In addition to some other useful upgrades and bug fixes, the big new feature this release adds is excellent syndication support for Micro.blog.
While many people use RSS feeds, JSONfeed, or other plugin methods for syndicating their WordPress website’s content to Micro.blog, this plugin now provides for a per-post decision about exactly what content to send to Micro.blog. It also naturally provides a syndication link from your site back to the Micro.blog post. To my knowledge no other method provides this syndication link functionality.
As I suspect many may already be aware, if your site supports Webmention (typically done with the Webmention and Semantic-linkbacks plugins), then Micro.blog will notify your site with replies and comments to your post as they appear on Micro.blog. This provides one the ability to do two-way communication between the two platforms.
Set up and configuration for Micro.Blog syndication
If you don’t already have it, install the plugin and activate it, otherwise update it within your site’s administrative interface.
Add your Micro.blog account username to your user profile on your WordPress site. This is typically found at /wp-admin/profile.php
. In my case I simply added c
to the field labeled Micro.blog username.
Adjust your WordPress Syndication Links settings page (typically found at /wp-admin/admin.php?page=syndication_links
) to include Micro.blog by using the appropriate checkbox. Be sure to save the setting.
Remove, if necessary, any of the RSS, JSON, or other syndication feeds from your Micro.blog account so you’re not accidentally duplicating the syndication.
Add the JSONfeed URL from the bottom of the Syndication Links plugin settings page into your list of feeds at https://micro.blog/account/feeds.
Create a post, select Micro.blog as an endpoint in the relevant meta-box, and publish your post.
Once published, your post will ping Micro.blog’s server to indicate the new content which will then be displayed in your timeline. The Syndication Links plugin will then find the permalink URL of your post on Micro.blog and display it on your post (as per your settings) along with any other syndicated copies. This notification process is roughly real time, but may take a minute or two for your post to display and the syndication link to appear on your site based on the processing times on the relevant servers.
As an added bonus, Syndication Links plugin will also find the syndication links from Micro.blog in your current feed and add those to your original posts.
If you have any questions, need clarifications, or find bugs with regard to your set up, you can file issues for the plugin on GitHub.
@c Hats off to the amazing David Shanske for doing this. And thank you Chris for writing such a comprehensive guide. This opens up MB social to the WP Indieweb in all sorts of new ways.
Thank you Chris for the explanation on the change. I had seen David Shanske’s post about the update to Syndication Links, but was confused how this was different from using a particular tag as a sort of trigger.
Is it odd that under WordPress 5.5.1 I don’t see any of the providers listed in your screen shots?
Based on the WordPress IndieWeb chat, I’m guessing you figured out your issue?
I will note that a bunch of the ones I’ve got in my screenshot are ones that I’ve manually created….
Micro.blog is a website and social service started by Manton Reece, which natively supports IndieWeb building-blocks like microformats2, Webmention, IndieAuth, and Micropub.