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 a tweet by Matt Mullenweg (Twitter)

Can we all agree that giant per-post image headers look terrible on most blogs? It’s been a curse of default WP themes past few years, too. We need it to be easier to have posts without image headers and even without titles.

Mostly, sometime the image is the thing, it is carefully created or curated. I do dislike them more on web pages I’ve gone to to look for information.

A couple of links for the future of Glow Blogs & one that is useful now (go Gutenburg).

Block theme generator – Full Site Editing

Submit the form to create a .zip file with your own WordPress starter theme for full site editing.

Part of WordPress full site editing and themes – Full Site Editing

Full site editing is a set of new WordPress features that helps us edit all parts of our website: Block themes, template editing, site blocks, and global styles.

Go Gutenberg – Learn the New WordPress Editor

Find Your Way Around Gutenberg introduces a brand new writing experience for your WordPress-powered site.

We’ll show you how to navigate the new interface and save time while editing.

hypercard icon

Yesterday I was posting a note about a book and though of a slight visual joke. I needed a bit of css animation added and it seems a bit too much to either have it in the customiser or my child theme. It turns out there is a block for that: Blocks CSS: CSS Editor for Gutenberg Blocks.

This plugin just added a field to the more settings area for the block where you can add some css, I’ve used it on the image of the HyperCard icon about to animate it.

I am still not all in on using blocks, but this could be fun.

Bookmarked Jan’s Blog — Yes! My IndieBlocks plugin is now up on … by Jan BoddezJan Boddez (jan.boddez.net)
Yes! My IndieBlocks plugin is now up on WP.org. Current version offers a single “Context” block, and, optionally, (1) some custom post types, and (2) the ability to add microformats2 to block-based (!) themes. More is on the way. https://wordpress.org/plugins/indieblocks/ Tested it on a nearly e...

This looks as if it might be a way forward for WordPress and the indieWeb. I currently use the post kinds plugin for replying etc. I wonder what would happen if I switched approaches. Can the two plug-ins work together?

Liked Handy CSS for WP Presentation Privacy by Tom Woodward (bionicteaching.com)
The following bit of CSS takes care of the blurring of content in the WordPress Multisite admin users view.

This is really useful looking. I spend a lot of time taking screenshots of Glow Blogs. Blurring usernames while leaving useful information is a pain.

Liked WordPress+IndieWeb as the OS of the Open Social Web by Ton Zijlstra (zylstra.org)
I presented during the 2022 Netherlands WordCamp edition in Arnhem on turning all WordPress sites into fully IndieWeb enabled sites. Meaning turning well over a third of the web into the open social web. Outside all the silos. The slides are available in my self-hosted Slideshare replacement for emb...

WordPress wants to be the Operating System for the Web. That OS is missing social features, and it’s not a big leap to add them with existing web protocols. No website owner would have to be a coder, be it home cooking style or professional, to use those social features and create conversations. It would just be there.

WordPress+IndieWeb as the OS of the Open Social Web – Interdependent Thoughts

Just great. Could quote every slide.

Listened This is Not a Blog (JIBC Talk) by adminadmin from cog.dog

an invited presentation at the Justice Institute of British Columbia November 30, 2015 http://go.cogdog.it/not-a-blog Abstract While the origin of WordPress was of a platform for the narrative journaling type of online publishing people associate with the word “blog”, as of 2015 the platform now powers more than 25% of all websites. As an extensible web-optimized […]

Listened to & enjoyed Alan’s 2015 talk. He compares WordPress and its approachability, flexibility and extendability with HyperCard. As always interesting & provocative (in the best way). Also HyperCard!

Listened How Accessible Is WordPress? from masterwp.com
In many instances, WordPress prioritizes accessibility in ways that other CMS’s and open source projects do not. But that doesn’t mean we do things perfectly. In this full-length episode of Press the Issue, Allie Nimmons explores WordPress accessibility from as many angles as she can in order to answer the question – how accessible is WordPress?

WE have been adding some accessibility features to Glow Blogs so I was interested to listen to this podcast. It went further than just web accessibility to discuss accessibility in the WordPress project as a whole, touching on progress & ‘politics’. Takeaways: the visitor experience with straightforward WordPress and standard themes is good. The backend, working with the new blocks editor, has some way to go.