There you go: release candidate 1 for the #drupal #indieweb module. Time for a little party! https://www.drupal.org/project/indieweb/releases/8.x-1.0-rc1
Category: IndieWeb
👓 I decided to work on my website theme for a bit. | David Shanske
I decided to work on my website theme for a bit. In order to support it, today I shipped(with a minor bug, sorry), a new Indieweb plugin that adds the ability to add the rel-me links inside the h-card widget instead of by themselves. I’m now using it. In my theme, I added support for a dedicated h-card page. I’ll be turning it on on my site likely in future as I experiment with moving my feed off of my main page.
Reply to Vika on permashort citations
https://indieweb.org/permashortcitation
👓 Seven ways to think like the web | Jon Udell
Update: For a simpler formulation of the ideas in this essay, see Doug Belshaw’s Working openly on the web: a manifesto. Back in 2000, the patterns, principles, and best practices for building web information systems were mostly anecdotal and folkloric. Roy Fielding’s dissertation on the web’s...
🔖 SLOWLY
SLOWLY lets you meet pen friends from your smartphone! Match with someone that shares your passion, write a letter and collect stamps from around the world. Speak your mind – one letter at a time!
SLOWLY is not your typical networking or dating app - we’re bringing the traditional pen friend experience to your smartphone.
The app is created for those who yearns for meaningful conversations with people in the era of instant messaging. We hope to connect people around the world at a slower but better pace – one letter at a time.
Meet a new pen friend, seal your letter & place a stamp - start connecting with the world on SLOWLY!
Features:
- Mailing time depends on where you & your pen friend live.
- A nickname & an avatar is all you need. Speak your mind & connect freely to the world.
- Matches based on common interests & languages.
- Collect & unlock hidden stamps!
Reply to What is Emoji ID? by Doug Belshaw
It also sounds very much like Kevin Marks’ Distributed Verification scheme using the rel=”me” attribute on web pages for which he built a chrome browser extension to actually implement it. Kevin also recently reported that Mastodon now actually supports this verification scheme in one of their most recent updates which should be used by instances that are regularly updating. The benefit is that this scheme already exists, is relatively well supported, there are parsers available for it, and it’s actually working on the open web. It’s also truly distributed in that it doesn’t rely on any central provisioning authorities that require ongoing maintenance or which could provide a monopoly on such a service.
👓 What is Emoji ID? | MoodleNet project
Some more details about a proposed solution for MoodleNet that could solve some problems around decentralised identity.
❤️ IndieWeb Days of Christmas | Eddie Hinkle
Every day in December, the IndieWeb is trying to collectively ship an update. Today, I created a stub for the 2019 Austin IWC page, and Aaron Parecki published it live on the server! So that's day 2! It's missing the schedule and sponsors because I didn't have that info, but it'll be added soon enough
👓 IFTTT, WordPress, and XML-RPC | ZATZLabs
I have another pro-bono non-profit site I support, where I set up an automatic feed for news items. When an item is given a particular tag in Pocket, it’s picked up by IFTTT and then posted as a post on the destination WordPress site, which becomes a short summary for the site’s front page. You ...
Using Inoreader as an IndieWeb feed reader
Toward this end I thought I’d double down on my use of Inoreader in my daily web consumption workflows. I wanted to make it easier to use my feed reader to post all these types of posts to my website which will still handle the notifications. In some sense, instead of relying on a feed reader supporting Micropub, I’ll use other (older) methods for making the relevant posts. As I see it, there are two potential possibilities using Inoreader:
(1) using a service like IFTTT (free) or Zapier (paid) to take the post intents and send them to my WordPress site, or
(2) using the custom posting interface in Inoreader in conjunction with post editor URL schemes with the Post Kinds plugin to create the posts. Using WordPress’ built-in Post This bookmarklet schemes could also be used to make these posts, but Post Kinds plugin offers a lot more metadata and flexibility.
If This Then That (IFTTT)
Below is a brief outline of some of the IFTTT recipes I’ve used to take data from posts I interact with in Inoreader and post them to my own website.
Likes
IFTTT has an explicit like functionality with a one click like button. There is an IFTTT recipe which allows taking this datum and adding it directly as a WordPress post with lots of rich data. The “then that” portion of IFTTT using WordPress allows some reasonable functionality for porting over data.
Favorites
IFTTT also has explicit favorite functionality using a one click starred article button. There is an IFTTT recipe which allows adding this directly as a WordPress post.
Since the “starred” article isn’t defined specifically in Inoreader as a “favorite”, one could alternately use it to create “read” or “bookmark” posts on their WordPress websites. I’m tempted to try this for read posts as I probably wouldn’t often use it to create favorite posts on my own website. Ultimately one at least wants an easy-to-remember 1 to 1 mapping of pieces of functionality in Inoreader to their own website, so whatever I decide I’ll likely stick to it.
Bookmarks
While there is no specific functionality for creating bookmarks in Inoreader (though starred articles could be used this way as previously mentioned), there is a “saved webpage” functionality that could be used here in addition to an IFTTT recipe to port over the data to WordPress.
Reads
While Inoreader has a common feed reader read/unread functionality, it is often not used tacitly and this is a means of reducing friction within the application. Not really wanting to muddle the meaning of the “starred” article to do it, I’ve opted to adding an explicit “read” tag on posts I’ve read.
IFTTT does have a “New tagged article” recipe that will allow me to take articles in Inoreader with my “read” tag and post them to my website. It’s pretty simple and easy.
Replies
For dealing with replies, there is an odd quirk within Inoreader. Confoundingly the feed reader has two similar, yet still very different commenting functionalities. One is explicitly named “comment”, but sadly there isn’t a related IFTTT trigger nor an RSS feed to take advantage of the data one puts into the comment functionality. Fortunately there is a separate “broadcast” functionality. There is an IFTTT recipe for “new broadcasted article” that will allow one to take the reply/comment and post it to one’s WordPress website.
Follows
Like many of the above there is a specific IFTTT recipe that will allow one to add subscriptions directly to WordPress as posts, so that any new subscriptions (or follows) within the Inoreader interface can create follow posts! I doubt many people may use this recipe, but it’s awesome that it exists. Currently anything added to my blogrolls (aka Following Page) gets ported over to Inoreader via OPML subscription, so I’m curious if them being added that way will create these follow posts? And if so, is there a good date/time stamp for these? I still have to do some experimenting to see exactly how this is going to work.
RSS feed-based functionality
In addition to the IFTTT recipe functionality described above, one could also use IFTTT RSS functionality to pipe RSS feeds which Inoreader provides (especially via tags) into a WordPress website. I don’t personally use this sort of set up, but thought I’d at least mention it in passing so that anyone who might like to create other post types to their website could.
Custom posting in Inoreader with Post Kinds Plugin
If using a third-party service like IFTTT isn’t your cup of tea, Inoreader also allows custom sharing options. (There are also many pre-built ones for Facebook, Twitter, etc. and they’re also re-orderable as well.) I thus used WordPress’ post editor URL schemes to send the data I’d like to have from the original post to my own website. Inoreader actually has suggestions in their UI for how to effectuate this generically on WordPress. While this is nice, I’m a major user of the Post Kinds Plugin which allows me a lot more flexibility to post likes, bookmarks, favorites, reads, replies, etc. with the appropriate microformats and much richer metadata. Post Kinds has some additional URL structures which I’ve used in addition to the standard WordPress ones to take advantage of this. This has allowed me to create custom buttons for reads, bookmarks, replies, likes, and listens. With social sharing functionality in Inoreader enabled, each article in Inoreader has a sharing functionality in the bottom right corner that has a configuration option which brings up the following interface:
Once made, these custom button icons appear at the bottom of every post in Inoreader, so, for example, if I want to reply to a post I’ve just read, I can click on the reply button which will open a new browser window for a new post on my website. The Post Kinds plugin on my site automatically pulls in the URL of the original post, parses that page and–where available–pulls in the title, synopsis, post date/time, the author, author URL, author photo, and a featured photo as well as automatically setting the specific post kind and post format. A lot of this data helps to create a useful reply context on my website. I can then type in my reply to the post and add any other categories, tags, or data I’d like in my admin interface. Finally I publish the post which sends notifications to the original post I read (via Webmention).
Conclusion and future
With either of the above set ups, there are a few quick and easy clicks to create my posts and I’m done. Could it be simpler? Yes, but it likely won’t be much more until I’ve got a fully functional Microsub server and reader up and working.
Of course, I also love Inoreader and its huge variety of features and great usability. While I’m patiently awaiting having my own WordPress Microsub server, I certainly wouldn’t mind it if Inoreader decided to add some IndieWeb functionality itself. Then perhaps I wouldn’t need to make the switch in the near future.
What would this look like? It could include the ability to allow me to log into Inoreader using my own website using IndieAuth protocol. It could also add Micropub functionality to allow me to post all these things directly and explicitly to my website in an easier manner. And finally, if they really wanted to go even further, they could make themselves a Microsub server that enables me to use any one of several Microsub clients to read content and post to my own website. And of course the benefit to Inoreader is that if they support these open internet specifications, then their application not only works with WordPress sites with the few appropriate plugins, but Inoreader will also work with a huge variety of other content management systems that support these specs as well.
Whether or not Inoreader supports these protocols, there is a coming wave of new social feed readers that will begin to close many of these functional gaps that made RSS difficult. I know things will slowly, but eventually get better, simpler, and easier to use. Soon posting to one’s website and doing two way communication on the internet via truly social readers will be a reality, and one that’s likely to make it far easier to eschew the toxicity and problems of social sites like Facebook and Twitter.
👓 Where’s my Net dashboard? | Jon Udell
Yesterday Luann was reading a colleague’s blog and noticed a bug. When she clicked the Subscribe link, the browser loaded a page of what looked like computer code. She asked, quite reasonably: “What’s wrong? Who do I report this to?” That page of code is an RSS feed. It works the same way as...
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
It’s not just that the silos can shut down their feeds. It’s that we allowed ourselves to get herded into them in the first place. ❧
December 02, 2018 at 09:16PM
“Who do I report this to?”
Everyone. ❧
A brilliant ending!
December 02, 2018 at 09:17PM
Where’s my Net dashboard? ❧
Interestingly, I came to this post in my feed reader while randomly looking for something I could use as an example in something I was writing about feed readers!!!
December 02, 2018 at 09:18PM
Where’s my next dashboard? I imagine a next-gen reader that brings me the open web and my social circles in a way that helps me attend to and manage all the flow. There are apps for that, a nice example being FlowReader, which has been around since 2013. I try these things hopefully but so far none has stuck. ❧
I’m currently hoping that the next wave of social readers based on Microsub and which also support Micropub will be a major part of the answer.
December 02, 2018 at 09:20PM
👓 More control over comments | Inoreader blog
You can see that we are focused lately on the social stuff. Why? Because it was always there in front of you, but there were many obstacles that made it not very usable or friendly. Comment has improved, but one thing with them remained. Many people don’t know that comments in InoReader are actually public …
👓 Inoreader How-to: Share with friends | Inoreader blog
Reading is fun, but it can be even more rewarding with friends. We have built Inoreader with productivity in mind, but we never wanted to leave out the social element – so there are plenty of ways to share that interesting piece of content you just read with friends on social media or in Inoreader …
👓 Boost your feeds! | Inoreader blog
You can also read this post in Chinese. Our servers are dealing with millions of feeds like the ones you read every day. We have to have this smart mechanism which balances them and fetches every feed at different interval. This interval is calculated from many factors and is aimed to provide you with the …
👓 IndieWeb Google Custom Search Engine | snarfed.org
TL;DR: it exists! Try it below, or here. A search engine for the whole IndieWeb has been a hot conversation topic, on and off, for many years now. Many of us offer search on our own individual sites, and more ambiti...