Month: February 2019

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How I Set up my WordPress Indieweb Website – 2019 Edition

This is an update to my 2018 article on how I set up my WordPress site.

Standard Plugins

  1. EWWW Image Optimizer(Link) – It reduces file sizes for images to ensure faster loading
  2. Pushover Notifications(Link)or the forked alternative Pushbullet Notifications(Link) for WordPress – This plugin sends notifications of site events to my phone. The Pushover version is actively maintained and allows for extensions.
  3. Simple Local Avatars(Link) – Overrides the default of using the Gravatar service for profile pictures to storing them locally. However, this plugin hasn’t been updated in years. May look for a new one.
  4. Avatar Privacy (Link) – Adds local avatars and custom default avatars, caches items from gravatar, adds opt out of avatars, etc. Should be a part of WordPress Core.
  5. The SEO Framework (Link) – Sometimes, I think about getting rid of all SEO plugins. I’m not really obsessed with this. This does add non-Indieweb markup for some sites that require it. It isn’t worth it for me to manually add this right now.  Last time I commented that I thought about getting rid of all SEO plugins. So I did.
  6. Antispam Bee(Link) – As an alternative to third-party solution Akismet, this plugin does a similar job without a third-party service.
  7. Hum(Link) – This is a simple URL shortener. So for each post, there is an equivalent URL address at di5.us. This allows me to give out easier to enter links to longer post titles.
  8. JSON Feed(Link) – Adds a JSON Feed to a WordPress site. This is an alternative to RSS as a feed. I’ve used it to feed my content to Micro.blog more effectively, as the specification was co-created by Manton Reece, who is the creator of that service. The plugin could stand some enhancement. I now am a contributor.
  9. Series(Link) – Creates a simple taxonomy called ‘Series’. I added this to my site to allow creating series of articles. There are other plugins for this, but this one is extremely simple.
  10. WP Photo Sphere(Link) – For the rare occasions that I post 360 degree images. Rare as in I’ve only posted one. Hasn’t been updated in a year and was throwing errors.
  11. Dimage 360 (Link) – My current solution for displaying 360 degree images.
  12. Social Network Auto Poster(Link) – I keep wanting to get rid of this thing. But I haven’t spent the time to replace it. Thinking of doing that soon.
  13. Simple Location(Link) – You can call this an Indieweb plugin, but it isn’t specifically an Indieweb technology(although it does use Microformats markup). It adds location and weather awareness to a post. So, you can click to add your location and the current weather conditions at that location to a post.
  14. Home Assistant for WordPress(Link) – I use Home Assistant for my Home Automation integration. Since it has an API, I wrote this simple plugin. A year after I wrote this, I have not added the ability to display information from any sensor and to update a sensor on the Home Assistant side from WordPress as planned. I use it right now as an enhancement to Simple Location. Instead of getting my location from the browser, it gets it from my Home Assistant installation, which tracks my presence.
  15. WP Term Images(Link) – Allows you to set an image for any category, term, or tag. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but even though there are a few improvements I’d make, it does the job. My theme displays these images on archive pages, as well as in the RSS feed.  I may consider running a fork of it so I don’t have to add this in all my themes.

The Indieweb Stuff

  • WordPress Webmention(Link) – Adds webmention support for WordPress. This allows communications between sites.
  • Semantic Linkbacks(Link) – Adds richer content to WordPress comments received by Webmention. For example, interprets them as reply, repost, like, favorite, mention, etc. This allows different displays and actions to be done with them.
  • IndieAuth (Link) – Creates an IndieAuth endpoint on your site so you can log into other services with your website credentials.
  • Micropub (Link) – Adds the ability to post to your site using Micropub. Uses the IndieAuth plugin for login.
  • Post Kinds (Link) – A replacement for the WordPress Post Formats which uses Indieweb post types. It allows you to respond to content on other sites, generates previews of those sites for context, allows you to post activity type posts(like watching, listening, reading, etc).
  • Syndication Links(Link) – Another project, which adds fields to a post for the corresponding versions on other networks. It also adds links to same to the post. It also adds a UI for posting to other sites, with support for the Bridgy service built in.
  • Indieweb Plugin(Link) – The Indieweb plugin is not only a plugin installer, but it contains tools for adding rel-me links(urls to your presence on other sites) based on your profile, declaring the default author for your site, and adding a simple h-card widget to show off a primary author.
  • MF2 Feed (Link) – Accepting that it is hard to get a theme that supports Microformats 2 markup, as there are only a few, this tries to add a side file to your site with the data available. I use this as a way of testing it for those who may have no other easy way to be Indieweb capable.
  • Refback (Link) – I quickly created this a few months ago. It is very basic. A refback is when you take referrers to your website(URLs sent when someone visits your site from another site), and process them as responses to your site.

A Few Choices

  • The theme I use is a custom one I built, but the most popular theme for Indieweb sites is Sempress(Link). I am currently using a fork of the WordPress Twenty-Sixteen theme(link) called IW26 that I modified for Microformats and support of the plugins I use. I have an alternative theme, a fork on the popular Independent Publisher theme called Indieweb Publisher(link). I’m thinking of switching themes occasionally to mix things up.

Bridgy

Bridgy now has a WordPress plugin(link) which acts as a UI for registering and posting to Bridgy. Oddly enough, I wrote the plugin, but don’t actively use it. I need to fix my handling of syndication. I deprecated the Bridgy plugin and moved a new version of the functionality into Syndication Links. I am now using it.

Bridgy is a service that you can link your accounts on places like Twitter, Github and Facebook(deprecated due API changes) to, and it will pull in comments, likes, etc from those sites and send them to your site to be integrated. This requires the Webmention and Semantic Linkback plugins to understand what is being sent.

Indieweb Publisher WordPress Theme Now Available to Try

Over the last months, one of the regular problems mentioned with the Indieweb on WordPress is the lack of compatible themes. Most themes do not properly mark up their content in microformats, or support some of the customizations that would integrate with Indieweb plugins.

I had already been working on my fork of the WordPress stock Twenty-Sixteen theme, called IW26. In my changing of the theme, I tried to limit being opinionated to the markup and plugin integration and leave the design to be mostly unchanged. On the backend, update the theme with any improvements to WordPress core and backdate any improvements made to _s, the starter theme that many WordPress themes are based on.

Independent Publisher is a popular theme that began adding microformats and Indieweb support. I had contributed to the theme. But development seems to be over and I haven’t gotten a response from the developer.

So, after much consideration, I decided to fork the theme. The Indieweb version, called Indieweb Publisher, strips out many of the specialty features the original theme had.  It is still an evolving work, but it is good enough for daily use.

What was removed:

  • Excerpt Options – Switched to only the decision as to whether to have an excerpt on front/archive pages. The type of excerpt to generate seems to me to be strictly plugin territory.
  • Multi-Author Mode – This was replaced with the Indieweb plugin’s setting for whether a site is a single or multi-author site.
  • Social icons menu – Again, seems like plugin territory to me.
  • Custom header used as a logo

What was added

  • Basic support for the Syndication Links, Simple Location, and Post Kinds plugins.
  • Option to show time on posts, not just date
  • Option to hide category display.
  • Custom logo feature to replace adaptive use of custom header
  • Genericons Neue replaced Genericons font set
  • Privacy Policy link if enabled in WordPress
  • Archive title and description functions and filters replaced custom coded functions
  • H-Card template page that can be used as front page
  • Set rel-feed if front page is not feed.
  • Footer widget
  • Switch to SASS for CSS generation
  • Replaced custom navigation with navigation from core implemented in WordPress 4.1
  • Started removing styling on microformats classes

Still being worked on is importing the Independent Publisher 2 layout that appears on WordPress.com and letting this be an alternate layout option, as well as taking full advantage of SASS file generation to remove duplication. I actually like the look of IP2 as well.

So, give it a try, give feedback and suggestions, and I’ll continue to iterate on both themes. You can download it from Github in a zip file and upload it to your site.

Someday, it may be worthy of an upload to the wordpress.org repo

Replied to https://boffosocko.com/2019/02/17/55743921/ by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)

Replied to a tweet by David Chartier David Chartier (Twitter)
#LazyWeb Anyone know if there’s a way to import a bookmarks HTML/OPML file (from something like Pinboard or Dropmark) into WordPress as individual posts? Ideally, individual link posts?

I’m tinkering with using WordPress for bookmark sav…

I have yet to build the infrastructure for this. I have the design in my mind for a new citation structure to use as the backend of a bookmark, similar to the old Links Manager. I can’t import till I’m happy with my data storage options.

Simple Location 3.6.0 Released

There is a new update to Simple Locations which adds some new features.

  • A query option for Micropub was added in a prior version and adjusted in this one. This is currently only supported in the Indigenous for Android app.  It allows the Android app to query the plugin for the name of the current location, to display and edit in the app.
  • Wikimedia Maps was added as a map provider, which is displayable without an API key
  • There’s a new setting that only shows altitude above a configurable height.

The biggest feature is Zones. Zones is a geofencing feature. If your location is inside the zone, it will not display the exact location, only a textual description.

Zones consist of a name, a location, and a radius around that location. If you are posting in the UI, it will replace the actual location name with that of the zone, and set the visibility to protected to add the actual coordinates.

If you are posted via Micropub, it will set the same, unless the location visibility property exists, and then it will follow that. Currently, this property is only supported by Indigenous for Android.

So, what does this mean? It means I am safe to post to my site and know that if I’m in one of these locations, it will obscure it unless I say otherwise. This is the first step to more granular visibility of location allowing me to store it in all posts, knowing that it won’t be shared specifically in areas I don’t want it to be shown in.