Listened to The poster’s guide to the new internet – The Vergecast | Podcast on Spotify

In episode three of our connectivity mini series, The Verge’s David Pierce explores the idea of and , two syndication models for posting on the internet that don’t rely on a single platform.

Along with the companion article POSSE: a better way to post on social networks – The Verge this was a mostly straightforward account of POSSE.

The highlight for me was listening to Manton explaining his philosophy in a very clear way. Manton always makes perfect sense to me.

One of the original premises was just, could we rebuild a Twitter-like user experience, but based on blogs?

The timeline in micro.blog is just post from lots of feeds, lots of RSS feeds, whether they’re hosted on micro.blog, or they’re hosted somewhere else.

How do we merge those together so you don’t just have a few tabs open with your favourite websites and you’re typing in the domain name, it’s more of a newsfeed timeline experience, and that’s what people want.

But if the foundation of that, if the protocols can be open, it allows us to build so many interesting apps, so many different types of experiences.

It’ll just be way better.

What is particularly delightful to me is the way Manton starts with RSS feeds. micro.blog is almost the opposite of most other networks as it doesn’t try to lock you in an any way. I’ve been using the service since the beginning, completely free of charge as I have my own blog here.

Manton is also clear on the difficulty of getting more people away from the silos and on to their own domain and using more open services.

 

The comments by Matt Mullenweg, any positive move towards IndieWeb ideas from WordPress will have a huge effect.

I was quite frustrated in looking for an RSS feed for the The Vergecast. Ironic given the subject of this episode. I finlly found it on their pod.link page. I do wish RSS feed links were not becoming harder to find.

Bookmarked Building a Block-Based Microblog by Jan Boddez.

IndieBlocks, which I am using to post this, is an alternative to the Post Kinds plugin that works with the block editor instead of classic.

I am still using mostly using classic on this blog as it seems the right tool for the job. But WordPress’s future seems to be blocks. I like the ui for bookmarks etc in IndieBlogs and guess I can ignore most of the blocks editor features.

I am a bit conflicted as to how switching approaches would work. For example Post Kinds adds an extra taxonomy for different kinds of post, IndieBlocks uses custom post types. I’ve got 7 years of post kinds posts here. I’ve also some styles based on the kinds.

I lean towards taxonomies over custom posts. This probably due to an over enthusiastic use of custom post kinds a few years back.

I think I prefer the incorporation of the link, author & quote into the main entry in IndieBlocks.

Good to have choices I guess 😉

So you love Facebook and you hate Facebook, you love Twitter and you hate Twitter. You love… You get the idea! If you’re anything like me you have at times questioned how much time you’ve spent trawling through social media. You may even be worried about how much data they’ve been gathering about you, or perhaps thinking about whether or not we’re even able to escape from it all. On the podcast today we’ve got Alex Kirk, and he certainly has been thinking about all of this. So much so in fact that he’s built a social network plugin for WordPress. Listen to the podcast to find out all about it…

Really interesting podcast discussing the Friends WordPress plugin with its author Alex Kirk. A lot of interesting features, including a built in RSS reader and a WordPress to WordPress social network.

I had a couple of thoughts, I wonder if this would work on a WordPress multi-site like Glow Blogs?

I also wondered if importing all these posts you were reading would bloat your own blog? This was answered in the podcast, you can set the number of posts kept or the length of time to keep them.

Alex did mention the IndieWeb, so I am wondering if there is much integration, with webmentions or bookmarking for example.

Obviously to use the social part you need friends using the plugin, but I think I’ll install it somewhere to see how it works as an RSS reader when i have a mo.

 

Replied to Why I Haven’t Embraced WordPress Blocks by David ShanskeDavid Shanske (david.shanske.com)
As someone who maintains a very specific set of WordPress plugins, over the last few years, I’ve been asked why I have not updated them to the block editor. The simplest reason is I don’t use the block editor, and I write the plugins for me, not for a commercial purpose, so while I keep saying I...

But it adds the microformats for different types of Indieweb posts outside of the traditional content block using WordPress filters. That is something I never particularly liked, and wouldn’t mind replacing with something integrated into content.

I’ve been using Post Kinds and other indie web plugins on this blog for a good few year now. Very grateful for the work in developing and maintaining them. I don’t yet use the Block editor very often on this blog either.

Adding the microformats, I presume links & quotes, to the main contents of the post would be great. I am guessing it would future proof the content of the classic editor goes away.

Liked Re-launched instagram-atom by Ryan BarrettRyan Barrett (snarfed.org)
Re-launched instagram-atom, my side project that lets you read your Instagram feed in any feed reader, with new browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Feel free to try it out, feedback is welcome!

I’ve not posted to Instagram for over a year. I don’t miss the adverts or bonkers timeline. I do miss photos from family & folks I don’t see elsewhere online. This sorts that out via my RSS reader.

Liked Making the IndieWeb more approachable by Tracy DurnellTracy Durnell (tracydurnell.com)
Replied to IndieWebCamp Popup: How to Make the IndieWeb More Approachable (events.indieweb.org) The IndieWeb community welcomes anyone who is interested in expressing themselves on a personal website, regardless of technical experience. In this meetup, we will be asking the question “how can we ma...

The IndieWeb is build on the kindness and enthusiasm of many clever folk doing tricky things. Simple it is not. I imagine this chimes with none technical or time poor folk. It does with me. There is a mention of micro.blog as the smoothest path to indieWeb happiness.

Replied to Brian @brianb@fosstodon.org (Fosstodon)
Here's what I want: A keystroke to open a window to a blank WordPress editor. Not the block, nothing fancy. A white box. Maybe a select or check for categories and tags. That's all.

If you are happy using a few #IndieWeb plugins and setting up indieauth & micropub you could use quill:
https://quill.p3k.io