#dev 2026-01-22

2026-01-22 UTC
cotsuka, shoesNsocks, vidak, sebbu and grufwub joined the channel
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[Sophia_wood]
[artlung]++ - I got my first webmention! I have decided to show these as π:
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Loqi
[artlung] has 40 karma in this channel over the last year (236 in all channels)
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tgagor
I did now, and looks like it didn't send the missing one. Can I do something about it?
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[artlung]
nice [Sophia_wood]!
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tgagor
[edit] I checked Bridgy now, and it looks like it didn't send the missing one. Can I do something about it?
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tgagor
I tried to use "Resend for post" in Bridgy, now I can see only one "like" - so it's not getting better ;/
blacklight, cotsuka, jonnybarnes, DanQ, simpleauthority_, simonbc, gRegor and [snarfed] joined the channel
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[snarfed]
tgagor sorry for the Bridgy trouble! https://brid.gy/mastodon/@tgagor@mastodon.social looks like it eventually sent all of the likes on that post, and one repost . it didn't send the other because they have #nobot in their profile bio: https://brid.gy/about#opt-out
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[rose]
Hi all. I admit I get a bit overwhelmed by chat systems without a separate topic thread structure. Maybe I am too used to forums from the 90s! Hence being a bit sporadic in how I drop in...
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[rose]
Anyway, topic for today: Backups. What system do people prefer? My own situation: VPS, about 80 GB max., and a storage box, about another 120 GB. I had initially used Restic, but god one tweak and I seem to break my script fast. Takes a bit of work to make it more user-friendly, but it's good for almost byte-level de-duping. Rsync, so much easier, and if you can integrate hard links, you can dedupe at the file level. What are other people
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[rose]
doing in similar situations? Something kind of important here is that Restic is slower on initial sync but much faster on all syncs thereafter. But Restic backups cannot be used as is, while rsync by nature pretty much can. I know some people also use borg and other systems...
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GWG
I'm using rclone to sync it to my NAS then running snapshot backups there
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[tantek]
what is a backup
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Loqi
A backup of an indieweb site should have everything necessary to redeploy it on a new webhost https://indieweb.org/backup
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jadedblueeyes
Just spent a lil less than an hour adding support for likes n stuff on my site via webmentions.io + bridgy
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jadedblueeyes
Was surprisingly easy
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jadedblueeyes
:3
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jadedblueeyes
Will probably add comments in a bit
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jadedblueeyes
But that'll be harder cause I have to process the HTML
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jadedblueeyes
Wish we had matrix here lol
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[tantek]
we used to! matrix was too fragile and their bridges broke down
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[Al_Abut]
Question I've been meaning to ask for ages: what's the difference between bridgy and posse party (and any other cross-posting I’m forgetting about)
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] Bridgy has three aspects: Backfeed, Publish, Fed. Bridgy Publish is the rough equivalent of POSSE party
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[Al_Abut]
I used to use a pretty popular app for it back in the day, Buffer
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[aciccarello]
POSSE Party has support for the more popular networks but requires some more complicated setup.
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[tantek]
Bridgy tends to be higher fidelity from an IndieWeb perspective, supporting more content types to more silos, features like original post permalinks etc. The others less so
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[aciccarello]
Mastodon and bluesky are supported by both, but the others are different
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[aciccarello]
Plus you have to host posse party yourself
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[snarfed]
also the biggest difference is probably backfeed. lots of things cross-post! very few backfeed
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[tantek]
yep, hence my top level point above 🙂
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[snarfed]
yes! thank you! just wanted to reiterate
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[snarfed]
http://micro.blog is one of the few (only?) other full-featured backfeed implementations I know of
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] the problem with things like Buffer, POSSE Party, and others is that they tend to be very / only outbound focused, for distribution, marketing etc. which is a very different vibe/use-case.
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[tantek]
In contrast to, if you actually want a back/forth with people, you need POSSE + backfeed, which only Bridgy provides as a service AFAIK
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[tantek]
if you're a broadcaster, yes, lots of solutions. if you want to stay in touch with friends, Bridgy is kinda it.
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[Al_Abut]
Gotcha. I get it from a technical perspective now, thanks for the round up from you both! I can see the utility of adding backfeed to your original site like @jadedblueeyes did above, that looks cool. Sort of like a modern distributed version of old school blog comments, or the interactions in a Medium post.
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[Al_Abut]
Still not sure if it's for me though. I’m torn between it being a low friction way to link conversations vs it being context collapse of a different sort. That's where I can see the one-way broadcast being a feature and not a bug, if each platform has its own vibe and strengths.
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[Al_Abut]
Like I don't see how it enables more back and forth, as you put it T
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[Al_Abut]
?
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[tantek]
I don't think platforms as special as they make themselves out to be. I honestly think the whole "special snowflake" framing of platforms is marketing by the platforms to make themselves seem more special than they really are
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[Al_Abut]
I can see that. My lived experience is very different though and there's where I'm drawing from, not “marketing” whatever that means.
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[tantek]
I think it's about the people, not the platform. like yes you may experience something "special" but it has to do with the people, not the platform.
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[Al_Abut]
Again, not in my experience
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[Al_Abut]
Since I follow and talk to the same people on different platforms
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[Al_Abut]
Which is normal human nature. I'm going to have very different conversations with one buddy in a group ride on my bike than I am with that same buddy talking about recipes in a cooking class or coffee shop meeting consulting about their business ideas or whatever
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[tantek]
the back forth is literally you post, they comment, you reply, they reply to your reply etc. that's the back forth
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[tantek]
there's also an activist element to it, not letting platforms be special, and treating them as "plain" as a way to lower expectations about them and shift attention away from them
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[tantek]
because they don't have your interests in mind.
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[Al_Abut]
Yeah again, not sure I follow how backfeed helps all that instead of plain vanilla posse. Sounds like it'd be a coffee talk instead because I'm not getting something over text.
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[tantek]
like not going to Starbucks because they're anti-union / mistreat their workers. sure it's nice cafe to hang with friends, but if the proprietor is a jerk then vote with your feet / dollars
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[Al_Abut]
Over text it's one of those things where asking the same question in different ways makes it sound argumentative when I'm just being dense and not getting it
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[artlung]
Your original question was _"what's the difference between bridgy and posse party (and any other cross-posting I’m forgetting about)"_
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[tantek]
backfeed keeps the conversation on our site, calmer, more focused, like blog comments, instead of lost in the algorithm stream
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[tantek]
on your* site
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[artlung]
do you have a sufficient answer yet? if not, what's missing?
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[Al_Abut]
[tantek] Ah, so you see it as calmer because you're not having to go to those various platforms to see who’s replied?
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[tantek]
Platform UX is like Vegas, designed to distract you away from focused conversations
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[Al_Abut]
[artlung] no, don't have an answer yet because I don't get the why behind using the tool beyond just the technical capability to do so
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] plus you can reply to replies *from your own site* instead of having to use distracting Platform UX to do so
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[Al_Abut]
Ah! I thought you meant going to each platform to reply in kind there and I was like, then what's the point?!?
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[artlung]
so your question is "why"
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[Al_Abut]
[artlung] it is now, yeah. First I didn't even understand the technical difference and then the follow up is to understand the point of the difference.
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[Al_Abut]
[tantek] is it Bridgy that allows you to do that reply-on-your-own-site? Or just webmentions.
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] there's a whole section on POSSE replies that describes that better, but yeah, being able to always reply *from your own website* is incredibly liberating and empowering, and never having to go to each platform to reply
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[artlung]
we have https://indieweb.org/why_post if you sort out an answer I suggest starting a https://indieweb.org/why_bridge
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] Bridgy Publish + webmentions supports POSSE reply-threading yes
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[Al_Abut]
[artlung] great suggestion! “Why Bridge” is the succinct name of this side quest.
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[Al_Abut]
Why backfeed is new to me:
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jadedblueeyes
[tantek]: well, not so much broke down but it became too much effort for m.org to run free ones
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jadedblueeyes
one of the other communities I'm a part of - musicbrainz- runs their own stuff and bridges to IRC and Discord from matrix
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[tantek]
we used to run a bridge, until the matrix side broke down
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[tantek]
does musicbrainz have docs on how their matrix bridge works?
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[Al_Abut]
Does anyone manually or selectively show webmentions on their site? I.e. curate which ones to show instead of displaying them all by default?
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[Al_Abut]
I don't want to turn the clock all the way back to the blog commenting days and have anyone be able to add words to my own site without permission
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[artlung]
yes. And I delete or edit comments too. I don't have to do it much. But back in the day I did it quite a bit. comments, pingbacks, trackbacks, webmentions.
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[artlung]
in terms of editing, I've edited grammar, spelling of folks' comments.
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[Al_Abut]
[artlung] so you have a dashboard where you click on stuff to display? Or it all displays by default and you delete stuff after the fact.
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[artlung]
WordPress makes it straightforward to do that. In the venues where I have raw webmentions I have to do that more manually.
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[Al_Abut]
Ah, got it
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[artlung]
raw = not managed by WP
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[Al_Abut]
Sigh. Sometimes I hate being an old school static site kind of guy, haha.
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[artlung]
now, I have a huge surface area for spam comments because I do not close posts to comments. maybe I have handful. Akismet is the plugin which helps with that.
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[artlung]
What is Akismet?
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Loqi
Akismet is an anti-spam webservice from Automattic that has various levels of service both free and paid https://indieweb.org/Akismet
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[aciccarello]
Al, you could see having a static site as a benefit in that you have more control over when mentions get added to your page.
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[Al_Abut]
[aciccarello] fair!
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jadedblueeyes
[tantek]: It's an instance of appservice irc run via matrix docker ansible deploy
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[Al_Abut]
[aciccarello] is that what you do with 11ty?
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jadedblueeyes
we want to move away from it to a bridge that's maintained though
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[aciccarello]
I actually don't have webmentions as part of my build yet. I only load them client-side
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jadedblueeyes
Probably heisenbridge or maturix-irc depending on when we move
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[Al_Abut]
[aciccarello] that's very cool. I'm already using http://webmention.io as a sort of internal dashboard. Is there a way to selectively add specific webmentions through that library? Or is it a binary all on/all off kind of thing.
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[aciccarello]
I think you would have to log into http://webmention.io to remove/block mentions you don't want.
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[Al_Abut]
Ah
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[Al_Abut]
Yeah then it sounds just like blog commenting moderation
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[Al_Abut]
No thanks
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[Al_Abut]
Avoiding that kind of admin tax from the blogger days is probably half the reason I'm still rocking static sites
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[Al_Abut]
Makes me want to make a “why static” wiki page
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[aciccarello]
I'd suggest a why section on an existing page rather than a separate page
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[Al_Abut]
Yeah I just realized that when looking through the wiki
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[Al_Abut]
Which led to finding this fun hot take:
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[Al_Abut]
[tantek] I'm curious about this line from the anti-db page:
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[Al_Abut]
> “It's likely that eventually we'll come up with something resembling a database / storage API on top of an HTML+microformats2 file.”
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[Al_Abut]
How's that going?
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[tantek]
exceptionally low like next to zero admin tax ☺️
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[tantek]
literally helps me feel calm about my website and sleep better
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[KevinMarks]
You can leave http://webmention.io as the repository and add filters to webmention.js to block the sites you're not interested in sharing
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[artlung]
Webmention io has moderation tooling as well / deletion is one, domain bans another.
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[Al_Abut]
This is good info and food for thought. Thanks gents!
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[Al_Abut]
Feel like I crowdsourced my own personal HWC this morning because I couldn't make either of the ones yesterday 😆
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[Al_Abut]
I've got a solid chunk of this afternoon set aside for working on my site for the first time since houseguests arrived almost two weeks ago.
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aks
Do people here selfhost things like webmention? I dont mind relying on it for now but i'd like to have my own thing, since i already have a script for sending
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aks
webmention.io i mean
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[tantek]
Typically people build the webmention receiving capabilities directly into their CMS rather than self host a separate service
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[aciccarello]
I know webmention support is on the roadmap for indiekit too which is a micropub server for static sites.
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aks
Ah okay, since i use a static site
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aks
Will check out indiekit
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aks
Im thinking of making my own static site generator because fun, so i want to probably integrate this stuff there
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[aciccarello]
I say it is on the roadmap but I don't think any work has been done. I'm still using http://webmention.io
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aks
I'll keep using it too
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aks
What i was thinking of selfhosting my own webmention.io server
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aks
So i could have it all under same roof so to say
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[aciccarello]
I don't think http://webmention.io was meant to be self hosted so there might not be documentation for that.
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aks
Yeah i cant find any
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aks
But any other similar tool would do. Best if its super simple my small brain can use
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[aciccarello]
I've also seen a few projects follow the same API model as http://webmention.io
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[aciccarello]
I can't remember which exactly
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aks
I keep wondering "how do we poll for mentions" but its "send-only" right?
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aks
So we wait for others to contact
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gRegor
Yeah, they're a notification sent (POST). If you come across a link back to you, you can manually send that webmention though
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aks
Oh makes sense
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aks
I love how simple it is in the end
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gRegor
Some of us have a form at the bottom of posts to send a mention, so that part can become even easier
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aks
Yeah im planning to add that to my site too :)
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gRegor
nice!
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aks
I will also make a notes feed that i will be using for more "casual" posts, which i publish on mastodon too
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aks
Not everything but blogposts are very longform things, then notes are like "hey heres pictures of my pet lizards" lol
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[KevinMarks]
I built mention.tech but it's on a deprecated version of appengine so I wouldn't recommend running your own version, but the basic webmention functionality is not complex to implement on anything that supports web endpoints and some kind of backend storage
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aks
Currently using bridgy for publishing
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[aciccarello]
aks, on my static site I have a step after my build to pull the latest post and send mentions for it.
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aks
[KevinMarks]: Ah interesting
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aks
[aciccarello]: I use something called "wm" that is ran on my rss feed after deployement
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gRegor
lizards++
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Loqi
lizards has 1 karma over the last year
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[aciccarello]
Yeah, probably the same one I use
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aks
And i have a webhook to my server from codeberg, so the moment i write new thing and push to main, it runs the script
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Loqi
[preview] [kevinmarks] mentiontech: webmention experiment
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[rose]
Sorry I am so ADHD today. I wrote that then just... disappeared! GWG - fair enough re: the rclone method. Yeah, was considering that. I feel like I should be using Restic, but it's just... more annoying. 😄
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aks
[KevinMarks]: Thanks i'll check it out too
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GWG
[Rose]: I did it that way because it was easier...it means I have minimal redundancy with the one way sync and then I only had to set up one snapshot for all the server backups.
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[rose]
@GWG: Yeah. It's interesting cos it is the way I was originally planning to do it - precisely because yes, it is easier. 😄
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GWG
rclone is just a bit easier to set up vs rsybc
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[rose]
Restic is a pain but ahh, yes. It is more secure, and has better deduplication built in.
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GWG
rsync. Because I also use it to external buckets as well
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[rose]
And the sustainability argument: It's a lot faster after the initial setup compared to rsync.
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[rose]
And it can dedupe even more cos it picks up partial changes to large files
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[rose]
I'm fighting with myself here. The should-use solution versus the easy-to-use solution.
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GWG
Been there
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[rose]
Restic is just... A PAIN.
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[rose]
😄 I need to decide. For now I'm using rclone until I can be arsed to properly set up and test Restic again.
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[rose]
I probably will go back to Restic. I feel as a sort of pro I really should be using the most sustainable solution, and know how to reliably implement it for others... (I'm an Editor of the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines, and going for rclone when I do already know Restic is better is sort of... not in line with the standards I am trying to hold myself to.)
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[rose]
:*( Cry, though, because rsync and rclone are just so much frigging easier.
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GWG
[Rose]: Bandwidth isn't the concern it once was
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[rose]
Yeah, it's also about time and efficiency though. And data size.
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gRegor
aks, your mention of lizards reminded me to make this silly thing: https://gregorlove.com/lab/lizard.php
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aks
Finally, a lizard button
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gRegor
haha I can't be the first to make one
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[Sophia_wood]
[Al_Abut] I am grabbing the count and just putting that with a pi on each page. if a mention would add to a post, I may manually incorporate it. I do this at build time only and my python script lets me know what new mentions there are - I am very new to this.
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[tantek]
[Sophia_wood] is the use of the pi symbol there a subtle "The Net" reference?
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capjamesg
[snarfed] I noticed something about the HTML fragment support in granary conversions. If I don't encode the source URL the conversion doesn't work.
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[Sophia_wood]
the site is banjomagpi (pi) - so no, but art is in the eye of the beholder.
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[snarfed]
yeah you have to escape the #, otherwise user agents generally don't send it to the server, as defined by HTTP
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capjamesg
Oooh, interesting.
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capjamesg
That is very good to know.
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capjamesg
Is there a reason why that is the case?
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[snarfed]
probably!
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capjamesg
Time to do some research!
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[snarfed]
I mean...you can if you're curious! but obviously don't expect to be able to change it 😁
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capjamesg
[snarfed] Yeah 😄
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capjamesg
I think updating my HTML is more prudent than proposing a spec change 😂
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capjamesg
[snarfed]++ encoding the URLs works thank you!
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Loqi
[snarfed] has 36 karma in this channel over the last year (53 in all channels)
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capjamesg
I'm not sure where it fits on the wiki but https://jamesg.blog/hwc-notes lets you follow HWC archived notes via a web feed.
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[Al_Abut]
Does anybody have a semi-automated posse setup? I hear a lot about manual or fully automated, but I'm thinking of a 3rd way. Something like an array in my frontmatter of where to syndicate to, or nowhere at all.
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aks
well with bridgy you can automate it like this https://brid.gy/about#webmentions
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aks
well, semi automate
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aks
just dont add that to your post if you dont want it published
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[Al_Abut]
Nice! Just what I had in mind, thank you!
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aks
no problem
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aks
im learning new things about this constantly too
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gRegor
I semi-automate my (CMS land, not static) by adding the bridgy link temporarily as a syndication link, then a button shows up on the post only for me to send a webmention. Click Send, check it cross posted, then remove/replace that syndication link on my post.
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gRegor
Bluesky gets a syndication link since I have a dedicated bsky account (not via Bridgy Fed), whereas Mastodon is fully on Bridgy Fed, so no syndication link.
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[Al_Abut]
[gRegorLove] interesting. Is there a pattern to which ones you cross-post vs not?
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gRegor
All articles are syndicated. Notes it depends on the audience really. Sometimes I'm just making some dev notes for future me or maybe to share here, don't send them to bsky/mastodon
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gRegor
read posts I don't generally syndicate there either
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gRegor
replies or likes are also location dependent of course
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[Al_Abut]
Does “Mastodon fully on Bridgy Fed” mean everything is automated for Masto and you're more selective about bsky? Or did I read that wrong.
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gRegor
I'm selective about both
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gRegor
The difference is bsky I set up an account the "normal" way. It was before Bridgy Fed, so I have a username/password. Mastodon I'm using Bridgy Fed entirely. If you view one of my posts on Mastodon directly (may need to refresh the permalink), it should redirect you to my permalink, because BF makes gregorlove.com my fediverse profile
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gRegor
That's what I meant by "fully"
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gRegor
Example: https://xoxo.zone/@gregorlove.com@gregorlove.com/115923684631858416 this should warn you it's redirecting. The "fed.brid.gy/r" link it shows is just a redirect to my canonical link, due to how Mastodon works
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Loqi
[preview] [gRegor Morrill] Link Roundup
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[Al_Abut]
Oh interesting. Wait, I seem to remember some issues with that when I was trying to reply on Mastodn to something you said. Or was that Cam Pegg? It was a while ago.
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] my initial POSSE setup was semi-automatic and would give me a preview of the POSSE copy before it propagated so I had an opportunity to edit before POSSEing
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[tantek]
I think semi-automatic is a good approach. That way you have opportunity to review and put some thought into the syndicated copies
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[Al_Abut]
Cool cool, glad to hear I'm on to something. I feel the same nerves about auto posting as I do about autogenerating the RSS, which I didn't know I didn't have to do until recently
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[tantek]
[Al_Abut] I was VERY picky about what my POSSE tweets looked like so I super overthought (and likely over designed) the problem and that's why most of the /Twitter article is this section with intricate details about how to POSSE every sort of thing to Twitter: https://indieweb.org/Twitter#POSSE_to_Twitter
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[Al_Abut]
Oh I can relate to that. I wordcraft my descriptions a lot too.
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[Al_Abut]
To the point of often describing the same post in different ways on different platforms.
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[tantek]
Except that I literally wrote code to handle ALL of those scenarios
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[tantek]
It worked so well for so long
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[tantek]
Now it's not part of my posting flow at all
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[Al_Abut]
What do you do now?
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[tantek]
My occasional POSSE tweet is 100% manual for the past few years
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[Al_Abut]
Do you posse anywhere else?
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[tantek]
Issues, comments, reacji to GitHub
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[tantek]
Photos to Flickr via BridgyPublish and IG manually (been a while though, still fixing my photo post flow and aggregation page)
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[Al_Abut]
Interesting
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[Al_Abut]
Interesting want to pick back up the momentum on photo stuff again soon. Been derailed lately with a combo of microformats feed and general life stuff.
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[Al_Abut]
The MF feed is acting as a blocker dependency on all kinds of projects
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[tantek]
Oh nos sorry to hear that (about it being a blocker). LMK how I can help
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[Al_Abut]
Thanks man, I absolutely will. For now just cross your fingers that it's more of a mental blocker about finally shipping it?
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[tantek]
I have so many blockers sometimes I find it easier to help others get unblocked
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[Al_Abut]
I'm still super stoked to get off RSS, enthusiasm hasn't waned, just that the energy to get it over the line went into non-screen stuff
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[Al_Abut]
Oh god yes, that's a real thing. Probably why I gain energy from dispensing unasked for impromptu design audits 😆
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[Al_Abut]
[KevinMarks] is there an uptick in atproto momentum lately?
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[Al_Abut]
I liked the other articles you shared earlier this week
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[Al_Abut]
Just to keep tabs for curiosity, I'm not sure where it's all unfolding
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[KevinMarks]
I'm seeing a lot of devs using it as a distributed storage for apps in the way that we hoped for in OpenSocial and TimBL has been pitching for SoLiD - OpenSocial we gave the social network silos too much control; SoLiD has all the LD bad smells and complexities. I give Paul Frazee the credit for making developer experience work with OAuth and personal storage, albeit fully public.
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[KevinMarks]
If you want a long read on the history of his thinking see https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/issues/820 and https://github.com/pfrazee/json-lz/blob/master/DESIGN.md which were when he was trying to make a PDS part of a browser
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Loqi
[preview] [pfrazee] #820 Application data schemas & how to manage decentralized development
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[artlung]
I've seen more than a few people noting enthusiasm for ATmosphere Conference. https://atmosphereconf.org
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[artlung]
(obvs I have self-selected folks building Bluesky stuff who are on Bluesky)
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[KevinMarks]
I do like the idea of going, though tricky currently with no employer
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[tantek]
Would be a good opportunity for an adjacent IndieWebCamp if any PNW folks can step up to organize
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[morgan]
I was about to say thats in my neighborhood albeit over a border so if anyone is around could get a coffee or hang out
DanQ, cotsuka and [snarfed] joined the channel