syndication | Chris Aldrich

Update to the Syndication Links plugin for WordPress for Custom Endpoints

David Shanske has recently updated the Syndication Links plugin for WordPress that now allows users to add custom syndication endpoints to their websites so they can actually syndicate their content to external sites.

In particular, this now includes syndication endpoints like IndieWeb News and indieweb.xyz subs. Configuring the plugin with a syndication name, UID, and the appropriate URL will create additional endpoint checkboxes in the “Syndicate To” metabox. (The UID is simply a unique identifier that the plugin uses in conjunction with Micropub clients, and the URL is the appropriate full URL to the appropriate syndication target.)

If one wishes to test syndication out, I might suggest using the test endpoint provided by indieweb.xyz. The appropriate entries in the custom provider section at /wp-admin/admin.php?page=syndication_links would be:

Name: xyz hottubs
UID: xyz-hottubs
URL: https://indieweb.xyz/en/hottubs/

Settings for configuring custom syndication endpoints in the Syndication Links plugin

For convenience, the settings page also allows the user to disable (via checkbox) endpoints they don’t use or don’t want to appear in their administrative meta boxes.

An example of the meta box that appears in the administrative interface when creating new posts. To syndicate your content to the desired sites using Webmention, just click the appropriate boxes.

Use with Micropub Clients

The update to the Syndication Links plugin also means that Micropub clients with appropriate support (like Quill, for example) will know about which syndication endpoints your site supports and will be able to include them in its checkbox list for auto-syndicating via Micropub.

Example Quill micropub interface with syndication endpoints configured within Syndication Links plugin

Naturally, people using these methods should be very careful about how they’re using them so that they aren’t abusing or spamming these channels. Those abusing these channels will certainly find their sites blocked from posting. Keep in mind that some of the syndication endpoints shown here are examples and that other endpoints exist or can be created on sites like indieweb.xyz.

Bridgy for WordPress

I’ll also note in passing that the syndication functionality to Twitter, Flickr, and GitHub that the Bridgy for WordPress Plugin provides is now also available within the Syndication Links plugin, so those who already have Brid.gy set up with their websites can easily and safely deactivate and uninstall that plugin. Doing this will prevent the duplication of meta boxes in one’s admin UI. Given the migration of some of its functionality, it is certainly possible in the future that this plugin may be deprecated or the Brid.gy set up portion of its functionality may be merged into another plugin like the IndieWeb plugin.

👤 Chris McLeod, Joe Jennett, and Khürt Williams may appreciate this the most for use with indieweb.xyz. It may be a minute too late for Brad Enslen however.

Replied to Joe’s Syndicated Links Considered ‘Spam’ By Some Mastodon Instance by Kicks Condor (kickscondor.com)

I actually kind of understand this—only because I think Mastodon is at odds with the Indieweb.

I don’t think that what Joe is seeing is an anti-IndieWeb thing. It is something we’ve seen before from a handful of instances and will assuredly see again.

The other example of this behavior I’ve seen was when Greg McVerry, a college professor and member of the IndieWeb community, tried to join a Mastodon instance that was specific to researchers and professors in higher education. Sadly he found out, like Joe, that syndicating content from other locations was not acceptable there. As I recall, they also required an automatic content warning on almost everything posted to that particular instance which seemed an additional travesty to me. I think he ultimately joined mastodon.social and found he didn’t have any similar issues there and anyone who wanted to follow him from any other instances still could. I’m sure he can provide some additional details and may have posted about it sometime in the summer of 2018 when it happened.

The tough part is that each instance, though federated among many others, can have its own terms of service and set up. Some instances can be and certainly are run by their own tyrannical administrators, and I suppose that it’s their right since they’re paying for the server and the overhead. The solution is to do some research into some instances and find one that isn’t going to ban you for what would otherwise seem like average use to most. I’ve found mastodon.social to be relatively simple in its terms and its massive size also tends to cover up a lot of edge cases, so you’re unlikely to run into the same problems there. (It is also run by the creator of Mastodon, who has generally been IndieWeb friendly.)

The issue Joe has run into also points out a flaw of the overall Fediverse in that just like each real-world country can have its own laws and there is a broader general international law, the international laws aren’t as well codified or respected by each individual country. When you’re operating in someone else’s country, you’re bound to follow their local laws and even customs. Fortunately if you don’t like them there are lots of other places to live. And this is one of the bigger, mostly unseen, benefits of the IndieWeb: if you have your own website, you can create your own rules/laws and do as you please without necessarily relying as heavily on the rules of others.

I’ll note that some in the IndieWeb (Aaron Parecki, Ryan Barrett, Mathias Pfefferle, Jacky Alcine, et al.) have been playing around with or thinking about adding the ActivityPub protocols so that their own websites act as stand-alone members of the Fediverse. Since I know Joe has recently moved to WordPress, I’ll mention that there are two separate projects to help WordPress sites federate:
* ActivityPub plugin for WordPress from Mathias Pfefferle
* Bridgy Fed from Ryan Barrett

Naturally neither of these (yet) supports all of the protocols so some functionality one would find on Mastodon won’t necessarily work, but I suspect that over time that they eventually will. It’s been a while since I tried out BridgyFed, but I’ve had the ActivityPub plugin set up for a bit and have noticed a lot of recent work by Mathias Pfefferle to use it for himself. I still have to tweak around with some of my settings, but so far it provides some relatively useful results. The best part is that I don’t need to syndicate content to Mastodon, but users there can subscribe to me at @chrisaldrich, for example, instead of @chrisaldrich. The results and functionality aren’t perfect yet, but with some work we’ll get there I think.

Good luck finding (or creating) an instance that works for you!

Replied to Feed page by

Andy Bell (Andy Bell)

Let’s make 2019 the year of personal sites and the IndieWeb.

Thanks for the awesome feed page and congratulations on launching into the IndieWeb in 2019!

If it helps, Max Böck recently wrote some excellent articles (with code examples) on using Eleventy to easily syndicate content to Twitter as well as to add Webmention functionality. If you haven’t seen them yet, they may help you along your journey a bit more quickly. Both can be found at: https://indieweb.org/Eleventy

👓 Static Indieweb pt1: Syndicating Content | Max Böck

Read Static Indieweb pt1: Syndicating Content by Max Böck (Max Böck - Frontend Web Developer)

How to automatically publish content from a static site on Twitter, using Eleventy and Netlify's lambda functions.

A nice little article with some excellent code examples for those who want to follow along.

Reply to Greg McVerry about academic samizdat pre-print server

Replied to a post by

Greg McVerry (quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com)

Then we also make a 12/31/2019 to have published first issue of a academic samizdat POSSE Journal about blogging research from any discipline. I wanna bring back some lightning talks like BlogCon 2003-2006., but first we do the journal.

I like that idea. Perhaps between the models for news.IndieWeb.org and Kicks Condor’s indiweb.xyz, we could create a syndicatable (pre-print) academic journal that allows sorting by top level academic disciplines.

I don’t recall though, are either of them open source, or do we need to re-build by hand?

👓 Syndication Links 4.0.0 Released | David Shanske

Read Syndication Links 4.0.0 Released by

David Shanske (David Shanske)

Today, from my hotel room in Berlin, Germany, where I am preparing to attend Indiewebcamp Berlin, my first European Indiewebcamp, I released Syndication Links 4.0.0. The major version number change is because in this version, Syndication Links takes on a new role. As promised previously, I’ve buil...

Yet another update from the unstoppable David Shanske! I can’t wait to try this out.

👓 Some OwnYourSwarm Updates | Aaron Parecki

Read Some OwnYourSwarm Updates by

Aaron Parecki (Aaron Parecki)

Today I launched some updates to OwnYourSwarm, the service that sends your Swarm checkins to your own website. It does this by watching your Swarm account and sending checkins to your site via Micropub.

Private Posts
I made two changes to how OwnYourSwarm can handle private posts. Private posts ar...

This is awesome Aaron! Thanks for continuing to push the boundaries.

👓 Facebook is deleting timeline posts that users cross-published from Twitter | The Verge

Read Twitter posts on Facebook temporarily disappeared by Nick Statt (The Verge)

Oops

👓 Distributor publicly released with Gutenberg support and Enterprise service offering | 10up

Read Distributor publicly released with Gutenberg support and Enterprise service offering by

Jake Goldman (10up)

We are proud to announce that Distributor has exited beta and is now openly available. Distributor is a free WordPress plugin that makes it easy to syndicate and reuse content across your websites—whether in a single multisite network or across the web with the REST API. With Distributor, content creators can "push" or "pull" content [...]

👓 Just do it — by hand | Jeremy Cherfas

Read Just do it -- by hand by Jeremy Cherfas (Jeremy Cherfas)

So when I do syndicate out to a silo, I do it by hand. Sure it would be tedious if I wanted to do that for every little thing, but I don't. I share the things I want to share, in the way I want to share them.

I’ve noticed that I typically syndicate almost everything manually despite the fact that I’ve got the ability to do it automatically. Doing it manually actually gives me a greater feeling of ownership somehow.

I do miss the ability to have public comments coming back however…

👓 Instagram issues | NextScripts

Read Instagram issues by NextScripts.com (NextScripts)

Instagram made some very big changes to authentication process. About 70% of our users are affected by them. Before the changes the process was quite simple: Sometimes Instagram decided that login from SNAP is “unusual” and asked for confirmation. You just had to open Instagram on your phone and...

👓 Alternative Facebook API Library | NextScripts

Read Alternative Facebook API Library (NextScripts)

NextScripts Autoposting API for Facebook allows you to share your texts, images and links to Facebook Profiles, Pages and Groups. New API library from NextScripts can automatically share texts, images and links to Facebook.