In the long run and for easier mass adoption, I’m hoping Manton can figure out how to parse RSS feeds in a simpler way so that users don’t need to do serious gymnastics to import their microblog posts from other sources. I’d imagine it’s far easier for him to adapt to the masses than for the masses to adapt to micro.blog. At the very worst, he could create a checkbox on the RSS import feeds to indicate which feeds are status updates and which aren’t and this would quickly solve the problem for the average user as most CMSes allow users to define custom feeds based on content type.
While there are a number of people doing things from simply adding date/time stamps (which micro.blog ignores) to functions.php tweaks to to custom plugins, some of which I’ve tried, I thought I’d come up with my own solution which has helped to kill two proverbial birds with one stone. (Note: I’ve listed some of these others on the Indieweb wiki page for micro.blog.)
The other day, I’d had a short conversation about the issue in the Indieweb chat with several people and decided I’d just give up on having titles in notes altogether. Most people contemplating the problem have an issue doing this because it makes it more difficult to sort and find their content within their admin UI dashboard which is primarily keyed off of the_title() within WordPress. I share their pain in this regard, but I’ve also been experiencing another admin UI issue because I’ve got a handful of plugins which have added a dozen or so additional columns to my posts list. As a result the titles in my list are literally about four characters wide and stretch down the page while knucklehead metadata like categories needlessly eat up massively wide columns just for fun. Apparently plugins aren’t very mindful of how much space they decide to take up in the UI, and WordPress core doesn’t enforce reasonable limits on these things.
So my solution to both problems? If found a handly little plugin called Admin Columns with over 80,000 users and which seems to be frequently updated that allows one to have greater simple control over all of the columnar UI interfaces within their sites.
In just a few minutes, I was able to quickly get rid of several columns of data I’ve never cared about, expand the title column to a reasonable percentage of the space so it’s readable, and tweak all the other columns to better values. Even better, I was able to add the slug name of posts into the UI just after the title columns, so I can leave status update titles empty, but still have a field by which I can see at least some idea of what a particular post was about.
@jimmymansaray I’m sure it’s not an Independent Publisher issue. You might also ask Colin where he got it and if it had actually worked for him. I think I saw that snippet floating around last week. I think Colin has ultimately changed to the following instead: https://github.com/colin-walker/wordpress-blank-title.
It adds the kind of date/time stamp you’re looking for (or is modifiable with some research) and has the added benefit that micro.blog should ignore the time stamp and just import the_content() of your status update instead.
Honestly, I’d recommend going without a title if you can manage it. If you need something in your admin UI, you might try this suggestion as well: http://boffosocko.com/2017/05/04/title-less-status-updates-for-micro-blog/
I notice that https://baty.blog/ (also https://micro.blog/jack) is also using Independent Publisher to do somewhat the same thing.
Test from Quill quill.p3k.io to micro.blog.
I’m IndieWebbifying my blog. This is a test of a reply.
I’ve decided to re-design my personal website, richardmacmanus.com. My primary reason is to become a full-fledged member of the IndieWeb community. If I’m writing about Open Web technologies here on AltPlatform, then I ought to be eating my own dog food. Another reason is to discover – likely by trial and error – how to route around Walled Gardens like Facebook and Twitter, which host so much of our content these days. In other words, my goal is to make my personal website the hub for my Web presence. Finally, I want to re-discover blogging in 2017 – what it can do in this era, who’s doing interesting things and how, and what opportunities there might be for the Open Web to cross into the mainstream.
So in a series of posts on AltPlatform, I’m going to document my re-design and see where it takes me.
Goals
With any website re-design, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. I’ve touched on some of that already, but here’s how I wrote it out in my Evernote:
My goals for my website in 2017:
Author website: promote my books and other activities as a professional writer (e.g. my tech column).
Blogging circa 17: participate in the Open Web and experiment like I did in 2003/04 [when I was starting ReadWriteWeb].
Make my website my central hub / identity on the Web.
The first goal is purely professional: ensuring my website supports and promotes my career as a writer. So my books, columns and any other writing I do should be front and center.
The second goal is the most exciting one; and the reason for this post. I’m keen to experiment with interacting with other indie bloggers – through comments, likes, social streams, and whatever else I find that connects people together on the Indie Web.
If I accomplish the second goal, that will go a long way to making the third goal a reality: making my website the central hub for my Web activity.
Principles
In addition to these goals, I have started jotting down some principles. These are personal to me, so they may not be relevant to others. One of my principles is to maintain my privacy about certain things. The Social Web is great, but I have come to really dislike the oversharing aspect of it. So, for example, I don’t wish to share what books I read or what music I listen to. Those are things I prefer to keep to myself.
In other words I will be selective about which social streams I aggregate on my blog. The stuff I share on Facebook with my friends and family, for example, will stay on Facebook where it belongs. I may aggregate my Mastodon stream, perhaps even my Twitter, but if I do it will be for experimental reasons. It’ll be to see what value it has on my website (perhaps none, in which case the experiment will end).
Let’s now get to the re-design…
Getting started
My website runs on WordPress.org and is hosted at InMotion. Here’s what my website looked like just before I began IndieWebifying it:
It was an okay design, based on the Tortuga theme. But it didn’t really connect me to other people, or help sell many books for that matter. So it was ripe for disruption!
The first thing I did was go to the IndieWeb community wiki. Over the years, it has built up a number of tools to help you create a personal website that not only communicates your online presence, but also connects you to other blogs – as well as social media (such as Twitter and Mastodon). There’s a Getting Started page, which is of course a great place to start. That pointed me to IndieWebify.Me, which has a step-by-step guide. Even better for my purposes was the Getting Started on WordPress page, much of which was written by AltPlatform’s own Chris Aldrich.
Before I got stuck in, I wanted further inspiration from other indie bloggers. After all, the beauty of the early Web was its “view source” nature – the ability to re-use other peoples innovations to build your own place on the Web.
Chris Aldrich’s website looks to be the quintessential IndieWeb site. He has all kinds of content streaming into and out of his site – check out the post types listed below. I resolved to ‘copy’ the way he does things, at least until I’m knowledgeable and confident enough to try my own ways.
I then came across Jonathan LaCour’s website, after he left a comment on a recent AltPlatform post. “I have a website that supports Webmention and Micropub,” he wrote in that comment, “and I’ve created a plugin for Nextcloud News, my feed reader of choice, that enables interactions.”
Alan Levine also has a fun-looking indie blog, which features his own photography amongst other things.
The re-design begins
During my initial research, I discovered the fastest way to get up to speed was install an IndieWeb recommended WordPress theme. So I switched from my old theme to one called SemPress, designed by Matthias Pfefferle. It’s a brilliant design from a technical point of view, since it supports all the latest Open Web standards. The design isn’t as colourful as my previous one, but I’ll work on personalizing it later.
I then installed the IndieWeb family of plugins, which you can find by simply searching “IndieWeb” in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Here are the individual plugins you get, and what each one enables:
Webmention – allows you to send and receive by adding webmention support to WordPress. Mentions show up as comments on your site.
Semantic Linkbacks – makes IndieWeb comments and mentions look better on your site.
Post Kinds – Allows you to reply/like/RSVP etc to another site from your own, by adding support for kinds of posts to WordPress.
Bridgy Publish – Adds a user interface for using Bridgy to publish to other sites
Syndication Links – Adds fields to a post to allow manual entry of syndication links as well as automatically from a supported syndication plugin.
In a nutshell, those five plugins allow you to a) send and receive responses with your site; and b) syndicate your content to other sites.
After installing these and playing around, I tested the Post Kinds plugin by posting a reply to a post Chris wrote. Essentially I created a new post on my site, which looked like this:
Eventually my reply showed up on Chris’ original post. Of course it reminded me of trackbacks from the 03/04 era.
After I saw how easy it was to post all kinds of social content to one’s own site, I re-designed my menu to include “Social Streams” – with the sub-categories “Reply,” “Like,” and “Note.” I may add other types of social streams, like Chris has done on his site, as I continue my experiments.
So, I’ve made a start re-designing my website into an IndieWeb one. I still have a lot to do, including adding my own design. But I’ll continue to document my progress in the next post. In the meantime, any tips or feedback appreciated!
Image credit: Tantek
Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Click to print (Opens in new window)
Like this:
Like Loading…
Related
I’ve decided to re-design my personal website, richardmacmanus.com. My primary reason is to become a full-fledged member of the IndieWeb community. If I’m writing about Open Web technologies here on AltPlatform, then I ought to be eating my own dog food. Another reason is to discover – likely by trial and error – how to route around Walled Gardens like Facebook and Twitter, which host so much of our content these days. In other words, my goal is to make my personal website the hub for my Web presence. Finally, I want to re-discover blogging in 2017 – what it can do in this era, who’s doing interesting things and how, and what opportunities there might be for the Open Web to cross into the mainstream.
So in a series of posts on AltPlatform, I’m going to document my re-design and see where it takes me.
Goals
With any website re-design, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. I’ve touched on some of that already, but here’s how I wrote it out in my Evernote:
My goals for my website in 2017:
Author website: promote my books and other activities as a professional writer (e.g. my tech column).
Blogging circa 17: participate in the Open Web and experiment like I did in 2003/04 [when I was starting ReadWriteWeb].
Make my website my central hub / identity on the Web.
The first goal is purely professional: ensuring my website supports and promotes my career as a writer. So my books, columns and any other writing I do should be front and center.
The second goal is the most exciting one; and the reason for this post. I’m keen to interact with other indie bloggers – through comments, likes, social streams, and whatever else I find that connects people together on the Indie Web.
If I accomplish the second goal, that will go a long way to making the third goal a reality: making my website the central hub for my Web activity.
Principles
In addition to these goals, I have started jotting down some principles. These are personal to me, so they may not be relevant to others. One of my principles is to maintain my privacy about certain things. The Social Web is great, but I have come to really dislike the oversharing aspect of it. So, for example, I don’t wish to share what books I read or what music I listen to. Those are things I prefer to keep to myself.
In other words I will be selective about which social streams I aggregate on my blog. The stuff I share on Facebook with my friends and family, for example, will stay on Facebook where it belongs. I may aggregate my Mastodon stream, perhaps even my Twitter, but if I do it will be for experimental reasons. It’ll be to see what value it has on my website (perhaps none, in which case the experiment will end).
Let’s now get to the re-design…
Getting started
My website runs on WordPress.org and is hosted at InMotion. Here’s what my website looked like just before I began IndieWebifying it:
It was an okay design, based on the Tortuga theme. But it didn’t really connect me to other people, or help sell many books for that matter. So it was ripe for disruption!
The first thing I did was go to the IndieWeb community wiki. Over the years, it has built up a number of tools to help you create a personal website that not only communicates your online presence, but also connects you to other blogs – as well as social media (such as Twitter and Mastodon). There’s a Getting Started page, which is of course a great place to start. That pointed me to IndieWebify.Me, which has a step-by-step guide. Even better for my purposes was the Getting Started on WordPress page, much of which was written by AltPlatform’s own Chris Aldrich.
Before I got stuck in, I wanted further inspiration from other indie bloggers. After all, the beauty of the early Web was its “view source” nature – the ability to re-use other peoples innovations to build your own place on the Web.
Chris Aldrich’s website looks to be the quintessential IndieWeb site. He has all kinds of content streaming into and out of his site – check out the post types listed below. I resolved to ‘copy’ the way he does things, at least until I’m knowledgeable and confident enough to try my own ways.
I then came across Jonathan LaCour’s website, after he left a comment on a recent AltPlatform post. “I have a website that supports Webmention and Micropub,” he wrote in that comment, “and I’ve created a plugin for Nextcloud News, my feed reader of choice, that enables interactions.”
Alan Levine also has a fun-looking indie blog, which features his own photography amongst other things.
The re-design begins
During my initial research, I discovered the fastest way to get up to speed was install an IndieWeb recommended WordPress theme. So I switched from my old theme to one called SemPress, designed by Matthias Pfefferle. It’s a brilliant design from a technical point of view, since it supports all the latest Open Web standards. The design isn’t as colourful as my previous one, but I’ll work on personalizing it later.
I then installed the IndieWeb family of plugins, which you can find by simply searching “IndieWeb” in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Here are the individual plugins you get, and what each one enables:
Webmention – allows you to send and receive by adding webmention support to WordPress. Mentions show up as comments on your site.
Semantic Linkbacks – makes IndieWeb comments and mentions look better on your site.
Post Kinds – Allows you to reply/like/RSVP etc to another site from your own, by adding support for kinds of posts to WordPress.
Bridgy Publish – Adds a user interface for using Bridgy to publish to other sites
Syndication Links – Adds fields to a post to allow manual entry of syndication links as well as automatically from a supported syndication plugin.
In a nutshell, those five plugins allow you to a) send and receive responses with your site; and b) syndicate your content to other sites.
After installing these and playing around, I tested the Post Kinds plugin by posting a reply to a post Chris wrote. Essentially I created a new post on my site, which looked like this:
Eventually my reply showed up on Chris’ original post. Of course it reminded me of trackbacks from the 03/04 era.
After I saw how easy it was to post all kinds of social content to one’s own site, I re-designed my menu to include “Social Streams” – with the sub-categories “Reply,” “Like,” and “Note.” I may add other types of social streams, like Chris has done on his site, as I continue my experiments.
So, I’ve made a start re-designing my website into an IndieWeb one. I still have a lot to do, including adding my own design. But I’ll continue to document my progress in the next post. In the meantime, any tips or feedback appreciated!
Image credit: Tantek
Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Click to print (Opens in new window)
Like this:
Like Loading…
Related
Title-less Status Updates for Micro.blog by Chris Aldrich (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)
I’m IndieWebifying my blog. This is a test of a reply.
This Article was mentioned on kimberlyhirsh.com
Read Title-less Status Updates for Micro.blog by Chris Aldrich Chris Aldrich (BoffoSocko)
Using the Admin Columns Plugin for WordPress to add a slug column to my admin UI instead of having a title.
@ChrisAldrich Out of curiosity, have you ever come across a plugin or function which automatically creates WordPress slugs for title-less posts, by trimming the_content? I am trying to avoid having to remember to manually create slugs.
boffosocko.com/2017/05/04/tit…
None that I’m aware of. It would be a nice feature. There are some micropub clients out there that will let you set the slug. Maybe that’s the easy answer?
Syndicated copies:
I can set the slug manually I was just trying to find a way not to have to, because every little bit I can shave off my cognitive load is one more bit of sanity. Haven’t found anything yet, though. Thanks!
David Shanske has done something like this before in Post Kinds Plugin within the admin UI. Perhaps he could add a similar option based on the first n letters of the_body or the_excerpt to set the permalink?
Syndicated copies:
@dshanske has done something like this before in Post Kinds Plugin within the admin UI. Perhaps he could add a similar option based on the first n letters of the_body or the_excerpt to set the permalink?
boffosocko.com/2017/05/04/tit…
Wow. This was a lot of work to support Manton’s shortsighted decisions.