If you haven’t been following along, here are some relevant pieces for background:
- The beginnings of a blogroll
- A Following Page (aka some significant updates to my Blogroll)
- OPML files for categories within WordPress’s Links Manager
- Was WP Links the Perfect Blogroll All Along? by Ton Zijlstra
Generally I’ve been adding data into my Following Page (aka blogroll on steroids) using the old WordPress Links Manager pseudo-manually. (There’s also a way to bulk import to it via OPML, using the WordPress Tools Menu or via /wp-admin/import.php?import=opml). The old Links Manager functionality in WordPress had a bookmarklet to add links to it quickly, though it currently only seems to add a minimal set–typically just the URL and the page title. Perhaps someone with stronger JavaScript skills than I possess could improve on it or integrate/leverage some of David Shanske’s Parse This work into such a bookmark to pull more data out of pages (via Microformats, Schema.org, Open Graph Protocol, or Dublin Core meta) to pre-fill the Links Manager with more metadata including page feeds, which I now understand Parse This does in the past month or so. (If more than one feed is found, they could be added in comma separated form to the “Notes” section and the user could cut/paste the appropriate one into the feed section.) Since I spent some significant time trying to find/dig up that old bookmarklet, I’ll mention that it can be found in the Restore Lost Functionality plugin (along with many other goodies) and a related version also exists in the Link Library plugin, though on a small test I found it only pulled in the URL.
Since it wasn’t completely intuitive to find, I’ll include the JavaScript snippet for the Links Manager bookmarklet below, though note that the URL hard coded into it is for example.com, so change that part if you’re modifying for your own use. (I haven’t tested it, but it may require the Press This plugin which replaces some of the functionality that was taken out of WordPress core in version 4.9. It will certainly require one to enable using the Links Manager either via code or via plugin.)
javascript:void(linkmanpopup=window.open('https://exanple.com/wp-admin/link-add.php?action=popup&linkurl='+escape(location.href)+'&name='+escape(document.title),'LinkManager','scrollbars=yes,width=750,height=550,left=15,top=15,status=yes,resizable=yes'));linkmanpopup.focus();window.focus();linkmanpopup.focus();Since I’ve been digging around a bit, I’ll note that Yannick Lefebvre’s Link Library plugin seems to have a similar sort of functionality to Links Manager and adds in the ability to add a variety of additional data fields including tags, which Ton Zijlstra mentions he would like (and I wouldn’t mind either). Unfortunately I’m not seeing any OPML functionality in the plugin, so it wins at doing display (with a huge variety of settings) for a stand-alone blogroll, but it may fail at the data portability for doing the additional OPML portion we’ve been looking at. Of course I’m happy to be corrected, but I don’t see anything in the documentation or a cursory glance at the code.
In the most ideal world, I’d love to be able to use the Post Kinds Plugin to create follow posts (see my examples). This plugin is already able to generally use bookmarklet functionality to pull in a variety of meta data using the Parse This code which is also built into Post Kinds.
It would be nice if these follow posts would also copy their data into the Links Manager (to keep things DRY), so that the blogroll and the OPML files are automatically updated all at once. (Barring Post Kinds transferring the data, it would be nice to have an improved bookmarklet for pulling data into the Links Manager piece directly.)
Naturally having the ability for these OPML files be readable/usable by Jack Jamieson’s forthcoming Yarns Microsub Server for WordPress (for use with social readers) would be phenomenal. (I believe there are already one or two OPML to h-feed converters for Microsub in the wild.) All of this would be a nice end -to-end solution for quickly and easily following people (or sites) with a variety of feeds and feed types (RSS, Atom, JSONfeed, h-feed).
An additional refinement of the blogroll display portion would be to have that page display as an h-feed of h-entries each including properly marked up h-cards with appropriate microformats and discoverable RSS feeds to make it easier for other sites to find and use that data. (This may be a more IndieWeb-based method of displaying such a page compared with the OPML spec.) I’ll also note that the Links Manager uses v1 of the OPML spec and it would potentially be nice to have an update on that as well for newer discovery tools/methods like Dave Winer’s Share Your OPML Subscription list, which I’m noting seems to be down/not functioning at the moment.
Thank you for documenting so much about this topic Chris. I too would like the ability to incorporate Follow posts into my list. Really should get back to updating my feeds too.
Happy donderdag! Mensen volgen op sociale netwerken is wat we het liefste doen. Het is de backbone van het sociale internet, ooit gestart door de blogrolls. De meeste weblogs hadden in de zijbalk een lijst met favoriete blogs die ze volgden, al dan niet met een RSS feed er bij vermeld. Er lijkt een hernieuwde interesse te zijn in de blogrolls.
Het is allemaal nog pril en de discussie is soms wat technisch. Maar als je leest hoe Chris Aldrich en Ton Zijlstra over en weer pingpongen op hun eigen blog over dit onderwerp, ik word daar blij van!
De technologie is er (nog altijd) en iedereen heeft wel zijn lijstje met favoriete blogs en sites. Waarom deze niet op je site publiceren? Check de link hieronder als startpunt voor meer achtergrond.
Belangrijk leesmoment om de tijd voor te nemen
From Following Posts and Blogrolls (Following Pages) with OPML to Microsub Servers and Readers — boffosocko.com
I’m still tinkering away at pathways for following people (and websites) on the open web (in my case within WordPress). I’m doing it with an eye toward making
Lunchpraat
Glitch Podcast 18: Gaat het Indieweb het internet redden? — http://www.glitch.show
Toch nog wat zelfpromotie. Ik was recent te gast bij de Glitch Podcast, dat werd een fijn gesprek van dik een uur over De Digitale Stad, David Bowie en natuurlijk het Indieweb.
💪 Marco Raaphorst legt uit dat je niets aan jaknikkers hebt. Doe je eigen ding! https://marcoraaphorst.nl/52624/tegengeluid/
🎪 Ik ben vrijdag op de Dutch Digital Day, eens luisteren wat o.a. Mike Monteiro en Jamie Bartlett over design, technologie en ethiek te vertellen hebben!
Blog on!
From Following Posts and Blogrolls (Following Pages) with OPML to Microsub Servers and Readers (BoffoSocko)
Thanks for consolidating this in one place, Chris. I caught snippets of the series and conversation between you and Ton in my Reader, but didn’t go back to search out everything. Now I have a concise place to go to when I have some time to read everything 😃
For my own part, my Links page is powered by the old WordPress Links Manager. I had no idea that had an OPML import function – that would have saved me hours of manual entry! I also didn’t know it could generate an OPML file for import elsewhere. “Today I Learned.”
In the last couple of weeks I’ve thought about creating a special page on my site to aggregate all of my Bookmark-type posts into one place. Similarly, I could create a custom “Kind” for Following, and aggregate those in a single place. Neither option would have their own automatic OPML file, but using a Kind does allow for a specific Feed for each type. It would allow for the full range of post meta to be added to each type too. The Post Kinds plug-in generates archives for each Kind, but I’m thinking a custom page would allow me to play with the presentation a bit more.
It’s something for me to experiment with at the least!
Thanks for this writeup, Chris. I probably haven’t thought as much as I should about following posts, so your documentation is really helpful.
You’ve reminded me that I’d like to eventually figure out a good way to have Yarns import and export OPML files. Given that the impetus of Yarns vs a hosted server is to own your feeds, it’s a shame I haven’t implemented better data portability yet.
Another idea your post brings to mind, is that it would nice to have an option to automatically create following posts (and add to the blogroll) when adding a new feed (and subsequently remove following posts when unfollowing). This should be fairly easy to implement, and would take advantage of Parse-This since its integrated into Yarns already.
Additional would be a bookmarklet for adding feeds.
As usual, you’re a fount of good ideas. I won’t have time to implement any of these things before IWS, but one of them might be a nice project for that weekend.
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I’m glad you all are using OPML. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with it you might not know about.
scripting.com/2019/06/19.htm…
I’ll have to read this blog posts and the included links several times to gain some understanding. It feels like this is all become incredibly complicated.
Replied to a post by @bix (micro.blog)
@bix, it’s interesting to see others experimenting with these sorts of things. I hadn’t thought of adding any newsletters (and I don’t subscribe to more than one or two), but I’ve built a huge, categorized following page which includes OPML subscription links as well.
There are some details and links to how I did it in WordPress for those who are interested: From Following Posts and Blogrolls (Following Pages) with OPML to Microsub servers and Readers.
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Read Publicly Sharing RSS Libraries i.e. My RSS Feeds are Yours by Kevin Smokler (Kevin Smokler)
–highlighted December 08, 2019 at 04:26PM
This is the third time I’ve heard about RSS coming back in almost as many days, and this not long after highlighting some recent advancements in feed readers. (One of the others was Jeremy Keith at this weekend’s IndieWebCamp in San Francisco.) Kevin highlights a fantastic reason why using a feed reader can be important and more healthy than relying on the social aggregation algorithms in your not-so-friendly-neighborhood social media platforms.
Like Kevin and Matt, I think it’s a nice thing to share one’s sources and feeds. A while back I created a following page where I share a huge list of the people and sources I’m following regularly via RSS feeds, Atom Feeds, JSONFeed, and even h-feed. Everytime I follow or unfollow a source, the page auto-updates. I also provide OPML files (at the bottom of that page) so you can import them into your own feed reader. If you’re using a feed reader like Inoreader that supports OPML subscription, you can input the OPML file location and your copy of my feeds will automatically update when I make changes.
Happy reading!
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Reading.am
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Replied to Networking as Time Saving by Jane Van Galen (Teaching and Learning on the Open Web)
Thanks for the shout out! Making those kinds of lists can certainly be repetitive, time consuming, and thankless. The only thing worse is that hundreds or thousands should try to reinvent the same wheel.
If you appreciated that bit of trickery, you might better appreciate a more open web version of the same with respect to the following page I made of various people and publications I’m following in my various feed readers. It provides OPML feeds so others can easily import them into their feed readers as well. You can find some additional documentation about it here.
Here’s the sub-list of relevant people: IndieWeb and Education
The OPML file, which you can import into many readers, for the same: IndieWeb and Education (OPML)
Here’s some additional reading and links for background, if you’re interested.
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Blogrolls? Those are like Twitter lists for the cognoscenti right? 😉
Seriously, I’ve resurrected mine a while back too. And included sub-sectioned OPML files just for kicks.
More details on the project and implications for the future: https://boffosocko.com/2019/06/18/from-following-posts-and-blogrolls-following-pages-with-opml-to-microsub-servers-and-readers/
Seems Frank and I aren’t the only ones thinking about, and tinkering with, OPML and WordPress. (I also wasn’t aware of the OPML importer—I did know about the Link Manager, though—until a couple months ago, when I’d just built the tiny plugin that keeps my WordPress links in sync with my feed reader’s OPML endpoint.)
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Happy donderdag! Mensen volgen op sociale netwerken is wat we het liefste doen. Het is de backbone van het sociale internet, ooit gestart door de blogrolls. De meeste weblogs hadden in de zijbalk een lijst met favoriete blogs die ze volgden, al dan niet met een RSS feed er bij vermeld. Er lijkt een hernieuwde interesse te zijn in de blogrolls.
Het is allemaal nog pril en de discussie is soms wat technisch. Maar als je leest hoe Chris Aldrich en Ton Zijlstra over en weer pingpongen op hun eigen blog over dit onderwerp, ik word daar blij van!
De technologie is er (nog altijd) en iedereen heeft wel zijn lijstje met favoriete blogs en sites. Waarom deze niet op je site publiceren? Check de link hieronder als startpunt voor meer achtergrond.
Belangrijk leesmoment om de tijd voor te nemen
From Following Posts and Blogrolls (Following Pages) with OPML to Microsub Servers and Readers — boffosocko.com
I’m still tinkering away at pathways for following people (and websites) on the open web (in my case within WordPress). I’m doing it with an eye toward making
Lunchpraat
Glitch Podcast 18: Gaat het Indieweb het internet redden? — http://www.glitch.show
Toch nog wat zelfpromotie. Ik was recent te gast bij de Glitch Podcast, dat werd een fijn gesprek van dik een uur over De Digitale Stad, David Bowie en natuurlijk het Indieweb.
💪 Marco Raaphorst legt uit dat je niets aan jaknikkers hebt. Doe je eigen ding! https://marcoraaphorst.nl/52624/tegengeluid/
🎪 Ik ben vrijdag op de Dutch Digital Day, eens luisteren wat o.a. Mike Monteiro en Jamie Bartlett over design, technologie en ethiek te vertellen hebben!
Blog on!
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