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Episode 4: Webmentions and Privacy


This week, Chris Aldrich and I got together a bit late…so I was a bit more quiet than normal.

With the GDPR regulations coming into effect in Europe May 25th, privacy seems to be on everyone’s mind. This week, we tackle what webmentions are, using them for backfeed, and the privacy implications.

Related IndieWeb wiki pages

 

Episode 5: Indieweb Summit and More

With the Indieweb Summit coming up, we should discuss what the Summit is like, community and how to participate, etc.

 

Links

  • Do I know anyone interested in building #indieweb tech or federated services? I’m having trouble conceptualizing some things without having people to bounce ideas off of. https://twitter.com/davidlaietta/status/995485455675162626 That’s what this is all about! I have always been an outsider to that community and want to find good ways to enter and get involved, but I am also trying to find ways to make ActivityPub based projects more accessible to the average web user.
Episode 6: WordPress and Types of Posts

In this episode, Chris and I discuss how Post Kinds mapped Indieweb types of posts to the WordPress system and why, the defined as opposed to implied types set up, and avatars.

While this is very WordPress centric, there are a lot of discussions here relevant to a broader Indieweb audience about adding new types of posts to your site, trying to design things flexibly(although a developer’s guide is probably needed), etc.

Episode 7: The Reverse Salmention

In this last episode before Chris Aldrich and I head to the Indieweb Summit in Portland, Oregon, he and I discuss my continual messing up of people’s Indieweb experience, little things I’ve hidden in plugins, web-signin vs IndieAuth, etc.

We’re both looking forward to seeing those of you who can join us in Portland.

Episode 8: Interflux

In this episode, Chris and I recap our takeaways and stories from the Indieweb Summit 2018 last month in Portland, Oregon, discuss Microsub, Vouch, and other ideas.

Episode 10 – The Thrilla in Manilla

October 1st will be the 43 anniversary of the Ali/Frazer fight. I spent a month in Manila and the title was suggested by Chris as appropriate.

In this week’s episode, we discussed new developments in WordPress and what I’ve wanted to accomplish for all these years in the Indieweb community. The ability to read something on my phone, store it on my website to either share or just save, as appropriate.

We discussed recent projects I’d worked on, such as the Micropub plugin, client discovery in IndieAuth, Post Kinds, etc.

Replied to JSON Feed for WordPress updated (manton.org)

It has been over a year since JSON Feed was announced. There have been a bunch of discussions about expanding the specification, but we are very happy with how well the initial version has worked. It powers all Micro.blog-hosted blogs by default and is also used on many WordPress blogs, home-grown s…

It was my pleasure to take over JSONFeed for WordPress. All it needs is periodic maintenance and maybe the occasional improvement when suggested, especially if the spec iterates, either officially or unofficially.

Thoughts About Assertion Workflows

This is a preliminary technical workflow proposal for assertions, which would be needed for badges, endorsements, and other ideas. It is based on thoughts that I had listening to the badges session at Indiewebcamp NYC 2018.

Scenario 1: Individual creates criteria and wants to assert that other individual has achieved said criteria. Example: Professor wants to certify students completed coursework.

  • Professor Posts Criteria for Each Achievement as a unique page (A).
  • Student completes assignment as a post (B).
  • Professor Posts Badge/Assertion/Endorsement post on their website as an h-review, with a p-item property to student’s URL (B). Would need a new or existing property to represent the relationship to the original assertion (A). Suggest u-assert and u-assert-of?j Can use u-in-reply-to possibly.

Scenario 2: Individual creates assertion post and solicits others to endorse that statement as factual.

  • Individual makes a post to their site(h-resume for references on a resume, not sure what to request endorsement of a statement? p-assert with a nested h-item?) and invites other individuals(using existing invitee property used for RSVPs?) to endorse or assert it. Criteria might be included for achievement.
  • Others create ‘assertion’ posts on their site(assert-of) and send webmentions, which would cause the post to be updated to note that it had been achieved.

Existing microformats for h-resume and h-review seem to allow additional context.

  • Education
  • Experience
  • Skill
  • Rating
  • Best
  • Worst

Brainstorming on the Indieweb wiki under assertion.

Replied to Chris Messina™ on Twitter (Twitter)

“Is it time to resurrect the DiSo Project? https://t.co/Sd3p8Gl6M8 Funny, we were here in 2006, @simonw: https://t.co/Vmz06KA1Gp /cc @willnorris @steveivy @singpolyma https://t.co/eWYliJtI2y”

People continued working on it. Everything you need using W3C standards like Webmention, Microformats2…give it a try? https://IndieWeb.org/WordPress/Plugins
Tomorrow I am going to be once again spending time in Manila. It has been on my mind lately, as it is a long journey and a hard trip. But, I intend to make the best of it and be as productive as possible.

Your Endpoint Did Not Return a Location Header

There have been some issues with Quill and other services advising that the WordPress Micropub endpoint did not return a Location header. There seems to be some confusion about this, which is partly because the message is a bit technical. One individual thought that this was related to Simple Location.

This indicates an error on the part of the Micropub plugin. Regrettably, in addition to not displaying the error response prominently, the Micropub specification dictates that the error response returns one of 4 error codes, and may return a human readable error description to assist the client developer in understanding the error, but is not meant to be shown to the end user.

This does not account for errors on the endpoint side that may need to be debugged. Currently, the WordPress plugin that creates the endpoint does not surface error messages on its side either to allow you to figure this out.

Better error messaging to the end-user on one side or the other seems to be a common issue amongst Indieweb tools to help them figure out the issue.

The most common issue that explains the failure is an inability to associate the URL with the user account. There are two versions of the software that does this.

  • In the IndieAuth plugin, to ensure accuracy, the plugin passes the WordPress user ID in the return to ensure that it can find it.
  • If you don’t have the IndieAuth plugin installed, the Micropub plugin uses an external IndieAuth endpoint instead of a built-in one, and the following techniques to find the WordPress user from your URL
    • If you have the Indieweb plugin installed, it looks in its settings for the default author on a single author site.
    • If you are using the URL of your author post archive, usually /author/username it will try to use that to get your username and therefore your user ID
    • If you have set a website URL in your profile, it will try to use that. Please make sure your website URL uses https if your website does, as this has caused some issues in matching.

In both plugins, we continue to improve the functionality in this case and I often port ideas that improved functionality in one version into the other, as they are both authorize Micropub using IndieAuth, but in the case of the Indieauth plugin, it also implements the IndieAuth functionality.

Right now, I’m working on improvements to the Micropub plugin to improve the error handling, among other things, and hopefully this will help.

 

Replied to Stepping back from POSSE by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)

I’m also going to make a strong argument in the open source Known community that syndication should be limited to webhooks going forward. In other words, third parties will be able to create microservices with a standard API, which your Known or other indieweb-compatible site will be able to connect to. You could click a button to notify those services (or have your site do it automatically). But any kind of API maintenance would be taken out of the core code or official plugins. Not only is life too short, but it’s long past time to stop building code on top of centralized silos of content.

I have to agree with Ben. The Micropub plugin for WordPress triggers a WordPress hook based on syndication targets and I’m working on a compatible system for the Post Editor, so that the UI doesn’t need to know how the item is POSSEd.

This is because I also don’t want to deal with silo interfaces most of the time.