discuss

💬 Join the #indieweb discussion via the web, Slack, IRC, Discord, ~~or Matrix~~ clients now with additional channels for dev, wordpress, and meta specific chat!

All are welcome to participate in chat and meet other members of the IndieWeb, discuss personal websites and IndieWeb projects, ask for help with technical issues, and more.

Wondering Which channel should I use when and why?

See: Which chat channels for what purposes

For technical information about how our chat and related services function, see discuss infrastructure.

Read Discussions

Discussions about the IndieWeb take place primarily in our chat channels:

Read recent IndieWeb discussions:

#indieweb general chat — start here!
#indieweb-dev developer chat
#indieweb-wordpress chat
#indieweb-meta chat
#indieweb-stream chat

Join the discussions! The IndieWeb chat is bridged equivalently across four different chat services so that users can use their preferred chat client!

Web (just use your browser!)

Online #indieweb chat! - click the blue "Join the Chat" button at the bottom.

Tips:

When using the online chat, you can change your username by sending /nick <new username> into the chat.

Join via Slack

Slack bridge to #indieweb chat (Sign up here)

Join via IRC

IRC:

Having trouble connecting? Refer to Libera’s Connection Guide

Join via Matrix

2023-08-06: The Matrix bridge hosted by element.io is currently disabled, and it is currently unclear if an "official" bridge we can use will return in the near future.

Join via Discord

Discord invitation link: https://discord.gg/dqmFnvmN7N

The Discord bridge is using the go-discord-irc daemon; if you encounter issues with the bridging itself, please ping Peter Molnar.

There are some ongoing issues with the Discord bridge: messages from Discord to IRC may get lost in the wire. Please report any problems you experience.

Add your icon

To have your icon or avatar show up on some of the platforms you'll need to add yourself to the list of chat-names (even if you're not using IRC). Due to some restrictions, avatars may not necessarily bridge across all platforms.

Chat Channels Purposes

Each of our chat channels has a specific purpose documented below.

Channel purpose mini-FAQ:

Not sure which channel to use?
- ask in #indieweb-meta!
Not sure if something belongs in #indieweb or #dev?
- ask in #indieweb-dev first
WordPress topic/example that seems more broadly IndieWeb related?
- ask in #indieweb-dev first

indieweb

#indieweb channel: Welcome to the indieweb! How to get on the indieweb, get started, how to post, what to post, indieweb events to join the community in-person, why indieweb (including applying principles directly to pragmatic personal site goals & improvements), what software / services are ready for users to use without dealing with coding or command lines.

Keep it user-centric please!

Not sure if you should ask a technical question here? Ask yourself:

Could someone who has never built a website understand what you’re about to say/ask?
- If not, please ask in the indieweb-dev channel instead!
- Everyone’s skill level and experience is different. Avoid words like “simple”, “just”, “obviously”, “easy” when explaining things. Such words may cause shame when people run into difficulty. Further reading is available in a blog post written by Chris Coyier on words to avoid in educational reading.
Is someone using jargon, code, or dev talk?

Politely request such conversations move to the indieweb-dev channel (see below). We encourage the whole community to help with this, to keep the main chat friendly for newcomers and folks that want to focus on using the indieweb! And it helps avoid encounters like:

https://twitter.com/klandwehr/status/977237843293720576
- "Recently joined the IndieWeb Slack and I feel like I’ve entered a foreign country. The words I am reading are English but at times they make no sense. The IndieWeb is just not ready for normals, but I sure hope it will be" @klandwehr March 23, 2018

For topics about the community, reasons/thinking behind (or evolving) the principles that are not otherwise directly tied to specific personal site improvements, please take those discussions to the indieweb-meta channel.

Lastly if you’re not sure where you should ask about a topic, you can ask that question in indieweb-meta.

dev

#indieweb-dev channel (#dev in Slack): Development tools, services (like Bridgy), issues, APIs, creating anything besides content, and any kind of jargon. E.g. creating design, UX, implementation details, protocols (like HTTP, Webmention, Micropub, IndieAuth), formats (like HTML, CSS, microformats2, h-entry, h-card, h-event), frameworks, coding languages (like JS, PHP, Python, Ruby), server configuration (Apache, nginx, HTTPS), and other plumbing.

wordpress

#indieweb-wordpress channel (#wordpress in Slack): WordPress-specific topics: Getting Started with WordPress, IndieWeb WordPress plugins, WordPress themes, general WordPress development. If a discussion becomes more generally applicable beyond WordPress, consider taking it to the #dev channel.

stream

#indieweb-stream channel (#stream in Slack): Loqi reports tweets and posts that mention IndieWeb keywords in this channel. Twitter search includes mentions of "indieweb" and "indiewebcamp". Mastodon tag feeds for the keyword "#indieweb" from mastodon.social and indieweb.social are included. There are also a number of individual blogs followed with a filter for indieweb-related keywords. You can also read the combined feed of posts (except the tweets) at https://stream.indieweb.org

chat

#indieweb-chat channel (#chat in Slack): Off-topic channel for discussing anything, and is not publicly logged. Even though Slack has some number of lines of scrollback, this channel is considered off the record. It is the expectation of community members that this channel remains off the record. Explicit quoting or even summarizing someone should only occur after getting explicit permission.

Related Chat Channels

Related channels often used by the community:

microformats channel

#microformats (#microformats in Slack): Ask about microformats in general, or the process of developing a new one or new features by researching, documenting examples, brainstorming, etc.

known channel

#indieweb-known (#known in Slack): Similar to the wordpress channel, the Known channel is for Known-specific topics (plugins, evolution, troubleshooting etc.)

Slack Users

Slack users:

Join the IndieWeb Slack Community!
Join additional channels!
- From the desktop: click the **Channels** heading in sidebar to view the other channels. Click a channel, i.e. # dev, it will show you a preview of that channel with a Join Channel button.

Search

The chat rooms (except for #indieweb-chat) can be searched at

https://indiechat.search.cweiske.de/
https://chat.indieweb.org/ (by typing into the search box and clicking the search icon which will redirect to the site above)

People on IRC

Main article: chat-names

See our list of chat regulars sorted by nickname, with their website and usual timezone(s).

The channel has regular administrators, who are also wiki administrators. If you want to get their attention, just say "adminhelp".

Activity

Anecdotally the channel seems quite active:

08:00-10:00 Pacific Time (-0800/-0700)
16:00-18:00 UK Time (+0000/+0100)
17:00-19:00 EU Time (+0100/+0200)

Differences between chat services

Each of these four options is roughly equivalent from a text perspective, though each may have features, configurations, or other niceties that differentiate them somewhat from each other.

Depending on your chat client, users from Matrix may show up with a [m] on their usernames, Discord users will have a [d] following their names, or users from Slack appear with their username in brackets. Some usernames may have the word "app" after them to indicate their content is originating from another platform. For cross-platform notifications to work on the receiving platform, one may need to include the [d] on screen names from Discord.

Some platforms, like Slack, will unfurl URLs or provide a link-preview into the chat while others will allow wiki page names pre-pended with a slash to autolink to the exact wiki webpage (eg: "/principles" in some chat platforms will link to the principles wiki page). Slack emoji responses aren't bridged to other platforms, so giving a heart or thumbs up to someone's post won't be seen unless they're also on Slack.

Keywords

People frequently in chat might like to be aware that many chat clients provide the ability to allow their users to be given real-time notifications when either their username or other specified keywords are used in individual channels. (Check the documentation of your chat client(s) for details.) This can be useful if one wants to engage in conversations around particular topics in chat.

Many organizers and project developers will have turned on notifications for keywords related to projects they're actively working on or which they support. Other community members or volunteers may have notifications for particular topics/keywords on which they're an expert and are willing to provide pointers or support. Keep in mind and be respectful of the fact that almost everyone in chat is an unpaid volunteer and we're all on different work and personal schedules as well as in different timezones. Depending on how often people are in chat and whether or not they read all the logs, Loqi can be helpful for communicating across time and space.

Using an IRC client

If you're already an IRC user, setup your client with:
- Server: irc.libera.chat
- Port: 6697 (usually default)
Join the channels above (by clicking on the chat links)

See the libera.chat connect guide if you’re having trouble connecting.

Email

There is no mailing list! 🎉

This is a deliberate decision. We encourage focusing on short discussions in chat and capturing incremental agreements/disagreements on the wiki. This also discourages long essays and repetition of arguments that can take place on email threads.

For more see:

FAQ: Is there an IndieWeb mailing list

Logs

If you prefer an email-like experience reading things in the past, see the current logs!

https://chat.indieweb.org/today will display the current day’s discussion log.

The source data of the logs served at chat.indieweb.org is available on GitHub.

Logs on Your iPhone Home Screen

To add the IRC logs to your iPhone home screen, visit the page below on your phone:

https://chat.indieweb.org/today?bookmark

Follow the link on that page. Then, from Safari, add that page to your home screen.

Suggestions

We have the most awesome IRC logs on the web. That doesn't mean they can't be even more awesome. Got an idea, suggestion, or issue to report about the logs? Create or comment on a GitHub issue:

https://github.com/indieweb/chat.indieweb.org/issues

Why isn't there a channel for X?

Historically, the number of channels in the IndieWeb community chat has grown organically. From time to time we do add new channels, generally when there is a consistent level of discussion and conversation that either makes it overwhelming or potentially unwelcoming to carry on discussions related to specific topics. This is balanced against the possibility that a new chat channel would be either so quiet or infrequently used that asking questions or attempting to have a conversation there wouldn't be conducive or would result in people repeating the same question in multiple channels.

There is usually an annual conversation about adding new channels at the organizers' meeting at the IndieWeb Summit, though other conversations do happen throughout the year or can be brought up in the #indieweb-meta channel.