Tag: Indieweb

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montages of screenshots of 8 webpages that are linked to in the article.

I’ve been using various IndieWeb ideas here for a fairly long time now, this is a great summary.

It was a movement with concrete ideas, protocols and an active community! As I read through their wiki, I understood their position and the intelligence of their proposals more and more. Such was my enthusiasm that I decided to follow their advice and adopt the protocols that made sense for my site. After finishing the tests and adjustments, I can confirm that the experience has been very positive: I have learned a lot, the UX of my website has improved a bit more, and I enjoyed the process.

I joined the IndieWeb, here’s what I learned | Andros Fenollosa

Every so often I hit a link to a tweet that twitter refuses to show me. Probably because of an ad-blocker I’ve set up and forgotten about. This might be the solution.

Bookmarklet which redirects from the current x/twitter address to its equivalent in X cancelled

bookmarklet which redirects from x/twitter to xcancel.com

I’ve seen quite a lot of painted ladies this summer, not as much as in 2019 the big year for them in Scotland.

Butterfly Conservation is asking nature lovers around the country to help count an explosion of exotic Painted Lady butterflies across the UK.

Help us count the #PaintedLadySummer! | Butterfly Conservation

I don’t use the classic editor much any more, but its disappearing might not be great for Glow Blogs. This is just about the classic block not the classic editor.

In an earlier post, I announced that the Classic block (core/freeform) would be hidden from the inserter by default starting in WordPress 7.1, accompanied by a new filter and a companion plugin.

I’ve decided to revert this change. The Classic block will continue to appear in the inserter in WordPress 7.1, exactly as it does today. There is no change in behavior for users or developers, and no migration is required.

The Classic block stays in the inserter for WordPress 7.1 – Make WordPress Core

Alway good to be reminded about function.php

I was inspired by this post to use WPCode to adjust how pages archive posts are displayed

💬 46 Extremely Useful Tricks for the WordPress Functions File | Read Write Collect

And a reminder that meta are not kind:

That’s over a 10× discount in exchange for giving your data to Meta. I can see the appeal if you don’t care about the privacy of your data and code, like, say, if you’re using Muse Spark to generate code for a throwaway project, or for something that’s open source anyway.

Daring Fireball: Meta: Introducing Muse Code and Muse Spark 1.2

Dave Winer on micro.blog. micro.blog is, i believe, one of the most amazing services on the internet.

I was able to do that with micro.blog which is the swiss army knife of interop in the web of the 2020’s.

Scripting News: Saturday, August 8, 2026

I am not teaching any more, I did a few days supply last session and might continue. I found A.I. useful for thinking about planning for stages I had not taught for years. But I used it a sounding board, and modified everything. Having pupils taught directly by A.I. might have some problems.

The deeper you look at how children learn, the clearer it becomes that this growing brand of alternative schools might remove the discomfort that often comes with learning – taking away what matters most as kids develop.

AI schools like Alpha promise efficiency, but can’t replicate the messy process that helps kids learn

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Likes Exploring WordPress, Textcasting, and Open Web Standards.

In this episode of the Fediverse Flows series, host Matthias Pfefferle sits down with pioneer technologist Dave Winer. The inventor of blogging, podcasting, RSS, and text casting. Together, they unpack the evolution of the open web, discussing why true interoperability and openness matter more than ever in an age of restrictive social media platforms.

The shownotes and transcript on this podcast are wonderful. The Takeaways, provide a great summary and worth reading after you listen.

I’ve been reading Dave Winer’s blog since I discovered rss. I’ve tried many of his more recent tools, including WordLand & FeedLand which he discusses here1.

Matthias Pfefferle is an IndieWeb & WordPress developer. I use his sempress theme & several of his plug-ins2 on this site. Recently he has been developing the ActivityPub – WordPress plugin . This allow your WordPress site to function as a federated profile. I’ve not tried that as I currently posse posts from here to mastodon via micro.blog.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of both participants.

A few interesting things

of the many in the podcast.

I don’t believe in comment sections on blogs, though. I think we could live without that, actually

Dave Winer

Like Alan I do like comments. I’ve read about bloggers who do not and mostly they are the ones with huge audiences. Apart from valuing the conversation, comments & even likes, which I fetch back via brid.gy, it does let me know that sometimes I am not writing into the void. I’d still blog for the void but it is nice to get some contact.
I’d guess bloggers like Dave dislike comments because of the way they can go on big sites.

But over time, what I hope happens is that people find that Wordland’s editor isn’t what they want. They want a different editor because you know what? There’s no one kind of editor that would please everybody.

Dave Winer

I’ve found this one of the most compelling reasons for exploring WordLand. WordLand is quite an opinionated editor. It has led me to think about all the different ways I’ve posted in the past and try out a few other options.

I think most of the younger generations are not aware of what a link is, what a URL is. They simply use one social network, and if they search for other users, they have that little search box and they search for the username. They do not understand that in a decentralized world that they may have to copy and paste URLs to find a new.

Matthias Pfefferle

This really spoke to me as a teacher. I am saddened by the way that even browsers hide paths after domains, and pupils just grab whatever google tells them. I have been surprised twice in the last few years by young kids, 9-11, doing something smart with urls or parameters.

I really enjoyed listening to this episode, lots of food for though. The ideas discussed become complicated quite quickly. A bit like the IndieWeb in general. Dave has of course been aware of WordPress but only recently started using it in earnest. Matthias comes from a different direction, the IndieWeb and Activity pub.

I’ve also now listened to another WordPress podcast with Dave: #186 – Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing – WP Tavern.

In this one Dave’s optimism and enthusiasm really shines through. I don’t know who it was told me, or maybe I read it somewhere: if you wait long enough Dave Winer is always right, Not sure that is true of anyone, but Dave Winer is always interesting & though provoking to read or listen to.

  1. Other products of Dave Winer I’ve used recently include:
    BingeWorthy 3
    Drummer
    1999.io ❤️
    ↩︎
  2. indieweb/wordpress-indieweb
    wordpress-indieweb-press-this
    WebActions for WordPress
    A Webmention plugin for WordPress
    ↩︎

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I’ve thought about joining in with the indieweb carnival a few times, but procrastinated. This months struck me, May 2025 IndieWeb Carnival: Small Web Communities – uncountable thoughts.

I’d love to hear your experiences of them, why and how you participate and what you think are the key ingredients for a successful small web community.

I didn’t start using digital technology until I was in my 30s (the 1990s). A primary school teacher, I got interested in using our Macintosh pizza boxes when I realised they could produce worksheets that took less time and looked better than Banda ones. I missed out on bulletin boards, myspace and live journal. Over the years I’ve have been involved in a few small web communities that have had great effects on me. My experience has been nearly completely positive.

AOL HyperCard forum

The first community. I discovered was the A.O.L HyperCard forum. I had borrowed a school Mac for the summer holiday and a neighbour had showed me HyperCard and l fell in love with the program.

Shortly after that I got access to the internet via AOL which included various forum. The only one I can recall was the HyperCard one. It was a great model of the best of online community behaviour. In the few years I was involved, I think that it might have included a transition to a mailing list, I can’t remember any snark. I do recall getting tons of help and advice for the start. This encouraged me to join in and help too when I could.

Joining a mature, confident community was a great place to start. A lot of the participants were old hands at online communication, the culture was not so much stated but exemplified.

ScotEduBlogs

The next small community was one I had more to do with setting up. Round about 2005, I extended my class blog where my pupils posted about their learning and started an educational blog myself. There was a small number of other teachers and educators blogging at that time. Driven by Ewan Macintosh, a community of bloggers grew up, initially round a wiki that collected links to blogs. Just before Twitter this lead to a flowering of blogging and commenting. We ran courses for teachers on blogging, meet-ups and eventually the TeachMeet idea appeared.

SEB, as I think of it, worked, while it did because it was driven by individuals, excited by using technologies in the classroom and pleased to find fellow practitioners who thought along the same lines. It was not that long ago but everyone was not online and certainly not all of the time.

I became involved in an aggregation project, which still limps along at ScotEduBlogs.org.uk, now a WordPress site, that still aggregates a dwindling number of rss feeds.

For a while this loose community was great, but it slowly dissolved into twitter & Facebook.

DS106

Ds106 has been the most exciting & creative community I’ve belonged to. Hard to describe, in part an aggregation of rss feeds in part a hashtag. DS106 is sometimes described as an open online course and sometimes a cult. It started as a Digital Storytelling course at the University of Mary Washington, but was open to anyone from anywhere to join in a very casual way. I’ve learnt more about using technology, Web 2.0 as was, from DS106 than any of the technology inservice courses I’ve been on. DS106 taught me about RSS and aggregation. I spent a lot of time making gifs too.

DS106 works because of a combination of the infectious energy and enjoyment exemplified by the leaders combined with a very open attitude to other participants having fun too.

micro.blog

I joined micro.blog at the very start. It is a marvellous, and for folk like me who used an existing blog, free service. For the first few years it was also an amazing community for me. I really enjoyed following and commenting with people there. I think some of that this community feeling might have slipped a bit for me. I’ll hopefully get more involved again in the summer.

Micro.blog itself has developed a lot both as a hosting service and what feels like the easiest way to use IndieWeb ideas. My posts now flow through micro.blog to mastodon, blue sky and threads. Micro.blog, and brid.gy pull comments and likes back. Micro.blog, for me, has become the glue to link me to some other larger communities.

The IndieWeb

As far as I can tell I discovered the indieweb in 2014. I’ve been using IndieWeb plug-ins on this site since 2015. I don’t really participate in the forums or other gathering. I’ve left a few comments here and there. I still feel I am somewhere in this community. Or the webbing at least.

As I typo my way through this post I have been breaking off reading some of the submission to this month’s Carnival. Links & blogrolls spiral off in all directions. The meaning of community expands. What an interesting place the smaller web is.

Thanks to Chris Shaw for the prompt.

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If you want to leave some of the more toxic online spaces, I’d recommend a look at micro.one. You can gain ownership, and control over your content. All without the overhead of setting up your own site1.

Blogging is at the heart of Micro.one. Short microblog posts or long-form posts. Photo blogs or podcasts. Inspired by IndieWeb principles. Your own domain name where you can own your content, then feed your posts into the Micro.one social timeline or the larger fediverse.

All for $1 a month2.

Micro.one is part of the fediverse. When you post to your blog, your posts and photos are also sent to followers on Mastodon and elsewhere.

Micro.one is a ‘subset’ of micro.blog, which is also a relaxed and charming community.

  1. Of course some of us like setting up or own sites;-) ↩︎
  2. If you are Scottish educator I’d recommend Glow Blogs £0 ↩︎
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Listened to Timetable – Episode 135: It is 2025 from @manton.

Love this, 1 minutes 42 seconds. I’ve listened twice, read the transcript. If you are

ready to bring back a little bit of the old web as a shield against a web that feels increasingly like an ad engagement machine instead of a publishing platform and community for people.

micro.one looks like a great way to control your content and

a quieter space that still feels connected to other platforms.

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Likes why post, what to post, and how to post by Tantek Çelik.

Here are a few specific reasons why you should post:

* Search everything you write. Do you post long comments or issues on GitHub? Do you post on public mailing lists? Post such things to your own site, so you can more easily search everything you’ve written on a topic. Then post a copy to those external destinations.

Lots of other ideas. Including Use a local text editor, I do sometimes. I used to use TextMate pretty exclusively, but drifted away because of post kinds, then blocks. Thinking about it a good bit more since testing WordLand, which I am enjoying.

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Likes My current Webmention setup by Nick Simson.

but I thought it may be helpful to share my configuration settings and demonstrate how I’m using both the Webmention plugin and IndieBlocks on the same site.

Helpful indeed. I wish I’d taken some notes as I went along on this site. I think I may have woven a tangled web.

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In reply to https://jan.boddez.net/notes/07e0df2cff by Jan.

That’s also why your post content wouldn’t break, if you were to disable IndieBlocks. (I.e., while the dynamically generated “theme blocks,” like the Facepile block for webmentions, would “disappear,” posts should remain intact.)

Thanks Jan, the not breaking part is really important. I am using IndieBlocks more as I transition slowly to blocks here. I also just had the thought I could look at the code view with the reply block to get a template I could use with TextMate so that those posts word be the same as ones make with IndieBlocks.

I was thinking of the Site Editor as I was using it elsewhere to make templates for different posts, but I think that is a red herring. Now I think about it templates are more about the look and layout.