Month: April 2020
Love its people, but never trust its government.
Review of Typlog as a turnkey platform for IndieWeb as a Service
Webmention is supported on Typlog now: https://t.co/iiY5SgWssf
— Typlog (@typlog) March 30, 2020
I looked at their website, and it also looks like they support a few other IndieWeb building blocks including WebSub and RelMeAuth by leveraging Twitter and GitHub. (The developer indicated they supported IndieAuth, but I highly suspect it’s just RelMeAuth, which is still a solid option for many IndieWeb tools.)
Having just put together a Quick Start IndieWeb chart that includes services like micro.blog, i.haza.website, and pine.blog, I was immediately intrigued. This new platform (proprietary and not self-hostable, but very similar to the others) looks like a solid looking little platform for hosting one’s personal website (or podcast) that includes some IndieWeb building-blocks.
It’s got a 7 day free trial, so naturally I spun up a quick website. With just a few simple defaults, I had something pretty solid looking in only a few minutes with a pleasant on-boarding experience.
I’ll note that some functionality like importing content from WordPress, Tumblr, Ghost, or a podcast feed requires an actual subscription. Once you’ve finally subscribed, there are instructions to set it up to use your own domain name. However, most of the basic functionality is available in the trial. Another important indie feature is that it has a built-in export using JSON format, so that one can take their domain and content to another service provider if they wish.
It looks like it’s got a ton of common useful features! This includes support for podcasting, password protected posts, scheduling posts, membership posts, and integrations for Stripe, CloudFlare, Google Analytics, and MailChimp among many others. The platform is built with some basic and beautiful page templates and prefers to have markdown in the editor, but seems to work well with raw HTML.
They also allow adding custom code into <header>
and <footer>
so it should be straightforward to add support Microsub to one’s site using a service like Aperture so that you can have (feed) reader support.
Unfortunately it looks like there’s no Micropub support yet. I suspect that Typlog would be quite pleased to have a number of posting applications for both desktop and mobile available to it by adding this sort of support.
Also on testing, it looks like while the platform supports incoming Webmention, it doesn’t seem to be sending webmentions to links within posts. (Perhaps they’re batch processed asynchronously, but I haven’t seen anything yet.)
The platform seems to do really well for posting articles and podcasts and even has a custom template for reviews, but all of the user interface I’ve seen requires one to add a title on all posts, so it doesn’t lend itself to adding notes (status updates) or other indie-like posts like bookmarks, likes, or simple replies. It has a minimal built in h-card, but it could be expanded a bit for sending webmentions.
The pricing for the service starts at a very reasonable $4/month and goes up to $12/month with some additional discounts for annual payments.
In sum, I love this as another very indy-flavored web hosting service and platform for those looking to make a quick and easy move into a more IndieWeb way of hosting their website and content. While services like micro.blog and i.haza.website may be ahead of it on some technical fronts, like pine.blog, Typlog has a variety of different and unique features that many are likely to really appreciate or wish that other services might have. I imagine that over time, all of them will have relative technical parity, but will differentiate themselves on user interface, flexibility, and other services. I could definitely recommend it to friends and family who don’t want to be responsible for building and managing their websites.
One of my favorite parts of Typlog is that the company building it is based in Japan, where I’ve seen a little bit of development work for IndieWeb, but not as much as in portions of Europe, America, or Australia. It’s been great seeing some growth and spread of IndieWeb philosophy and platforms in Asia, Africa, and India recently.
And of course, who couldn’t love the fact that the developer is obviously eating their own cooking by using the platform to publish their own website! I can’t wait to see where Typlog goes next.
David Shanske’s hosted version of Quill
As the coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, John Oliver discusses President Trump’s inconsistent response to the pandemic, including his suggestion of an Easter deadline for sending America back to work, and his reluctance to use the Defense Production Act.
More details and documentation about it tomorrow.
Angela de Marco: God, you people work just like the mob! There’s no difference.
Regional Director Franklin: Oh, there’s a big difference, Mrs. de Marco. The mob is run by murdering, thieving, lying, cheating psychopaths. We work for the President of the United States of America.
—Married to the Mob (Orion, 1988)
Directed by Paul McGuigan. With Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, Una Stubbs. Mycroft needs Sherlock's help, but a remorseless criminal mastermind puts Sherlock on a distracting crime-solving spree via a series of hostage human bombs through which he speaks.
A three-time Grammy Award winner, he had a string of much-covered hits in the 1970s but had not released an album since 1985.
I’ll pour one out for you today Bill. Thanks for leaving your music behind.
Directed by Rebecca Chaiklin, Eric Goode. With Bhagavan Antle, Kody Antle, Carole Baskin, Howard Baskin. Subjected to long hours, little (or no) pay and the whims of eccentric bosses: are big cat park employees just cogs in a web of personality cults?
Directed by Rebecca Chaiklin, Eric Goode. With Bhagavan Antle, Carole Baskin, Howard Baskin, Bobbie Cooper. An incident in Carole's past casts her in a suspicious light, and while she maintains her innocence, Joe is all too happy to point the finger at her.
Directed by Rebecca Chaiklin, Eric Goode. With Bhagavan Antle, Carole Baskin, Howard Baskin, Sylvia Corkill. Joe ramps up his efforts to become an internet and TV star, but a mysterious fire and lawsuit threaten his plans - until an angel investor appears.
Directed by Rebecca Chaiklin, Eric Goode. With Bhagavan Antle, Kody Antle, Carole Baskin, Sylvia Corkill. As Joe dives into politics, he deals with turmoil and tragedy in his personal life. Meanwhile, the dynamics at the park change with the new owners.
Self-hosting TiddlyWiki with GitHub Pages
Because it is a single text file usually named index.html
written in HTML, CSS and some JavaScript, I thought it would make an ideal candidate for a simple-to-use personal website that can be hosted on one’s own domain. As a researcher who appreciates the IndieWeb and Domain of One’s Own philosophies and uses my personal website as a commonplace book for both work and personal reasons, how could I resist?
TiddlyWiki
TiddlyWiki is easy to use, highly flexible, modifiable, and can be easily copied, backed up, and shared. There’s an active community of users and developers for the platform which dates back to 2004. There are a variety of examples and documentation online and plugins are literally as simple as dragging and dropping some files from one source directly into your own Wiki. For those interested in the OER movement, individual Tiddlers (TiddlyWiki’s name for cards or discrete entries within the wiki) can be easily dragged and dropped from other TiddlyWikis to copy them!
There are some useful instructions for hosting it almost everywhere–except on one’s own domain name.
The few easy options I’ve found for hosting a TiddlyWiki publicly online as a website were rely on someone else’s service as a subdomain. As much as I like the idea of TiddlySpot I really wanted to use my own domain name (not to mention that it’s non-obvious how to host a newer TiddlyWiki version 5 (TW5) instance there). I’d also seen TiddlySpace shut down a few years ago and didn’t want to deal with that potentiality—though I will admit that exporting would be as simple as downloading and moving a single file!
So after a month or so at tinkering around at several complicated solutions that always seemed beyond my grasp, I went back to IndieWeb basics. What is their recommendation for the easiest way to get a website up and running? The fact that an empty TiddlyWiki file is named index.html
gave me my answer: set up a GitHub Pages-based website and simply connect it to my domain!
However, as simple as this pathway may seem to some, I thought I’d briefly document the process I took so others can do the same for themselves.
First I’ll presume you’ve got a domain name and a host that will allow you to change the CNAME for where your domain name is pointed. (If you don’t, check out https://indieweb.org/personal-domain for details.)
In short, you’re going to upload a single file to your GitHub account and then point your domain name at it.
The idea of GitHub may scare a lot of people, but you won’t need to use git, know any git commands, or even know how git works since I’ll describe steps that entirely use the graphical user interface and don’t come anywhere near using the command line or any complicated GitHub applications. It’ll be as easy as dragging and dropping.
Let’s start!
Step-by-Step Tutorial
Get TiddlyWiki
- Go to https://tiddlywiki.com/ and click on the “Download Empty” button on their homepage. This will allow you to save a file called
index.html
to a convenient place on your computer. - This one file is the entirety of your future website! Guard it well.
GitHub
- If you don’t already have one, create an account at https://github.com/
- You’ll use this account and their free GitHub Pages service to host your website for free as long as the project folder (also known as a repository) you are hosting is public.
- At GitHub create a new repository.
- Name it
username.github.io
, whereusername
is your username (or organization name if you’re doing it for your organization) on GitHub. - Give your repository an optional descriptive name. I named mine “A TiddlyWiki commonplace book”
- Choose the “Public” option, otherwise no one will be able to visit your new website.
- Click “Create Repository”
- Name it
- Upload your TiddlyWiki to your new repository
- In the Quick Set Up box click on the link for “uploading an existing file”.
- On the subsequent page you can either drag and drop the empty TiddlyWiki
index.html
file you saved on your computer or you can click “choose your files” to find and upload the file. - If you like, you can optionally add any additional README, License, or gitignore files as necessary. If you don’t know what these are you can safely skip them or revisit doing this later.
- Under “Commit changes” give your upload a short title; the suggested “Add files via upload” is fine. You can add an optional extended description if you like.
- Click on the “Commit Changes” button.
- P.S.: If you haven’t done so before you’ve just made your first Git commit. Congratulations!!
- Your https://github.com/username/username.github.io repository folder should now be ready and have your
index.html
file in it.
Setting up your domain
- Here you may need to consult with the the instructions your specific domain name registrar or host has for pointing your domain name (or subdomain) at your new GitHub Pages website. Usually they will have step by step instructions for doing this, but they can also often do it for you via email or phone support if you prefer.
- Examples:
- Instructions for Reclaim Hosting: https://community.reclaimhosting.com/t/mapping-a-domain-to-custom-dns-records/32
- Instructions for 1&1 using a subdomain: https://www.ionos.com/help/domains/configuring-cname-records-for-subdomains/configuring-a-cname-record-for-a-subdomain/
- Examples:
- Now you’ll want to configure your GitHub Pages site to dovetail with your domain.
- In your newly created GitHub repository, click on the “Settings” tab in the top right corner or go to https://github.com/username/username.github.io/settings
- Scroll down the page to the “GitHub Pages” section
- In the “Custom Domain” section enter your domain name
example.com
into the field and click the “Save” button.
Setting up your website
- It may take a while for the DNS system to propagate the changes from your host, but you should be able to visit your website and see your empty TiddlyWiki online. Congrations! You’ve got a new website.
- You’ll notice in the TiddlyWiki documentation that the first rule of TiddlyWiki is to always save or back up your wiki!
- (The second rule, in true Fight Club fashion, is–let’s say it together–to always save or back up your wiki!)
- Since our wiki is on GitHub, we’ll want to use the Save to a Git Service instructions. Once set up, the changes to our TiddlyWiki should automatically self-save (this can be changed within your wiki’s Control Panel too) or they can be saved manually using the TiddlyWiki checkmark save functionality.
- I’ll note that you can presently use your GitHub password in these settings, but this isn’t quite as secure as generating a custom token (or password), and sometime in late 2020, GitHub won’t allow you to use your basic account password this way, so you may as well set up the personal access token now.
- Setting up Personal Access Tokens
- You will need a Personal Access Token (essentially a password that will be specific to your TiddlyWiki account) in order to save your TiddlyWiki file.
- On GitHub, click on your user icon, select “Settings”, then “Developer Settings”
- Next click on the “Personal Access Tokens” tab and then click “Generate new token”
- Give your token a descriptive name like “TiddlyWiki”
- Under scopes, select “repo” (and all of its sub-scopes)
- Click the “Generate Token” button at the bottom of the page.
- Once created, immediately copy this string somewhere safe since navigating away from the page will not allow you to recover it. (If you do, you’ll need to regenerate a new token.)
- Finally copy the text of your token into the Tiddler noted above in place of your password. There’s no explicit save button, just ‘X’ out of the settings control panel and click your TiddlyWiki’s main save button.
- Your token value should be stored in browser local storage.
- Now you can edit any Tiddler and save it.
- After edits to your wiki, you’ll see that the checkmark icon on the page is red (depending on your theme), indicating changes to save. You can click on it to force a save.
- I’ve found it convenient to wait for the TiddlyWiki to schedule the save on its own, however, make sure you’ve saved any changes you want before closing your browser tab.
- Sometimes saves aren’t always successful and you’ll see error warnings, but usually they’ll clear themselves up on subsequent auto saves.
- If necessary, you can visit your GitHub repository for your wiki and it will indicate the interval of time since the last save.
We’re done!
- Everything after this you may be able to either handle yourself by poking around your new wiki or you can find lots of help in the two Google Groups listed above or by searching around online, in fora, or even step-by-step videos on YouTube.
- If you’ve done this as part of the IndieWeb or A Domain of One’s Own, be sure to log yourself into the IndieWeb wiki and add yourself to the examples on their TiddlyWiki page where you might also find some other useful ideas.
- If you like, you can delve deeper into GitHub and use one of their apps or command line functionality to regularly back up your website to your desktop, or you can make branches of your site on your local computer and then push those changes up to the cloud.
- If you find problems or encounter issues, feel free to drop me a line or catch me or others in the IndieWeb chat.