2014-01-10 UTC
# 00:15 acegiak snarfed: yeah one of the reasons I've been working on wordpress stuff is because i can then get people set up quickly with wordpress if they want to join in after I go on one of my rants
# 00:16 snarfed i use wordpress too. has a mixed reputation in these parts, but i like it a lot, mostly because i don't have to build it myself :P
# 00:16 snarfed even the indieweb parts, since other people like you and pfefferle do that for me!
# 00:17 acegiak I think wordpress is a massive threat the indieweb because it risks homogenisation, but at the moment at least it's benefits outweight that
# 00:18 acegiak snarfed: I kind of wish I could work out a way to get my whisperfollow plugin to work without it chewing up so many resources that you get in trouble with shared hosts
# 00:19 acegiak cause I had to move to hosting my system on my own machine because each time I scanned for updates it would hammer the server
# 00:20 acegiak I wonder if PuSH or something like it would play nice with MF2 H-Entry pages
# 00:20 snarfed acegiak: re homogenization…eh. yeah, i hear that, but i just can't get myself worked up about it. it's a big space with a ton of players…and more importantly, we have way worse problems (e.g. getting people onto indieweb at all) than monoculture right now.
# 00:20 snarfed yeah, that part of shared hosting is tough. understandable though. sounds like VPS or PaaS is right for you
# 00:23 acegiak snarfed, these days i've got a static ip and my own host box which handles everything from dns records to webhosting and all manner of other stuff
# 00:24 snarfed yeah, i was looking at machinespirit. sounds great! costs some sysadmin time, but maybe worth it
# 00:24 acegiak i just wish i had the skills to set up openldap with email, xmpp, wordpress etc
# 00:25 snarfed try it! sure it'll take some effort, but there's no magic. it's all doable!
# 00:25 acegiak yeah, i just have a lot of learning to do about email setup really
# 00:26 snarfed ugh yeah. that's maybe the worst one these days, with spam blacklists and DKIM, etc.
# 00:26 snarfed honestly, if you outsourced just one, i might argue that email is it
# 00:27 acegiak machinespirit was originally supposed to be an indieweb supporting silo for my friends and family so they wouldnt have to do all this shit but i've come around to the each person owns their own domain amd solution perspective
# 00:28 acegiak snarfed: at the moment i still use a lot of google services, gmail is my primary email
# 00:28 snarfed machinespirit could still host everything for your friends with their own domains, right?
# 00:30 acegiak true, it would just take more rejiggibg of the domain mapping etc which is messy. im a coder not a sysadmin. im thinking more about ways to make deploying a standalone system/solution these days.
# 00:31 acegiak oh! i've heard of owncloud but not ansible, ill check that out
# 00:32 acegiak i was looking at raspberry pi solutions but there's the issue then of working out the mapping between external ip and multiple internal ips for multiple people's sites at home
# 00:32 acegiak so now i'm wondering if theres a way to host those sorts of things over the cellular network
# 00:33 snarfed hmm. looking at ansible's site, not sure it's what i'm thinking of. similar but not exactly the same
# 00:34 snarfed you don't need an IP per site, right? you can use host
# 00:35 acegiak yeah but it'd be kinda tricky to make that operate in a plugnplay way?
brianloveswords joined the channel
# 00:36 acegiak i kinda want people to set up easy and then customise rather than do lots of initial config
# 00:36 snarfed i mean, it may be easier for specific tools in specific settings, but it's not a core, inherent thing
# 00:36 acegiak if you had a router set up correctly that might work
# 00:38 acegiak oh! or one central device connected to the router that does the actual servingbut based on the config and contents of connected storage devices
charlesroper and caseorga_ joined the channel
# 00:41 acegiak so then to install a site or move it you just plug in a usb or whatever into the hosting device which then sends an update to the dynamic dns
# 00:42 snarfed pretty crazy to have to optimize for moving data or servers around physically, since it should ideally be so rare, and it incurs so much overhead for the serving itself
kylewm joined the channel
# 00:48 acegiak snarfed, the android over cellular route isn't as ridiculous as I thought either
# 00:49 snarfed it does sound kinda ridiculous, but i don't have enough context for your req'ts
# 00:49 snarfed and i'm not really a sysadmin either, so i doubt i'd know better than you :P
# 00:50 acegiak snarfed: trying to work out how to make a simple drop and deploy solution
# 00:51 peat Seems like you might have to do some tunneling. Most easily connected networks are behind a gateway of some sort.
# 00:51 snarfed right, but solution to what problem? and by "drop," i assume you mean install a new one somewhere. why? what are the threats or pain points you're trying to solve?
# 00:51 snarfed just explaining why i'm probably not so helpful :P
poppy joined the channel
# 00:54 acegiak snarfed: I'm trying to work out something that is AS simple as shared hosting to deploy but doesn't have the "getting yelled at by the host when you use too much processing power" problem
chloeweil joined the channel
edwardasykes and caseorganic joined the channel
vrypan_ joined the channel
pasevin joined the channel
# 01:53 acegiak pdurbin: I'd rather pay for a thing than it be advertising supported these days
pfenwick joined the channel
# 02:46 KevinMarks well, if you use node and one dyno, it is free. if you need to spin up more you start paying.
# 02:47 KevinMarks this is true for ruby too, but node is efficient enough that you don't start needing more dynos as fast
# 02:56 pdurbin KevinMarks: interesting. I've been meaning to try Heroku
# 03:16 jjuran For a small site with low traffic, nearlyfreespeech.net is a good choice, with a yearly cost in single digits of dollars.
paulcp, otterdam, pavelz, edsu, caseorganic, skinny, KartikPrabhu, schalkneethling, charlesroper, tantek, LauraJ, melvster, edwardasykes, dvirsky, edwardas_, squeakytoy, Sebastien-L, voxpelli, marcthiele, glennjones, adactio, bnvk and pasevin joined the channel
# 13:26 pdurbin free shell (ssh) account too, if that's non-obvious :)
nloadholtes, chloeweil, Zegnat, LauraJ, jonnybarnes and bpayton joined the channel
# 15:05 aaronpk i need to start splitting sites out onto different servers so this stops happening
# 15:06 EHLOVader do you use anything like monit to keep track of server stuff?
# 15:07 aaronpk jonnybarnes: that wouldn't prevent the server from segfaulting still
# 15:08 jonnybarnes I thought that was kind of the point of VMs, to sandbox software so it can't "damaege" the host
snarfed joined the channel
# 15:12 aaronpk sure that's fine if sometihng in the VM crashes, but there's still the chance the host can segfault and take everything down
charlesroper_, snarfed and skinny joined the channel
pasevin and chloeweil joined the channel
tantek, voxpelli, CheckDavid, LaurieJ, _6a68, snarfed and AmyMac joined the channel
pasevin, benprew, snarfed, bnvk, pfefferle, bnvk_, kylewm, bpayton and paulcp joined the channel
benwerd joined the channel
# 18:43 Loqi benwerd: aaronpk left you a message on 1/8 at 8:07pm: happy late birthday! is your and barnaby's birthday the same day?!?!
LauraJ joined the channel
KartikPrabhu, barnabywalters, tantek, dvirsky, benwerd and chloeweil joined the channel
# 19:34 schalkneethling oooh, now that is neat. How did that just happen ;)
# 19:34 bear loqi monitors twitter for a number of keywords
benwerd joined the channel
# 19:35 tantek snarfed - you asked rhetorically at a past Homebrew Website Club meetup - do we expect everyone to code their own solution? (implying no)
# 19:36 tantek and I think it is better reframed - how many indieweb implementations do we want/expect to see?
# 19:36 tantek on one extreme is monoculture (WordPress being the obvious candidate)
# 19:37 tantek on the other extreme is worldwide coding literacy (Mozilla Webmaker, Codeclub, etc.)
# 19:37 bear isn't that answer going to change as the community that is forming around indieweb ages?
# 19:37 tantek I'd like to see something in the middle. Rather than one or millions, I think we've succeeded if we see thousands.
# 19:38 tantek bear - I don't think the answer changes because the answer has to do with how accessible is it to build your own solution?
# 19:38 tantek How simple are the formats and protocols we develop such that anyone can quickly incrementally build *something* that works on the indieweb?
# 19:38 neuro` I'd rather see numerous projects with small to medium devs and users communities. Diversity makes us rucher
# 19:38 bear it changes in the early days and becomes less so in the long-tail phase
# 19:39 tantek neuro` yes. and diversity is a sign of ease of implementation. of low barrier to entry.
# 19:39 tantek lower barrier to entry also encourages more experimentation, more creativity, more competition - all of which contribute to a healthier ecosystem.
# 19:40 barnabywalters also, vast quantities of small, slightly different implementations eradicates the need for intimidating full-stack “do-everything” protocols
# 19:40 tantek not just eradicates, but actually helps prevent
# 19:41 tantek by encouraging the opposite - building block protocols, each which add incremental utility
# 19:41 bear I am agreeing overall, I just consider the community to be at the stage now where different types of solutions are helping to work out the data sharing formats
# 19:41 bear once the data transfer solidifies then I expect the tools to blossom
# 19:42 neuro` tantek: s/RT/quote/, then I remember the logs are public :)
# 19:42 tantek neuro` your post looks so much more beautiful on your own site, styled the say you have it, than it does on Twitter. Well done.
# 19:43 tantek setting an excellent example that answers the question of why indieweb.
scor and KartikPrabhu joined the channel
# 19:52 snarfed tantek, bear, neuro`: late to the party, but fully agree re landing somewhere in the middle btw monoculture and everyone writing their own
# 19:52 tantek I do honestly feel like the answer is in the thousands.
# 19:53 bear I would love it to be like python web frameworks - there is one for everyone ;)
# 19:53 snarfed my main concern is that we often discourage projects that seem too big, corporate, accessible, etc, like wordpress
# 19:53 tantek Previous attempts at formats/protocols in this space were accessible only to small handfuls (sometimes only 1-2) people who were able to understand what was going on. That's not enough. Single digit implementations is not enough.
# 19:53 benwerd That's a really interesting (and smart, I think) order of magnitude - I'd expect CMS products to number in the hundreds as an upper bound, so we really are talking tinkerers
# 19:54 snarfed some are bad in meaningful ways, which is fine, but others are good options, and the accessibility and polish of big, mature projects is really valuable for newbies
# 19:54 tantek snarfed - it's not that we discourage projects that seem too big, but rather we discount them because they are typically too slow to move to take part in evolving a technology.
# 19:54 snarfed sometimes yeah, but i think we often over-apply that
# 19:54 tantek WP plugins are an interesting edge of evolvability
# 19:54 snarfed more importantly, it's a tradeoff. bigger projects that may be slow vs smaller projects that are much rougher and less welcoming to newbies
# 19:55 tantek while we're evolving technologies, pure growth of newbies is not the point
# 19:56 snarfed yeah, fair enough. we definitely want makers to make, in whatever stack they're most effective
# 19:56 snarfed i just also want a handful of good options for non-technical people who come to us, even if we're not actively going out and finding them
# 19:57 EHLOVader what do you guys think of cloudflare? do you use it for indiewebcamp related things?
# 19:57 snarfed fortunately, i think we have that handful: idno, wordpress, github pages + webmention.io, etc
# 19:57 snarfed cloudflare is probably a bigger hammer than most of us need right now, but in general, i hear it's good
barnabywalters joined the channel
# 20:00 neuro` snarfed: cloudflare is usefull when you gets on HN, otherwise on a personal site it's like killing a fly with an AMX30
# 20:01 snarfed agreed. any CDN, at least, there are plenty of good ones
# 20:02 snarfed or just smart caching in your server. you can get a long way with the right headers and memory or filesystem based caching
# 20:03 neuro` Even when HNed, the 50MB RAM disk I use for microcaching behind my Nginx was enough for me not to notice it happened.
# 20:05 neuro` BTW there's a huge difference between hosting your site on a shared host and going full self hosted. Self hosting is nice, but it implies security issues that are not trivial and I'm happy we (as indiewebcamp people) don't push people to self host their server
# 20:07 snarfed security req'ts are a spectrum, from fully hosted service (wp.com, tumblr) at the bottom to to VPS, shared hosting in the middle, and VPS or physical server at the top
# 20:07 snarfed shared still has some risk, but nowhere near as much as admining the OS yourself too
kylewm joined the channel
# 20:16 EHLOVader but non relevant for me... curious, this seems to perform the same for me, but that is cause I am here...
barnabywalters joined the channel
# 20:17 EHLOVader was looking at cloudflare because it may be better (at least in this case) to combine, minify, optimize with closure compiler or something, and host it myself than to split it up and use a CDN for the common ones
# 20:17 bear there are different levels of "cdn" - having static files on S3, using google's cache of fonts and js libs and then the full on site cache ones
# 20:18 bear it also depends on if you are self hosting or using a shared host or vpn
# 20:18 EHLOVader this is mostly server location cdn, like google cache, since cdnjs will be used by many it will be more likely to be cached
# 20:18 bear yea, then stick with the cache'd versions and track your traffic load to see if you really need a "real" cdn
bnvk, pasevin, tantek, barnabywalters, paulcp, kylewm, jonnybarnes, AmyMac and pfenwick joined the channel
# 22:27 tantek snarfed re: "handful of good options for non-technical people who come to us" - I only know of one "good" option that I recommend to folks like that: buy your own domain and use domain mapping on a Tumblr account. Every other option is too much maintenance or UI that gets in your way.
# 22:28 snarfed sure! that's definitely one of the simplest, if not the simplest
# 22:28 snarfed it's nice to have options that ramp up slightly from there too
# 22:28 tantek and I'm saying that having helped a few friends get setup on Tumblr with their own domain and start tinkering with their templates.
# 22:28 tantek I don't know of any comparably easy/friendly/cheap options
benwerd joined the channel
# 22:29 snarfed fortunately we don't need to pick the one to rule them all
# 22:29 snarfed i agree, that's best for minimal expertise and cost
# 22:30 tantek as pointed out at our first HWC meeting by Jay, Tumblr is the bar to aim for (in terms of ease of use / usability / beauty)
# 22:30 snarfed sadly it doesn't get you far into indieweb specific features
# 22:31 snarfed but "next step" options do, and still don't require coding or sysadmin
# 22:31 tantek even the step from Tumblr to self-hosted WordPress is too big of a step
# 22:32 snarfed and i don't mean to rathole on wordpress specifically. i'm thinking about github pages + webmention.io and others too
# 22:32 tantek a lot of us got into writing our own publishing systems because WordPress is too much of a pain *for us*
# 22:32 snarfed oh definitely, i wouldn't say self hosted is the next step
# 22:32 tantek I'm not sure there is a good "next step" then
# 22:32 snarfed yeah, but we're already thinking about newbies, ie people who aren't like us
# 22:33 tantek github pages seems like non-trivial setup (in exchange for the free-ness)
# 22:33 tantek github pages by itself is not a publishing system
# 22:33 aaronpk if you use jekyll then it is close to a full publishing system, since they do all the static page generation.
# 22:33 tantek you have to have some software that "runs" on your GH pages
# 22:34 snarfed right. i don't know GHP well, i figured they had most of the pipeline worked out
# 22:34 tantek haha that's funny. I wouldn't wish Ruby/jekyll setup time / pain on any non-technical person.
# 22:34 aaronpk all you have to do is create a folder structure and then it is magic from there
# 22:34 tantek nevermind github push pull master blah blah blah command line barfage
# 22:34 tantek all you need are a handful of magic beans - I mean scripts
# 22:34 aaronpk getting a basic setup running is easy. doing anything beyond that is a rabbit hole.
# 22:34 snarfed i'll concede any individual point. i just care that we can recommend a number of options with different tradeoffs, not just tumblr or roll your own
# 22:35 tantek snarfed - gh pages are a non-starter for a non-technical person - sorry to say
# 22:35 tantek plus you're not going to do that on your mobile device are you?
# 22:36 tantek nor are you even going to create a folder structure on a mobile device
# 22:36 snarfed we keep falling back into this false dichotomy of either 1) free, zero effort, do it from a phone, or 2) write the whole thing yourself
# 22:36 tantek these are all things you GIVE UP when you leave Tumblr
# 22:36 tantek so if you can't meet that bar - you don't have a next step
# 22:36 snarfed no, some people may care more about other things. everyone has their own criteria
# 22:36 snarfed i want us to be open to listening to people and what they each care about, and then make an intelligent recommendation
# 22:37 tantek we don't even know what pain that non-technical people are willing to put up with
# 22:37 tantek given that, I'm not willing to recommend anything but domain mapped Tumblr currently
# 22:38 snarfed it's good that we have a default, but we can understand all the options, and be ready to recommend something specific once we listen to someone more
# 22:38 tantek sure, if you're up front about the pain, that's fine
# 22:38 snarfed but we can only do that if we're open minded enough to understand the actual pros and cons of each
# 22:38 tantek but claiming that setting up ruby / jekyll / gh pages to a non-technical person is BS
# 22:38 tantek that's the problem, we're not being honest even with ourselves
# 22:39 snarfed sure, sure. again, i didn't know it well. i concede anything about GHP :P
# 22:39 tantek on another subject - I saw some discussion of CDNs
# 22:40 tantek re: CDN discussion - what if we treat our websites/webservers as CDNs which serve (and queue webmentions) for us while the "primary" copy of our data is in our mobile device(s)? E.g. so that creating/writing/publishing a post is instant (zero network traffic) and all that remains is CDN propagation (background)?
caseorganic joined the channel
# 22:40 tantek for lulz tries plugging his Tumblr into indiewebify.me
# 22:41 aaronpk I like where you're going with that, except that I don't want to treat my mobile device as the canonical copy
# 22:41 tantek they all die / freeze horribly when network access goes away
# 22:41 aaronpk the mobile apps i've been writing basically do that, where they create new content in a local database and sync it later
# 22:42 aaronpk as far as you can tell when you use the app, the post is created instantly
# 22:43 snarfed (sorry to be so one note, it's just the one i know the best)
# 22:44 snarfed in any case, i like the idea, tantek. some stuff does that now, more should in the future!
# 22:44 tantek snarfed - are wordpress's mobile apps open source?
# 22:44 tantek e.g. would it be possible to add aaronpk's clientside indieauth support to them?
# 22:45 tantek because currently they send your user/pass in the clear over the network right? since they lack any better auth protocol
# 22:45 aaronpk your site would have to speak xmlrpc though, in order to let it create posts
# 22:45 tantek aaronpk - non-starter - the xmlrpc metaweblog API requires sending user/pass in the clear over the network
# 22:46 snarfed i think they now use the new REST API if you have jetpack
# 22:46 aaronpk i believe there is a token exchange now... i could be rwong
# 22:46 tantek better to patch the wordpress apps to use indieauth + micropub
# 22:46 snarfed regardless, good motivation to use SSL, which wp.com has automatically
# 22:53 tantek and after espousing the friendliness of Tumblr it took me several steps to figure out how to change my icon on it.
# 22:59 tantek hmm looks like indiewebify's authorship checker doesn't look for rel=author links - or at least <link rel=author>
# 23:00 tantek and we don't have a page on indiewebify either
# 23:04 tantek I'm assuming there's no starring or +1ing of a specific issue?
# 23:04 aaronpk of course you could always favorite it from your own site ;)
# 23:06 aaronpk indiewebify++ nice touch "It looks like your site is hosted on Tumblr.com Silo without a custom domain name. "
# 23:10 tantek The thinking here is more small steps we can help new folks do
# 23:10 tantek once you get someone onto Tumblr, you can walk them through some more steps like adding h-entry to make their Tumblr more indieweb-like.
# 23:11 tantek Since Tumblr thinks editing their templates is end-user friendly, I figure it's worth documenting how to do so (arguably easier than ruby/jekyll setup).
# 23:26 tantek snarfed - I think it's worth distinguishing Blogger/Tumblr from WordPress/WPengine
# 23:27 tantek btw - really great additions to the web hosting page
# 23:27 tantek great job with the criteria section too - knowing the right questions to ask is often one of the harder parts.
# 23:32 Jeena OMG I passed my (if I'm not mistaken) last exam (Computer Graphics), so now in theory I will soon be able to call myself: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science!
# 23:34 Jeena thanks, I'm so excited, I started when I was 30 years old and now I'm 35 ^^ (had to work for two years in between because I ran out of money, but whatever!) :p
paulcp and poppy joined the channel