post

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A post is either a piece of content or the act of publishing that content (usually in a way that is shared). It is different than a page

• A discreet piece of content (perhaps a note or an article) — see also posts
• The act of creating the aforementioned content
  • Also used elsewhere, e.g "posted a comment", "posted a photo"

Why

This section is about why you should post in general. For why you should post on your own site, see:

• why

Why post something? Excellent question, and the answer is likely to be very personal, much more so than the general why IndieWeb question (and answers).

Perhaps start with analyzing what do you already post, and where? E.g.

• Do you post on silos?
  • What kinds of things do you post on silos?
  • Why do you post any one specific post on a silo?
  • Is that something you could post to your own site instead? (and POSSE)
  • If so, try it. If not, why not?
• Do you post on public mailing lists?
  • What kinds of things do you post on mailing lists?
  • Are they things you could post on your own site first? And POSSE to the mailing list with a link back to your post permalink?

How to

How to post

• "Open your text editor and write a blog post without overthinking it." - gRegor Morrill: Hello, 2018!
• Participate in National Blog Posting Month
• Pick a 100 Days Projects that resonates with you, and just start posting something small every day (maybe start with a "7 Days Project" and see how you feel after a week)
• Twelve Blog Post Writing Tips From 2012 - tips for both short and longer form posts. A few of them (see post for full list) - Tantek Çelik
  1. Single topic post
  2. Tweetable post title
  3. Summary opening paragraph
  4. Put tangents aside
  5. Quotable Tweetable sentences
  6. Local text editor
  7. Lists are nice
• ...

How to parse a post

How to determine the:

• original URL of a post
• author of a post
• name of a page
• implied type of a post

And how to:

• Find info to display a post as a comment

What to post

Having trouble coming up with inspiration or ideas about what to post? See if any of these resonate (or add your own when something inspires you to post, and sign your name!)

Any time

• Something positive that you did today
  • Tantek Çelik: positive doing then posting
• Write about something that you wish was documented better, or that you want to refer back to as your own documentation
  •   Jamie Tanna: Blogumentation
• ...

Annually

• Your Year in Review (see examples therein)
• ...

Brainstorming

Why post

Why you (might want to) post (or just why write). Share your reasons why you post, maybe they'll help motivate someone else!

• Dries's comment:

  I write for myself first. Writing, in many ways, pushes me to think; writing is my process to flesh out ideas.

  I write for the conversations second. I use this blog to think out loud in a public space, and to start conversations with people thinking about the same topics.

• Shawn Wang: Learn In Public: Posting as a mode of "learning in public":

  You already know that you will never be done learning. But most people "learn in private", and lurk. They consume content without creating any themselves. Again, that's fine, but we're here to talk about being in the top quintile. What you do here is to have a habit of creating learning exhaust. Write blogs and tutorials and cheatsheets. [...] Don't judge your results by "claps" or retweets or stars or upvotes - just talk to yourself from 3 months ago. I keep an almost-daily dev blog written for no one else but me.

• ...

Why post positive things

• Tantek Çelik five reasons here: http://tantek.com/2018/357/t3/five-reasons-post-positive-things-promptly

Why not to post

Perhaps even document thoughts on why you might not post:

• Avoiding self-promotion. Some alternatives:
  • post promoting others's good work instead or first
  • post something for a community (like an indie event for a community meetup like HWC)
• ...

What to post next

Have too many things or drafts to post and not sure what to post next or in what order?

• Tantek Çelik:
  1. post things for the future first, RSVPs, events, and other posts like announcements that will positively impact the future, and bring people together constructively in the future
  2. post things from that day, per http://tantek.com/2018/364/t1/sixth-reason-post-positive-things-promptly
  3. post previous drafts of positive things oldest to newest from the past week or month, per http://tantek.com/2018/364/t5/post-that-day-then-date-time-previous-week-month

What else to post

See if any of these resonate: (or add your own when you find sources of inspiration to post)

• Jot down ideas for posts, no matter how incomplete; could just be a word or fragment. Use a text file, notepad, or whatever is easiest for you. Re-visit the list periodically and expand those into posts.
• Anniversaries of projects or activities you started/joined and have kept up with
  • publish on the day of or within a few days of the anniversary date
  • provide a highlights or a brief summary of what you did on the subject in the past year
  • link to previous years's post(s) on the subject
  • (good incentive to implement on this day to help remind you of anniversaries!)
• ...

Posting to Support Open Source

• Open Source communities should encourage contributors to post for a variety of reasons.

See Also

• Category:PostType
• posts