Display of Reads, Listens, and Watches in comments sections
David Shanske’s excellent Post Kinds Plugin allows one to post what they’re reading, listening to, or watching in simple IndieWeb fashion. (Examples of these on my site: read posts, listen posts, watch posts.) These posts types automatically include the appropriate microformats classes so the user doesn’t need to bother doing them manually. For a long time when replying to another’s site, bookmarking it, or even mentioning it when also using the Webmentions plugin would send the site a Webmention that would generally cause it to show up as a native comment, bookmark or mention. With an update late last year, from within the Discussion
settings in WordPress, one could set toggles so that many of these webmentions could be displayed as facepiles. Other broadly unsupported post types would typically default to a simple mention.
Recently David Shanske and I started a podcast, and he thought it would be useful if his site could accept listen posts and show them visually within his comments section just like these replies, bookmarks, and mentions. Thus over the past month he’s added code to the Semantic Linkbacks Plugin to add the functionality for these types of posts to properly render showing facepiles for listens, reads, and watches.
This is what webmentions of listen posts look like on his site in his comments section:
What’s happening
Listen (or scrobble) posts can send webmentions (or notifications) to the original content potentially with the experimental listen-of
microformat. In the case of scrobbles of podcasts, these webmentions could be displayed as “Listens” which would provide the canonical copy of the podcast some indicator of its popularity and actual audience. It is tremendously difficult to obtain data on the actual number of listens within most of the podcast community and typically a fraction of the number of downloads must be used as an indicator of the actual reach. Being able to display listens could potentially be a boon to the podcasting market, particularly with respect to advertising as this type of open social web functionality spreads.
Similarly read posts with the read-of
microformat and watches with watch-of
will be accepted and show up within the comments section. Like the previous types, they can be set to display as facepiles within the user interface.
Knowing that this read functionality would be available, this week I helped ColoradoBoulevard.net set up their site to be able to accept and display reads of their articles. Here’s an example from their site:
I haven’t yet seen one for watches in the wild yet, but maybe you’ll be either the first to send or receive one?
The microformats on these posts is generally considered to be experimental, but with the ~500+ users of this suite of tools as well as others who are already using them on other sites, they’ve now taken a dramatic step into the open internet and more widespread use and potential official adoption.
Editable Webmention Types and Avatars
Webmention Types
Just yesterday, I spent a few minutes in the IndieWeb chat helping someone to laboriously delve into their mySQL databaset and find a particular snippet of data so they could manually change a received webmention from being a simple mention
to being a reply
so that it would display as a native comment on their website. I’ve often done this to take what sometimes seem like simple mentions and change them to replies to reveal the richer content they often contain for the broader conversation. Sadly the process is boring, laborious, and fraught with potential ways to mess things up.
As of this weekend, this process is no longer necessary. One can now go to the admin interface for their comments and webmentions (found at the path /wp-admin/edit-comments.php
), click on edit
for the particular comment they’re changing and then scroll down to reveal a droplist interface to be able to manually change the webmention type.
As another example of a use for this functionality, perhaps you’ve received a listen mention on one of your podcast episodes that has a lot of useful notes or commentary germane to your episode? Instead of hiding it as a simple listen, why not change the type to reply
to allow a richer conversation around your content? After all, with a reasonable reply it will be implicit that the commenter actually listened to the episode, right?
Avatars
Because there is currently no functionality in WordPress for saving or caching the avatars of commenters via webmention, when users change their profile images on siloed services like Facebook, Twitter, et al. the link to their old avatars quits working and they were displaying blank spaces. This is an unfortunate form of linkrot, but one that can become more visually apparent over time.
As one can see in the image for the commenting edit box above, the field for the Avatar
is now editable. This means one can update out-of-date or blank avatars. One now also has the ability to moderate/edit or easily remove/switch avatars if users are sending inappropriate photos for one’s site’s audience.
This article inspired me to install the Post Kinds plugin for WordPress. This is a reply. I have no idea if and how this works but I reckon Chris Aldrich will forgive me for experimenting. Let’s see if it works.
Syndicated copies:
@bradenslen Looks like it did pretty well on your site, though the syndicated version to Twitter needs some help. I suspect you’re using Brid.gy Publish to do that? Test away…
Syndicated copies:
Thanks Chris. Yes I am using Brid.gy for now as an experiment, although I may go back to using Micro.blog for Twitter syndication or just let WordPress do it.
Thank you Chris for a plan English article. Do you remember those manuals that where written by tech guys and no normal person ever read? I like to say well done to all the guys that build this stuff. why do you guys undersell this stuff? webmentions is massive. Keep up the good work guys
This is a nice idea, I sometimes get webmentions that have interesting contents I see in the email notification but here on the blog it just shows as an avatar with not text. Now I can fix that, example.
Liked Reads, Listens, Watches, and Editable Webmention Types and Avatars in the IndieWeb WordPress Suite by Chris Aldrich Chris Aldrich (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko) One can now go to the admin interface for their comments and webmentions (found at the path /wp-admin/edit-comments.php), click on edit for the particular comment they’re changing and then scroll down to reveal a droplist interface to be able to manually change the webmention type.
This is a nice idea, I sometimes get webmentions that have interesting contents I see in the email notification but here on the blog it just shows as an avatar with not text. Now I can fix that, example. Like this:Like Loading…
Syndicated copies:
Reads, Listens, Watches, and Editable Webmention Types and Avatars in the IndieWeb WordPress Suite by Chris Aldrich (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)
Besides website security, making sure I get the latest features of the IndieWeb WordPress Suite is why I have my WordPress plugins set to auto-update. I am using the entire IndieWeb WordPress Suite. I love the new features!
Like this:
Like Loading…
<img alt="" src="https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7fa94585b903e6e183d6164b16b1b573?s=42&r=pg" srcset="">
<h2><span>Author:</span> Khürt Williams</h2>
Gen X-er near Princeton University in Montgomery Township, New Jersey, with a passion for aquariums, terrariums, technology, and photography. I love hiking in the woods, and my eclectic musical tastes span soca, Afrobeat, calypso, 1990s rap, grunge rock, and alternative genres. <a href="https://islandinthenet.com/author/khurtwilliams/" rel="author">
View all posts by Khürt Williams </a>