Michael Bishop, @miklb

Sometimes chef, sometimes WordPress developer, all the time web curious.

Working on

Community projects

Currently working on a WordPress theme that is IndieWeb ready. Slowly working into contributing to the community WordPress plugins.

I previously created a Jekyll theme, allowing people without a web presence or new to IndieWeb an easy way to get up and going using GitHub pages.

Repo: Jekyll IndieWeb Theme

Wants to work on

In no particular order:

link-preview
Local Checkins/Better OwnYourSwarm integration

Itches

Use micropub more for likes and replies. Better organization of my site for notes/bookmarks.

now-listening type posts are also something I want to add. Have looked at few different ideas, and either working towards PESOS from last.fm or use Indigenous when it’s released for micropub, but that may require some tweaking as I don’t think it will support initially.

Problem with last.fm is I’m not sure I want all of my songs scrobbled and turned into posts, rather be able to selectively share, thus back to micropub of some fashion.

I'd also like to get my native comment replies in WordPress to POSSE through brid.gy as Twitter replies.

Meaning, I write a note, POSSE to Twitter. Someone replies on Twitter and it backfeeds as a comment. I reply to that on my WP site, it POSSE’s as a reply back to Twitter.

IndieWeb setup

Currently I am using WordPress with a hand rolled theme.

Plugins used include:

webmentions
webmentions for comments
bridgy publish
semantic linkbacks
syndication links
micropub
post kinds

Previously I had a Jekyll site that I hosted on my own VPS. I used a webmention.io plugin for receiving mentions. I also leverage brid.gy to POSSE to Twitter. My Jekyll code is still hosted on GitHub, and use Travis CI to build and deploy the site when changes are pushed to the GitHub repo, which also works for hosting site on GitHub.

Used Webpage Micropub to Github to publish to GitHub repo via micropub. Modified the webmentions.io plugin to syndicate micropub posts as well using brid.gy. All code in my GitHub repo.

Thoughts on WordPress

The gist of my observation in setting up WP is that the lack of mf2 and emphasis on theme supporting them. I approached setting WP up as a new user, and what my goal would be, POSSE to a silo (Twitter) probably would be a 1st step. Installed the webmention plugins, set up bridgy, and it failed due to lack of mf2 support(latest WP theme, 2016). If I wasn't already familiar with these steps, it would be discouraging, and some (most?) might delete the plugins and move on, not knowing why it didn't post to Twitter. The failure was fairly silent without reading the raw json on bridgy.

Currently the theme section is way down the page and doesn't emphasis the importance of mf2. Only one theme is linked, along with a plugin that seems geared towards a commercial framework, Genesis is mentioned.

I know GWG is working on improvements to the IndieWeb plugin,but right now it's emphasized in the wiki. It just directs people to download 10 more plugins, without doing anything. The ala carte plugins might be great for a seasoned user who wants choices to build IndieWeb into their existing site, but for someone just setting up WP it's overwhelming. 2 plugins for Webmentions doesn't make sense.

There needs to be a section for "I've heard WordPress is what I should start a blog with, and I want it to be IndieWeb. What do I need to do?" Reproducible steps to POSSE to common silos.