#indieweb 2020-08-26

2020-08-26 UTC
gRegorLove and [fluffy] joined the channel
#
[fluffy] so, for static site generators there’s things like Jekyll and Pelican. For more dynamic sites there’s things like Publ.
#
[fluffy] and yeah github wikis work that way too, they’re just a git repo containing interlinked markdown files
#
[fluffy] sphinx can also take markdown I think but you have to do more care and feeding than just dumping markdown files into a directory
#
[chrisaldrich] I thought about github pages, but didn't consider wikis... I'm looking for something as basic as possible for throwing lots of simple text files at... static site generators are a step or two above what I'm looking for???
#
[fluffy] oh, is blot.im specifically a hosted thing for that stuff?
#
[fluffy] anyway I specifically designed Publ to be like, hey you have a bunch of content in files on a filesystem, and you dump it into your content directory and it Just Works. But there’s some initial setup involved.
#
[fluffy] like you need to host it somewhere and you need a couple templates.
jonnybarnes joined the channel
#
[fluffy] but like you can do the same dropbox/sshfs/whatever workflow that blot seems to be designed around. It’s just self-hosted.
#
[chrisaldrich] Thanks fluffy! I hadn't looked at the set up for Publ as closely as I keep meaning to make time for. Sounds a bit like Blot which does roughly that and is self-hostable as a Node.js thing or as a paid service for $4 or 5/month....
#
[fluffy] yeah it’s a pretty nice way to do things. 🙂
#
[chrisaldrich] Do you have any plans to have it as a paid hosting service??? 🙂
#
[fluffy] I’ve thought about it but I don’t have that kind of time/energy to build that.
#
[fluffy] at one point I had that as a reward tier for my patreon but that’s long-gone
#
[fluffy] oh and I think I might have that on my github sponsor page that nobody touches 🙂
#
[fluffy] yeah, I list a $20/month reward for hosting a publ site for someone. Clearly I don’t actually want to get into that business.
Toomim joined the channel
#
Toomim Hey guys, is the West Coast Homebrew club canceled today? https://events.indieweb.org/2020/08/homebrew-website-club-west-coast-talIosGEv6Kx
kensp, wholesomedonut, KempfCreative and wolftune joined the channel
#
GWG It's tomorrow
jonnybarnes, wolftune, KartikPrabhu, Pankajkumar, kensp, strugee, markopasha, cweiske and swentel joined the channel
#
jamietanna[m] Is anyone doing private posts with a static site? I'm writing a post about my proposal but want to see if I can take inspiration from anyone else
#
jamietanna[m] chrisaldrich I'd recommend looking at Netlify - I use it with images, and you can just point it at a folder in a git repo to upload
#
jamietanna[m] (if you're thinking of it being uploaded as-is)
#
Ruxton jamietanna[m]: private as in only you or private as in you+some people?
shoesNsocks joined the channel
#
jamietanna[m] Ruxton: private as in mostly me, but I'll be building it in a way that allows me to share with others too
jonnybarnes, [tantek] and rEnr3n joined the channel
#
[tantek] I agree with the ambiguity of private in that usage. I think we stared trying out "friends only" as a form of "limited audience post" whereas private means literally just for the author
#
[tantek] also why I think DM is preferable to PM (for direct messages vs "private" messages)
jonnybarnes and ecobos joined the channel
#
Ruxton nods
#
Ruxton cheers, thats why good terminology is important
#
Ruxton limited posts in static land, you can just do with HTPASSWD, but I don't feel like that covers private. In thinking about it a bit, I think the concept of a private post is almost counter-point to a static site
[KevinMarks] joined the channel
#
jamietanna[m] That's a fair shout, thanks for calling that out!
jonnybarnes joined the channel
#
jamietanna[m] Yeah I think my solution cheats as its not quite static, but ticks most of my boxes - now just need to finish the write up, with updated naming to be "friends only"
#
sknebel I know some folks have done hidden URLs. and one of those paywall things did JS to decrypt with external service. but yeah, private posts and fully static is a difficult proposition
ciudadanob[m], [Jean_Philippe_], dckc, fauno, KartikPrabhu, gxt, jonnybarnes, [pfefferle], [tb] and electronicmaji joined the channel
#
[tb] jamietanna[m] interested in what you're doing here as you and me are both on Hugo 🙂
#
[tb] Are you going to auth in front of the private posts with Netlify's auth or something?
#
[tb] I don't know if you could do this with Netlify because I don't think you can intercept requests with Netfliy Functions, but I bet with something like CloudFlare Workers and a static site, you could route private posts through a CloudFlare Worker that then runs an IndieAuth authorization grant flow back to the viewer's own IndieAuth endpoints, and if they're on an allow list that you bake into the function then the worker will let them in
#
[tb] And even give them a session (pretty sure CloudFlare workers can set cookies)
#
[tb] I'm probably switching my site from Netlify to CloudFlare workers just for reasons like this
#
[tb] ↩️ Well it's pretty specific to my own bespoke backend, but feel free to take a look! https://github.com/craftyphotons/singulus
#
Loqi [craftyphotons] singulus: The backend hub for tonyburns.net
dckc joined the channel
#
[tb] Also IndieAuth just being one example there, you could have your authentication worker support an authorization grant flow for other sites as well like GitHub/Twitter/etc too of course
gRegorLove, [pfefferle], KempfCreative, [KevinMarks], wolftune, [grantcodes], KempfCreative1, Hory, swentel, jonnybarnes and [fluffy] joined the channel
#
[fluffy] I had gone through a mental exercise of trying to do post privacy with static sites and the best I could come up with involved using .htaccess rules and in-server authentication, which is really just a dynamic site the long way around (and terrible and prone to leakage)
#
[fluffy] well, or having client-side decryption of DVDCSS-style encryption, which seemed even worse
jonnybarnes, gRegorLove, swentel, rrix and wolftune joined the channel
#
nekr0z [fluffy]: at which point I'd just openly put up posts that are GPG-encrypted with pubkeys of the intended readers and call it a day
#
[fluffy] yeah, pretty much
swentel, cjw6k, rrix, [Murray], kensp and [KevinMarks] joined the channel
#
[KevinMarks] small web << https://www.sciencemag.org/news/1999/09/its-small-web-after-all
#
Loqi ok, I added "https://www.sciencemag.org/news/1999/09/its-small-web-after-all" to the "See Also" section of /small_web https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=72260&oldid=72259
#
[KevinMarks] small web << https://smallweb.net/
#
Loqi ok, I added "https://smallweb.net/" to the "See Also" section of /small_web https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=72261&oldid=72260
jamietanna joined the channel
#
jamietanna Thanks for the interesting thoughts [tb] and [fluffy]! I'll hopefully be posting it this evening!
#
[KevinMarks] small web << https://thesmallweb.co/
#
Loqi ok, I added "https://thesmallweb.co/" to the "See Also" section of /small_web https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=72262&oldid=72261
#
[KevinMarks] small web << http://www.thesmallwebpeople.co.uk/
#
Loqi ok, I added "http://www.thesmallwebpeople.co.uk/" to the "See Also" section of /small_web https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=72263&oldid=72262
[jeremycherfas] joined the channel
#
[jeremycherfas] [KevinMarks]++ for much-needed clarification.
#
Loqi [KevinMarks] has 20 karma in this channel over the last year (73 in all channels)
#
GWG I have a date based archive question for everyone
#
GWG In my main feed, the entries are sorted from newest to oldest
#
GWG In a date based feed, they are as well, but if I'm looking at a specific date, I'm wondering if those feeds should be oldest first
#
GWG Anyone given this thought?
[tantek] joined the channel
#
[tantek] GWG, sounds like a design / UX question
#
GWG [tantek]: Correct. Curious what people have thought
#
GWG Might have to document on /archive
[chrisaldrich], jonnybarnes and wolftune joined the channel
#
[tantek] GWG worth capturing as questions there to be sure, perhaps in a brainstorming section?
#
[tantek] I feel like examples are mixed. In cases where an archive page is treated like a subset of a stream, there does tend to be a reverse-chronological order. In other cases like a month / calendar grid view, there's a chronological order. Not sure there's one "right" way to do it.
#
aaronpk i went with oldest first on my date permalinks
#
aaronpk whereas everything else is reverse chronological
KempfCreative1 joined the channel
#
[KevinMarks] interesting https://special.fish/
KartikPrabhu, thelounge24478, wolftune and jonnybarnes joined the channel
#
GWG [tantek]: I was looking at https://david
#
GWG https://david.shanske.com/2020/08/22
#
GWG The photos form a narrative of the day
#
GWG I suppose I could make a collection post or such
#
[tantek] GWG that is a *great* example of why to use chronological ordering on archive pages
#
[tantek] it automatically forms a narrative for that point/range in history
#
GWG I have to see if I can easily change mine
#
GWG It would make a good five line plugin
swentel joined the channel
#
jacky jamietanna: I think [fluffy] is!
#
jacky oh I didn't finish scrollback lol
#
jacky also yeah w.r.t private posts, I don't _think_ they can truthfully exist without some sort of trusted implementation of clients to _not_ allow unintended use
#
[tantek] GWG, aaronpk, you've convinced me, I've added it to my list of things to fix in my archive pages (display items in chronological order)
jamietanna joined the channel
#
jamietanna jacky what do you mean by "unintended use"
[fluffy] joined the channel
#
[fluffy] Accidental leaking to non trusted readers I assume
#
[fluffy] Ideally preventing purposeful leaking too but that’s more of a social problem than a technical one
#
[tantek] right. screenshots of text message conversations are posted to Twitter, not sure what you can do to prevent that or discourage it?
#
jacky yeah
#
jacky well
KempfCreative joined the channel
#
jacky a proper client could request to disable screenshots
#
jacky (most bank apps tend to do this)
#
[tantek] I mean I suppose expiring messages helps?
#
jacky and Signal provides this as an option
#
jacky that can too but only if they don't screencap in time
#
[tantek] sure, then use a second device to take a photo
[tb] joined the channel
#
[tb] Snapchat just shames you to the other person
#
[tantek] can't avoid the analog hole
#
jacky right but at that point, it's like showing how much effort one is taking to capture content that they shouldn't
#
[tantek] to be clear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
#
jacky which can be used as a bit of a form of social shaming (why are you doing that?)
#
[tb] Yeah, in the end you just need to define a boundary for your threat model
shoesNsocks and [Jose_Leiva] joined the channel
#
[Jose_Leiva] ↩️ nice thanks
jamietanna joined the channel
#
jamietanna fair shout folks! not something I've considered so far - post will shortly be up though, doing last minute checks
leg joined the channel
#
Loqi [indienews] New post: "Investigating Solutions for Private/Friends-Only Posts on a Static Website" https://www.jvt.me/posts/2020/08/26/static-site-private-posts/
#
[tantek] oooh
[fluffy] joined the channel
#
[tantek] first impression, really appreciating the faux retro-terminal styling jamietanna++
#
Loqi jamietanna has 10 karma in this channel over the last year (34 in all channels)
#
jamietanna[m] Thanks Tantek ☺
KempfCreative1 joined the channel
#
jacky niceeeeee
[chrisaldrich] and jonnybarnes joined the channel
#
[fluffy] @jamietanna I kind of feel like once you start down the path of having a custom service that fronts/decrypts your static content there’s not much that makes this really worthwhile as a static website anymore. Which is why I ended up making Publ a dynamic publishing system. Although your approach does have the nice benefit of letting you maintain your site repo in public git.
#
[tantek] do we have page collecting examples of such retro terminal styling? I feel this is definitely "a thing" on the IndieWeb and have seen many examples (literally only on the Indieweb, absolutely none on any silo)
[KevinMarks] and [snarfed] joined the channel
#
[snarfed] gmail has one, but it’s pretty minimal
#
[KevinMarks] The ones that do crt filters are extra special
#
[fluffy] My writing page is styled to look like an old typewriter
#
[fluffy] there are a few company sites I’ve seen with terminal-esque components but they’re usually part of an ARG sort of thing
#
[fluffy] like when Google was doing their hiring minigame
#
[KevinMarks] Well, if you're emulating games that ran on CRT, you need a filter to make them look right as they were designed with scan lines blurriness, and look over pixellated if you just draw them as rectangles
awolf and seekr joined the channel