Notes

If your WordPress install and Mastodon server run on the same server, wp_http_validate_url() and thereby Share on Mastodon’s settings page may reject your instance URL. (WordPress, somehow, rejects “local” URLs.) The API calls themselves will probably work just fine, though. (wp_remote-post() and its cousins normally do not explicitly “validate” URLs.) This behavior’s “fixed” by explicitly allowing these URLs by means of the http_request_host_is_external filter. https://github.com/janboddez/share-on-mastodon/issues/46#issuecomment-1408315635

This is an important distinction to make. (Just FYI: ActivityPub does come with a client-to-server API, which Mastodon chose to ignore.)

ActivityPub is a mostly server-to-server API that both Micro.blog and Mastodon support. […] Likewise, [you] can follow Mastodon accounts and reply to posts without needing an actual Mastodon account yourself.

For client apps like Ivory, Mastodon has its own API. It’s a completely different thing than ActivityPub, closer to the Twitter API. It’s not an open standard and Micro.blog does not support it.

The following also holds, at least in part, for Micropub—yet another API, yay!—clients. Part of the confusion can be overcome by adding support for the spec’s “config queries” (where apps are able to detect which features a server supports).

If Micro.blog worked with Ivory, what would the UI look like when the features didn’t exactly match up? It would be confusing.

Just published a new version of Share on Mastodon, and then, while I was at it, my laravel-indieauth package to Packagist. I’d never published anything on Packagist! Might have to do the same with my laravel-webmention package now.

Here’s something new. I occasionally—using this bit of code—fetch (very basic) weather data when I post to this site, and I just saw a temperature, underneath a day-old note, of minus zero degrees Celsius. (Not that that’s incorrect per se, but I’d like to avoid it right here.) The “fix”? Run the (floating point) number through round() first, then number_format().

I have yet to look into it, but I fear that using [email protected] or whatever as the “email address” for webmentions might lead to issues, should one have enabled only the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” setting, in WordPress’s Discussion settings. (I manually review each and every comment, so I wouldn’t know.)

I mean, if every comment (i.e., webmention) appears to be coming from the same (dummy) email, then … basically, all of them are going to be approved.

You should probably not add “No Title” to your titleless “IndieWeb” notes. Even if your site’s front end doesn’t show these “titles,” your RSS feed still might. Which would cause feed readers to display these notes as “articles,” i.e., with a title (equal to “No Title”).

Someone came up with “Fediverse search” and folks were not amused. Even though I’ve opted out of search engine indexation, I can still use Google to search, e.g., site:mastodon.social @​[email protected]​geekcompass.com. Nothing online should be considered private.

Some folks would rather not have their toots embedded or otherwise displayed on non-Fediverse sites. Any blog can choose to implement ActivityPub and become a Fediverse site. When more websites move in that direction, the “Fediverse” will pretty much be the web. Quoting, annotating and linking back and forth, under “fair use,” are a key part of the web. Publishing online isn’t the issue. (Certain features of) social media are.

Still, f—k discoverability. And “going viral.” I follow hundreds of web feeds; didn’t need an algorithm, or “Explore” tab, or “federated timeline”—what would that look like, a federated timeline of the entire blogosphere?—to “discover” those. Word of mouth is the way.

Imagine having a section on your site where you’d aggregate and show, in full, others’ blog posts, from all around the web. I wouldn’t do that.

Bookmarked https://laravel-news.com/laravel-pint.

Got reminded that IndieBlocks’ “context” isn’t included in WordPress’ autogenerated excerpts. Easily resolved by showing full notes on archive pages, though, which is probably what you want anyway, it being a microblog and all.

Added to Share on Mastodon’s “latest nightly,” so to speak: (1) the ability to upload not just featured and attached images, but also images in the post; (2) more robust alt text; (3) (server) error messages; and (4) (optional) admin notices.

Toying around with syndicating to Mastodon, and admin notices and whatnot.

This here is why I created IndieBlocks. An already hugely popular blogging platform, any modern theme, and a single plugin, and you have all these things.

I hope we see a lot more platforms [so] that people don’t need to think about federation, microformats, syndication feeds, webmentions, etc. People do not care about these things. Developers need to.

Bookmarked https://pepelsbey.dev/articles/skewed-highlight/.

Perfect for testing my new OPML importer against!

2022 update: Hallway’s still not done. I bought a much more expensive guitar, a 1950s table-top organ thingy, a budget electronic drumkit, a 70-year-old oil painting, and (S)NES Classic Mini(s). Kids got a dollhouse, and a Super Mario LEGO set, and way too many presents overall, and it’s been (mostly) fun.

Here’s my 2021-in-review: I bought a couple busted up guitars in the first few months of the year, and then there’s a black hole of some six months, and then in between the 3rd and the 4th wave my parents came over a couple times and helped us a whole lot finishing the hallway—still not done—and then in November my wife’s brother and his fiancée visited from Toronto, and our daughter, now two, finally got baptized, and there was birthdays and Sinterklaas and Christmas and way too many presents.