) as a trigger, the trigger becomes the permalink URL you’re mentioning. In my case you can webmention either my domain name http://www.boffosocko.com or any other URL on my site. If you really wanted to, you could target even some of the smallest pieces of content on my website–including individual paragraphs, sentences, or even small sentence fragments–using fragmentions, but that’s something for another time.
See if there’s webmention support for your CMS, or ask your CMS provider or community, system administrator, or favorite web developer to add it to your site based on the specification. While it’s nice to support both outgoing and incoming webmentions, for the use we’re outlining here, we only need to support incoming webmentions.
Sadly, I’ll report that Twitter does not support webmentions (yet?!) otherwise we could probably stop here and everything would work like magic. But they do have an open API right? “But wait a second now…” you say, “I don’t know code. I’m not a developer.”
Worry not, some brilliant engineers have created a bootstrap called Brid.gy that (among many other useful and brilliant things) forces silos like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Flickr to send webmentions for you until they decide to support them natively. Better, it’s a free service, though you could donate to the ASPCA or EFF in their name to pay it forward.
So swing your way over to http://brid.gy and under “Get started” click on the Twitter logo. Use OAuth to log into Twitter and authorize the app. You’ll be redirected back to Brid.gy which will then ensure that your website and Twitter each have appropriate and requisite rel=“me”s on your links. You can then enable Brid.gy to “listen for responses.”
Now whenever anyone @mentions you (public tweets only) on Twitter, Brid.gy will be watching your account and will automatically format and send a webmention to your website on Twitter’s behalf.
On WordPress your site can send you simple email notifications by changing your settings in the Settings >> Discussion dashboard, typically at http://www.exampl.com/wp-admin/options-discussion.php. One can certainly use other plugins to arrange for different types of notifications as well.
A bonus step for those who want more control!
In the grand scheme of things webmentions are typically targeted at specific pages or posts on your site. General @mentions on Twitter not related to specific content on your site will usually be sent to your homepage. Over time, this may begin to get a bit overwhelming and may take your page longer to load as a result. An example of this is Kevin Marks’ site which has hundreds and hundreds of webmentions on it. What to do if this isn’t your preference?
In my case, I thought it would be wise to collect all these unspecific or general mentions on a special page on my site. I decided to call it “Mentions” and created a page at http://boffosocko.com/mentions/.
Update
While the code snippet just below should work, as of the 3.3.0 update of the Webmention Plugin, there is now an automatic setting at /wp-admin/options-discussion.php that will allow you to use a dropdown UI box to choose the page on your site to which homepage webmentions will be directed.
Then I inserted a small piece of custom code in the functions.php file of my site’s (child) theme like the following:
// For allowing exotic webmentions on homepages and archive pages
function handle_exotic_webmentions($id, $target) {
// If $id is homepage, reset to mentions page
if ($id == 55669927) {
return 55672667;
}
// do nothing if id is set
if ($id) {
return $id;
}
// return "default" id if plugin can't find a post/page
return 55672667;
}
add_filter("webmention_post_id", "handle_exotic_webmentions", 10, 2);
This simple filter for the WordPress Webmention plugin essentially looks at incoming webmentions and if they’re for a specific page/post, they get sent to that page/post. If they’re sent to either my homepage or aren’t directed to a particular page, then they get redirected to my /mentions/ page.
In my case above, my homepage has an id of 55669927 and my mentions page has an id of 55672667, you should change your numbers to the appropriate ids on your own site when using the code above. (Hint: these id numbers can usually be quickly found by hovering over the “edit” links typically found on such pages and posts and relying on the browser to show where they resolve.)
Naturally this is only the tip of the indieweb iceberg. The indieweb movement is MUCH more than just this tiny, but useful, piece of functionality. There’s so much more you can do with not only Webmentions and even Brid.gy functionality. If you’ve come this far and are interested in more of how you can better own your online identity, connect to others, and own your data. Visit the Indieweb.org wiki homepage or try out their getting started page.
If you’re on WordPress, there’s some additional step-by-step instructions: Getting Started on WordPress.
The top five Mastodon instances as judged by meaningless criteria that we refuse to disclose.
Instagram filter used: Clarendon
Photo taken at: Glendale, California
The review of core had some resources I’m sure I knew about and have even used before, but somehow forgotten from long disuse. The quick review of the loop was useful to have again particularly as I delve into some themeing work these past few weeks.
The examples they provide are pretty solid from a pedagogic standpoint.
CreditIllustration by Yann Kebbi
Hard times for Muppets! Sad! Me think unemployment not easy for puppet with addiction issues. Me find unemployment very triggering. Me want to ask government, “Who is real monster here?”
Colleagues bad now, too. Elmo spiral into depression and eat his goldfish, Dorothy. Pepé the King Prawn worry about deportation. Miss Piggy now glorified geisha, forced to be active listener. Only good thing is most of us newly politicized. Me is totally woke. Use new free time to rally colleagues and to dialogue. Camaraderie good! Camaraderie powerful! During long hours together in unemployment line, you can really get deep, you can really go beyond the felt.
What strange to Muppet community is Muppets always like Donald Trump. Donald Trump always somehow seem like kindred spirit. Donald Trump seem like slightly more organized Fraggle. Yes, in nineteen-eighties, on “Sesame Street,” Ronald Grump character built tower of trash cans on Oscar’s turf. Yes, other time, on special, Joe Pesci play Ronald Grump and spit on Elmo. But mocking was gentle. Mocking gentle, and plus we give lots airtime. Donald Trump like airtime. Airtime is hair time. The letter “H”!
Me trying to transition into this new life chapter with grace. Me trying to find bright side: no more pledge drives, no more feeling old when realize all favorite TV shows are sponsored by river cruises. But sometimes cloud come over me in afternoon. Cloud of realization. Cloud of sad. More reflective now. Time makes puppets of us all. Bad!
Me talk to agent about possible second career as recording artist, because me often mistaken for gravel-voiced singer Tom Waits. Me think me has everything Tom Waits has, plus me is blue. Sad songs from blue person, very good, very meta. Agent laugh. Agent say more realistic direction is recovery memoir and TED talk. Agent say more realistic direction is therapy pet who visit hospitals—“Make-A-Wish but the meter is running, hon.” Agent also say that he get call about Cookie working as kind of Swiffer—some company want Cookie as a “electrostatic stanching shammy.” Now me laugh. Me think contemporary consumerism like virus that eat brain. Me unclear about meaning of “electrostatic stanching shammy,” but me pretty sure it mean rag.
So. Me trying to be big. Me trying to reap benefits of talk therapy. Therapist point out that Cookie strong because Cookie weathered changing attitudes about eating. Therapist talk about time, in 2005, when show had Hoots the Owl sing “A Cookie Is a Sometime Food.” Stupid song. Stupid song suggesting me had no jurisdiction or agency over throbbing id. That song the beginning of the end. That the singing on the wall. Me not like that song! That song just another unseen hand reaching up the Cookie ying-yang.
Now this new government hand. It not nice like Frank Oz hand. Frank Oz smell good, have light touch. Government hand rough, like that of teen-age boy. So now me take only route available: me wage cookie hunger strike. Me get Hoots the Owl to do duet of new song, “Bye-Bye, Biscotti.” Me get outside consulting firm to create slogan: “Nom, Nom NO.” Me tell world that “C” is not for cookie, “C” is for cauterize the wound that is direct result of rapacious governing. Me get sympathetic People cover in manner of survivor of rare disease.
Meanwhile, me send message to Washington via quiet assertion of strength. Me remind government that Cookie Monster have no eyelids. Me remind government that Cookie Monster always watching. ♦
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Peter Wilson (Peter Wilson)A brain dump of the features a one click indieweb plugin for WordPress might include.
I'm giving a talk at the Stanford Complexity Group this Thursday afternoon, April 20th. If you're around - like in Silicon Valley - please drop by! It will be in Clark S361 at 4 pm. Here's the idea. Everyone likes to say that biology is all about information. There's something true about this - just think about DNA. But what does this insight actually do for us? To figure it out, we need to do some work. Biology is also about things that can make copies of themselves. So it makes sense to figure out how information theory is connected to the 'replicator equation' — a simple model of population dynamics for self-replicating entities. To see the connection, we need to use relative information: the information of one probability distribution relative to another, also known as the Kullback–Leibler divergence. Then everything pops into sharp focus. It turns out that free energy — energy in forms that can actually be used, not just waste heat — is a special case of relative information Since the decrease of free energy is what drives chemical reactions, biochemistry is founded on relative information. But there's a lot more to it than this! Using relative information we can also see evolution as a learning process, fix the problems with Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, and more. So this what I'll talk about! You can see slides of an old version here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bio_asu/ but my Stanford talk will be videotaped and it'll eventually be here: https://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordComplexity You can already see lots of cool talks at this location! #biology
Unless you've been living under a rock (or just very much removed from social media, in which case, I applaud you for going to a place I never will), then the concept of "woke" being used as an adjective is not a particularly new thing for you. As…
