Category: Social Stream

I suspect that @chrismessina could do it quickly, but for those who’d like to leave Twitter for #WordPress with similar functionality (but greater flexibility and independence), I recorded a 2 hour video for an #IndieWeb set up/walk through with some high level discussion a few months back. If you can do the 5 minute install, hopefully most of the rest is downhill with some basic plugin installation and minor configuration. The end of the walk through includes a live demonstration of a conversation between a WordPress site on one domain and a WithKnown site running on another domain.

tl;dr for the video:

• WordPress base install
• IndieWeb Plugin (gives you quick access to most of the plugins below)
• The SemPress Theme or Independent Publisher Theme
• Webmention and Semantic Linkbacks plugins (for site to site communication and notification)
• IndieAuth plugin (for authenticating with Micropub, Microsub, and other related tools)
• Micropub plugin (for a variety of clients you can use to publish to your site)
• Syndication Links plugin (to indicate which sites, like Twitter, that you syndicate your content to to stay in touch with those left behind)
• WebSub plugin (to ping feed readers for real-time communication)
• Brid.gy for WordPress plugin (to pull in backfed comments from other social silos)
• Post Kinds plugin (for better delineating articles, status updates (notes), replies, favorites, likes, etc. with appropriate microformats markup)
• Aperture Plugin (allows you to sign into a variety of Microsub readers which also act as your stream and allow you to reply to others directly from your reading interface. This part is still a bit experimental, but the kinks are being worked out presently for a richer experience.)

Additional pieces are discussed on my IndieWeb Research Page (focusing mostly on WordPress), in addition to IWC getting started on WordPress wiki page. If you need help, hop into the IndieWeb WordPress chat.

For those watching this carefully, you’ll notice that I’ve replied to David Shanske’s post on his website using my own website and sent him a webmention which will allow him to display my reply (if he chooses). I’ve also automatically syndicated my response to the copy of his reply on Twitter which includes others who are following the conversation there. Both he and I have full copies of the conversation on our own site and originated our responses from our own websites. If you like, retweet, or comment on the copy of this post on Twitter, through the magic of Brid.gy and the Webmention spec, it will come back to the comment section on my original post (after moderation).

Hooray for web standards! And hooray for everyone in the IndieWeb who are helping to make this type of social interaction easier and simpler with every passing day.