Tag: IndieWeb

IndieWeb reading via Aperture, Monocole, and Indigenous

Last weekend, I configured my website to use Aperture as a micro sub endpoint with Indigenous and Monocle as my microsub readers. I had some initial challenges with the setup but, with the help of Aaron Parecki and Eddie Hinkle, I got it working yesterday. Aaron developed Aperture and Monocle and Eddie developed Indigenous.

Aperture is a Microsub server. Microsub is a spec that provides a standardized way for reader apps to interact with feeds. By splitting feed parsing and displaying posts into separate parts, a reader app can focus on presenting posts to the user instead of also having to parse feeds. A Microsub server manages the list of people you're following and collects their posts, and a Micropub app shows the posts to the user by fetching them from the server.

I spent some time using both apps to respond in various ways to blog post from my the limited number of feeds in the channel I created. The experience was both more and less than I expected.

More

Being able to respond to post right in the reader is great. With this setup, my feed reader workflow is simplified.

The current response workflow is:

  • open the post in a browser window
  • copy opening a new browser window for my website
  • create a new post
  • choose a post response kind
  • type a response
  • click publish

Replying from Monocle and Indigenous is as simple as clicking the button for the response kind -- reply, repost, like. The last two don't even require any typing. My responses appear as posts on my blog. I can immediately see how this is useful. I wish Feedbin and Reeder supported microsub.

Less

Each time I responded to a feed item via Indigenous or Monocle, my response created a blog post on my website. However, the appearance of these blog post is not to my liking. Reposts looked the worse. I had expected that responses to photo post might include an image embed. I was not able to select the section of the blog post I wanted to respond to. The responses were syndicated out to Twitter and appeared even less appealing.

I know my expectations are unrealistic considering that the Aperture, Monocole and Indigenous projects are early experiments with microsub by two developers using their spare time. I just can't get past how these responses appear on my website. I can't see myself using these tools in their current state. If I had the knowledge or time I would consider building my own tools but ... I don't. The technology shows great promise and I will revisit this experiment later.

The closest thing in my mind to this experience is the WordPress.com Reader. I can follow my favourites in the Reader and respond directly to those posts with comments or like without leaving Reader. The only thing lacking is the ability to create a corresponding blog post for that response and webmentions. Imagine if JetPack was updated to support both?

Thoughts on micro.blog

Hi @manton,

One of my frustrations with micro.blog is the lack of post summary cards. Most of my posts contain my photography none of which can be found on micro.blog. All the posts from my self-hosted WordPress website appear as title + link.

It would be great if micro.blog could pull in the featured image from my posts along with the excerpt and some way of tagging post so that they can appear in the discover photos stream.

I’ve been with micro.blog since launch. But my content is mostly ignored on micro.blog. Perhaps my content sucks. But I think it’s mostly because it’s very hard for “birds of a feather” to be found on micro.blog. The Discover page is utterly useless to me. It’s basically random posts with no filter. Something more like Automattic’s Reader would improve the experience for me. I would be able to find and follow much easier.

Yeah, I’m tooting my own horn a little bit. I want to show off my photography. I am quite shallow and enjoy likes. One of my previous blog posts featured images like the one in this blog posts. The image was syndicated to Instagram and Twitter and of course, showed up in the WordPress.com Reader. The post received commentary from Instagram (via Brid.gy), WordPress.com viewers, and one from micro.blog. But comments from micro.blog viewers are rare. I’m invisible.

But I want the content to originate on my website. I want to post to micro.blog and a way to have the comments from there appear back on my website. I’m not sure of this but I don’t think manually posting a link to micro.blog allows for this.

It would be great if you could work on these things. It would help make me feel more at home on micro.blog. Currently, it feels like a silo for web developers. Where are the photography geeks and how do I find them? Where are the Formula 1 racing fans and how do I find them?

@klandwehr asked @Burk to create F1 emoji’s to add to the discover list. That helps, but how would a new micro.blog subscriber know to as Burk to do this? How would they find people with similar interests? My 51-year-old eyes can barely see the emoji. Where are the text hashtags?

Perhaps Ben Weirdmuller has a point. In this post, Ben writes of leaving the silos behind completely.

I think it might be more effective to move all the value away: publish on your own site, and use independent readers like Woodwind or Newsblur to consume content. Forget using social networks as the conduit. Let’s go full indie.

I control my blog entirely — from the OS layer to the application layer. Manton, you control micro.blog. It’s your platform.

I doubt few on micro.blog will see this post but just in case, I want to be clear. I am not attacking micro.blog. I want it to succeed. I am just pointing out what I think are some rough edges that need work. I have no interesting in working around those rough edges. I have no interest in moving my WordPress website to the micro.blog platform.

Micro.blog and IndieWeb

Wrapping My Head Around Micro.blog and IndieWeb by Jason Sadler (sadlerjw.com)

You can pay $5 a month to get them to host your microblog, but by adopting some web standards like RSS and webmentions, you can host your microblog on your own site. If you’re on WordPress you can publish to your site using the Microblog iOS and Mac apps. Replies are a bit of a bugbear, though: they’re handled entirely within Micro.blog if initiated using the app’s Reply functionality, or threaded in properly if you post from your own site with the proper webmention URL.

As a security architect I often have to create policies, procedures, and guidelines. It can be a challenge to get everything right.

Based on what is written in the micro.blog community guidelines, from my perspective the hosted blogs are not really independent.

E.g.

Blog content hosted by Micro.blog will be subject to the community guidelines below.

The following will not be tolerated in @-replies or in posts (including photos) that appear on Micro.blog.

However, I think the community has perceived that they have 100% control over content post on their hosted micro.blog domain. A consequences of violating the guidelines:

Posting to Micro.blog-hosted sites will be temporarily or permanently disabled.

Based on my understanding of these guidelines, micro.blog is a moderated silo. It's no different from WordPress.com or Tumblr. I don't know whether micro.blog will be a successful alternative to people fleeing Twitter, Facebook, et al. But I feel I've seen this movie before.

My self-hosted WordPress website has been around since 2005. Last year, I started using the IndieWeb plugins. Lot's growing pains. Lots of manual effort in some places. I have since backed off from trying to work around the challenges. I felt like one of those people who spends more time tweaking the engine of the car than actually driving it.

But it's my home stead. I'm not in publishing or marketing but I don't want to build my presence on the web on rental property.

I apologize if this sounds critical but I’ve operated my own domain for 13 years and I have 100% editorial control over my content. Perhaps this is something for Manton to discuss with the community to clarify the intent of the guidelines and endure that community expectations and understanding of those guidelines are aligned.