Improving the WordPress documentation on the IndieWeb Wiki

I had started it in November 2018, but today I spent a several hours to do some additional documentation and finally migrate the changes and updates to the WordPress pages on the IndieWeb wiki.

The biggest set of changes is for the Getting Started on WordPress page which is hopefully simpler and clearer for the IndieWeb beginner. It was previously arranged around the somewhat jargon-y idea of IndieMark which is a much more developer-centric presentation and much more useful for developers building an IndieWeb site from scratch. This was fine for an earlier generation of IndieWeb adopter.

Now that many of the WordPress plugins have aggregated and become much more mature and robust, many thought we needed a simplified way of approaching things for people who can at least manage a WordPress install in terms of installing and updating themes and plugins. This update to the getting started page is meant to reflect this so that those with either a new site or converting a pre-existing site can get up and going as quickly as possible. As a result this page is very opinionated toward the simplest paths available for the broadest number of people. Naturally once one has a few of the bigger building blocks working and wants to delve in further, there are other pieces of the wiki that can help, and the getting started page has links to many of these.

Because WordPress gives people so much functionality out of the box, the getting started page is now focused on adding bigger building blocks of IndieWeb functionality like IndieAuth, Webmention, Micropub, WebSub, and Microsub.

Many of the pieces of the older page have been updated and migrated to the Advanced WordPress Set Up page or to other relevant pages within the broader WordPress heirarchy.

Special thanks to Michael Beckwith, Greg McVerry, and many others in the IndieWeb chat for their work and contributions toward this effort as well!

We all look forward to everyone’s thoughts, comments, and further contributions to the wiki as the suite of IndieWeb-related WordPress plugins and tools continue to improve and evolve.