Blogging

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What is the independent web?

I got a comment from a reader yesterday asking what I meant by the phrase “the independent web” in my previous post. In my post, I defined it as “websites and web presences that are not part of a silo like Twitter, Facebook, etc, where people own their data and control it”. An extension of this is using technologies like RSS for checking for site updates and for podcasting, which are not controlled by another platform (even though entities like Spotify and other streaming services would like to “capture and keep users” within their ecosystems). Wanting to double-check, I did some searching to see if there were other references to this phrase. and found a number of links I will add at the end of this post. To me, the key aspect of “independent web” is not being dependent on a silo (like Twitter or Facebook). This can be self-hosting or hosting on a service that provides good export (Micro.blog as an example). I recently wrote a post about how easy should it be to create a website, based on a discussion between several bloggers. The key point of that discussion, to me, was that Twitter/Facebook provides ease of use/setup/no cost, but also a lack of control. To me, if you want to have an independent site, you should be prepared to pay something for it, and the cost of hosting a weblog or website is pretty low. Finally, to me, the use of the term “IndieWeb” has grown somewhat beyond this “independent web” definition to include using technologies like Webmention as part of a website to site-to-site communication. Again, to me sites don’t have to use Webmention to be considered part of the independent web. I hope this helps answer the question my reader had.

Other links on “the independent web”:

Business Insider – The Independent Web

John Battelle – Identity and the Independent Web

Web Designer Depot – What is the Independent Web and Does It Matter in 2021?

Victoria Drake – Make your own independent website

The History of the Web – Toward an independent web

Mental Pivot – Support the independent web

What about the IndieWeb and RSS?

Dave Winer wrote a post with the title “IndieWeb should love RSS” recently, with one of the themes being that the IndieWeb has a lack of support for RSS. I would like to provide a little background from my participation in the IndieWeb community.

In January 2014, I attended a Homebrew Website Club meeting. This was (and still is) a gathering of like-minded people to discuss personal websites and making updates to them. The lead person was Aaron Parecki, one of the IndieWebCamp co-founders. We all introduced ourselves, and shared various opinions on web site development and talked about our individual sites. One of the things mentioned was the use of microformats as a technique/technology for building websites. I had not heard of this before, and looked into it more after the meeting. I then wrote a post on what I was interested in exploring, and one of the items was “following other sites”. What I found in looking at other Indieweb-type sites was that they did not have any RSS feed for posts. Specifically, the two co-founders, Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik, did not have feeds available for their sites. In the next meeting I attended, I brought this up. The response was that they were using microformats to encode data within their websites, and that there were microformat parsers which could read that formatted data and present it in a feed reader application. Aaron Parecki even did a hack on the Selfoss feed reader application to allow it to parse microformats-based sites and present site updates like a RSS feed reader would. I even wrote up some instructions on how to set this up (after the fact). In the meeting, however, I asked how the attendees expected people to keep up with site updates without some type of feed to monitor. Aaron’s response was that more people needed to adopt microformats. I said that this was a “boil the ocean” strategy and that people who use feeds to monitor sites expect to use RSS and Atom, not microformats.

Sometime after that, I noticed that both Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik started providing a feed for their sites, although it was really a feed generated by some other application that was parsing their microformats stuff. For the next several years, though, the general trend in the group of websites that considered themselves to be part of the IndieWeb community focused on microformats and technologies that built on microformats as a building block. Over time, this overt position against RSS/Atom feeds has subsided, and (per the IndieWeb website), I would say the current focus is on the principles of (1) principles over project-centric focus, (2) publish on your site, and (3) design and UX come first, then protocols and formats are developed second. In that list, RSS and Atom become part of a “plurality of projects“, acknowledging that there can be “more than one way to do it”, as Perl devotees like to say.

The more active IndieWeb members (Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik leading the way) have created a number of standards based on technologies grown from implementations on Indieweb websites (Webmention, Microsub, and Micropub). Time will tell if these develop into more mainstream technologies. I think Webmention (supporting site-to-site communication/commenting) is the furthest along (I have it enabled through WordPress plugin on my main site), but I am interested in exploring the others. RSS, though, has stood the test of time, and is still powering feed readers and podcast clients throughout the world. Dave Winer should rightly feel proud of his contributions in this area. RSS and podcasting are a crucial part of what I call (and others have called) the “independent web” (websites and web presences that are not part of a silo like Twitter, Facebook, etc, where people own their data and control it (also an IndieWeb principle)). The two areas (IndieWeb and independent web) share some features, but in my opinion, should not be considered “the same” – there are differences. My hope is that they can coexist and at times even work together, but always with respect (as the IndieWeb code of conduct states: “Be respectful of other people, respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered….”).

Checking out IndieBlocks for WordPress

This weekend, I tried out the IndieBlocks plugin for WordPress websites. In 2019, WordPress moved to a new editor for weblog posts called Gutenberg, which uses “blocks” to insert different types of post formats (text, formatted text, video, embeds, etc.). IndieWeb developers had developed a plugin to support different post types, but it used the Classic Editor (now called), and did not support the Gutenberg editor. I played with the “Context” block, and was able to create bookmark, like, and reply posts. I did have a problem with creating a standalone Note using the IndieBlocks plugin (I created it, but it did not appear on the home page). However, the developer said that he is working on the issue.

Back in July 2022, Dave Winer said he never suggested people should run their own web server. However, in the last week, he tweeted a link to this post from 2015 where he says “If you’re a journalism educator, please make sure every new journalist you graduate has the ability to run a server, install blogging and river software”. Just saying…let’s be consistent…

What does “two-way RSS” mean?

I read Dave Winer’s post on Two-way RSS earlier today, and I agree with the concept (publishing tools should allow other editors to create content), but I am not understanding referring specifically to RSS. In the Micro.blog site, a user can publish to a timeline from a RSS feed. However, all the editing in that context occurs in the tool creating the RSS feed. In past posts, Dave Winer has advocated for publishing tools to allow other editors to create content for that publishing tool. I am just having difficulty seeing how allowing “inbound RSS” solves the problem.

How easy should it be to create a website?

I read this in a post by Ton Ziljstra today, referencing a conversation between Ton, Aaron Parecki, and Tantek Celik. I think the correct answer is “it depends on what you want”. Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik are recognized as the co-creators of IndieWeb.org, and leading figures in the IndieWeb movement. The context of the question from Ton’s post is that you can do it on social media silo sites, but what about on the open web? I think that Tantek and Aaron would like to be able to see this happen on the open web, but they mentioned a third party silo (Linktree) as a solution.

I think that people like to get stuff for free. They like to access web services for free. So when someone thinks “I would like to have a website”, their first thought may be to look to a free service. However, in many cases, they do not “own their data“. They may not even own their own URL. To own your data, to own your URL, has a cost. It can be a small cost, but there is a cost. I would say that creating a site on WordPress.com, and paying a fee to have your own URL and to not have ads on your site, is the simplest way to have a site and own your data and URL. To totally own your web presence requires a little more cost and effort (I wrote a book on how to do it!), but again this is totally doable. Ton says he would create a small site writing HTML in Notepad. He could, but then he would need web hosting and a URL (see my book for how to do this cheaply!). Again, it comes back to the answer “it depends on what you want”. If a person is willing to let another site host their words for free – go for it! If you want to have more control, host it yourself, or pay for a site you control (like Micro.blog or other hosting sites).

The urge to fiddle around

Every so often (well, at least once a week….), I read about different blogging tools and think “I would like to try that out…”. Then, I remember this picture, and think “My WordPress setup is just fine, I don’t need to look at other blogging tools” (he says as he types this post in Drummer to publish with Old School). But…I had some time this weekend (Memorial Day holiday), so I spent some time looking at two tools related to Drummer.

The first tool was drummerCMS (a shell for the Old School blogging tool to connect with Drummer). Some time ago, I saw that Scott Hansen wrote a post about running drummerCMS locally, and that it could generate a set of files from the OPML blog file. I set it up per his post a few weeks ago, but had a problem, and set it aside. This weekend, I reached out to Scott Hansen, and he said that his original post had an error in the build URL, and he had updated the post. I tried it again, and it did create a set of files, but not the finished product I was hoping for (a set of HTML files that I could upload to a hosting site). I did a little looking through Old School, and saw that the tool is tied into uploading to Amazon S3, and although parameters related to that could be changed, the tool seemed to do the final render as part of the S3 upload. Sigh…setting it aside again… 

The second tool was written by Antranig Vartanian, and was using an XSLT style sheet to style an OPML file from Drummer as a blog. I took a slightly out-of-date copy of my blog.opml from Drummer, copied it to a folder on my web hosting service, copied the XSLT style sheet, added a link to the style sheet within the OPML file, and was able to create this rendering of my Drummer posts. Fun!

I guess a batting average of 1 out of 2 is not too bad…must…stop…fiddling….