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).

Using OPML to organize information for use

Recently, Ken Smith shared an example of a directory of activities to do during a wedding weekend (primarily for attendees not familiar with the area). I recently started a OPML directory of sorts on Oregon elections. Using the drummer.this.how feature from Dave Winer, these directories can be easily reviewed by others. I also recently created a Github repo to collect thoughts on organizing information for use, but it is not in OPML format (although it could be…)

In the early days of OPML, some people were trying to organize podcast directories using OPML files. The idea was that someone could be the maintainer of a directory on a topic, and that file could be included as a folder/directory within a larger directory structure. After playing with the new includes feature in opmlPackage, I started thinking about this again. My impression is that many people who post lists of things do so with the idea of sharing, but the reuse of that sharing is difficult. However, if the list was in an OPML file, this would lend itself to reuse/sharing/remixing. If you had a group of experts who could summarize/curate information/resources for a set of topics in OPML, this could be the basis of a larger work which could be updated at anytime by any of the experts (see Ken Smith’s “Beyond griping” post for more info). As I mentioned in this post, maybe starting a little “beachhead” for experimentation would be in order. Watch this space for more details!

Playing with includes in opmlPackage

This afternoon, I spent some time experimenting with opmlPackage from Dave Winer, focusing on the new feature to include other OPML files within an OPML file. The includes feature is only part of the Node version of the package (other features can be used in a browser). I changed the OPML file that had example includes to use three reading list files that I had in OPML format. I then changed the demo script to add logic to write out the new outline as a file (you can see it in this Gist) and ran it locally on my laptop. Finally, I created another copy of the OPML client to display the new outline (you can see it here). Looks like the includes feature is working fine!

Who is running to represent you?

As I posted yesterday, with primaries wrapping up, the candidates for the major parties are being chosen. Some candidates will run as an independent (like Betsy Johnson in the Oregon governor’s race). For most, if not all, states in the United States, the state office of Secretary of State is responsible for running elections within a state. These offices have been working to be able to provide unofficial results as soon as an election concludes. To find this, search for “secretary of state yourstatename elections” to start. Oregon has an excellent site, and your state probably does as well. Check it out!

Who represents you?

With the primary elections wrapping up across the nation, you might have a question – who is my representative? At the state level, a voter has a state representative and a state senator (except for states that have a unicameral legislature (one chamber, not two)). At the federal level, a voter has a US House representative, and two US Senators. But with redistricting going on as part of the 2022 elections, someone different might be representing you.

How to find out? The Oregon Legislature has a page to allow you to enter your address and find out who your current representative are (searched on “how to find my representative in Oregon”). Next, you might do a search on “yourstatename redistricting”. For me in Oregon, this lead to a website for the Oregon Legislature on changes made for redistricting. This site also had links to a GIS site with PDFs for Oregon state House and Senate districts, and US House districts. From the earlier page, I could find my state House and Senate district, and was able to download the map. In a few minutes, I had all the information I needed.

Next step – who is running for office this fall? Tune in soon!

I had a problem today looking at Ken Smith’s activity outline that I posted about on May 30th. When I looked at the page on my laptop, I would get a message saying “This site can’t be reached”. When I looked at the page on my phone on Wi-Fi, I got the same result. When I looked at the page on my phone on mobile data, I was able to see the page. Has anyone else had this problem?

How change happens

Seth Godin had a great post last week that speaks to Ken Smith’s citizen toolkit post, here are the key paragraphs:

Going to the protest of the day, performing acts of slacktivism, hopping from urgency to emergency–this is how people who day trade in our culture are whipsawed. But the people who are consistently and actively changing the culture are not easily distracted. One more small action, one more conversation, one more standard established.

The internet would like us to focus on what happened five minutes ago. The culture understands that what happens in five years is what matters.

Focused, persistent community action is how systems change. And systems concretize and enforce cultural norms.

If you care, keep talking. Keep acting. Stay focused. And don’t get bored.

Hey Lazyweb and Org mode users! I tried to install org-opml this weekend but had problems – anyone else tried this?

A great example of organizing information for use

Ken Smith wrote a post yesterday showing a great example of activities that wedding attendees could participate in around the wedding date. The example was an outline created in Drummer and published using the drummer.this.how construct/PagePark plugin. This could be done for any event, with a permanent URL that can be sent to a group, and updated as needed since Drummer is a web app. Or – this could be a set of instructions, which could be updated based on feedback. Or – this could be an agenda for a meeting. Or – hopefully you are getting the picture – it could be any information that can be easily structured in an outine. Boom!

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….