Notes

Completely overhauled—disclaimer: this version’s not live, yet!—Share on Mastodon’s “image alt text” functions. It’ll now always parse post content for images, and store each image’s alt (if any) attribute, and use that, regardless of what was stored—or not stored, courtesy of the “new” block editor—in wp_postmeta.

https://github.com/janboddez/share-on-mastodon/commit/917044f42790241e7be8d875c9ba7ea8d40b3c40

Realizing the way I typically set up WordPress URLs (using a so-called permalink front that matches my “non-home” “blog page”) may not be all that great after all, as it affects, well, nearly all URLs. I work around that for IndieBlocks’ notes and likes, and it can be worked around even for author archives (through a filter). Except, e.g., the ActivityPub plugin doesn’t like filtered author URLs (because it needs them to never change).

Pushed v0.7.0 of IndieBlocks. I’ll write a little something over on the IndieBlocks blog later this week. Main change is the (very basic) Location block, which will of very little use to … almost everybody. Plus smaller tweaks all over the codebase. Wrote a quick “tutorial,” too, on how I set up a simple, webmention-enabled microblog using nothing but WordPress core and IndieBlocks.

I was just asked if IndieBlocks can support a tumblelog-like site (A: Yes!) and … I’d completely forgotten there is in fact a simple setting for this. https://github.com/janboddez/indieblocks/issues/86

Never ceases to amaze me how, like, actual, professional web developers break their RSS feeds by moving to a new SSG. (Redirects exsist. 😬)

https://indieblocks.xyz, too, got hit by WordPress 6.2.1 breaking shortcodes in block theme templates. The “fix,” for me, was really easy: convert the offending Shortcode blocks to Template Parts (two clicks, literally). Of course, I use only two instances of the Shortcode block this way; I’d make them into dynamic, “theme” blocks, but really, it’s not worth it.

Remains kinda cool to see Share on Mastodon mentioned in the wild. And the WordPress app’s limitations. I work around those by using Micropub, which does support CPTs, but it’s still a bit of a hack. In fact, I have set up IndieBlocks to recognize “Micropub post types” and add in the proper blocks—or rather IndieBlocks’ blocks.

Why cursor-based (and not “offset”) pagination? Because (1) marking entries as read will remove them from the current page and thus shift all “later” entries “to the left,” and (2) new entries being added in the background will cause similar shifts. Both events would result in items being missed or shown more than once as you browse back and forth.

One of Feed Reader for WordPress’s nastiest bits of code—well, there’s a few more—is the cursor paginator. Lots of raw SQL in there. I did look for a lightweight query builder library, but alas.

We now carry the internet in our pockets; back in the day, we’d have to dial in, and “No more than an hour per day!” (And often less than that.)

Almost all of these changes came from information technology—computers, the internet, social media, and smartphones.

Super quick remark: offline mode isn’t limited to SPAs.

One of the major driving factors for the move to Single-Page Applications (SPAs) over the past decade has been the potential to allow offline (or low-connectivity) usage.

May check this out next. I’d love to go all “block theme,” at least for a little while. Then again, a premade theme can never cover all the carefully crafted bits and pieces around here. (But I’d love to create a dynamic block for post type “sparklines,” for instance.)

Or maybe I should just leave it, even if it means its behavior will have changed ever so slightly. (The difference is that, as of version 0.13, both setting and filter are ignored for posts over a day old, to prevent the accidental sharing of older posts. Before, the filter would be in effect always. Good chance no one will notice.)

I’m deprecating the share_on_mastodon_enabled hook in favor of the “new” Share Always option. (The one thing making me reconsider was that the latter did in fact support a second, poorly documented, $post_id argument, which could be used to, e.g., enable forced sharing only for certain post types. That said, don’t think anyone actually uses it.)

Another thing I’ll look into is a “(hash)tags” setting, to auto-append tags. (Again, if you’re doing this through a filter today, that approach will just continue to work.)