Glossary plugin now available for Micro.blog and Hugo sites

As a result of this thread, I have developed a glossary plugin for Micro.blog! Thanks to @JohnPhilpin for his review and testing. The plugin is available in the Plugins directory, and more info on using the plugin is at the Github repo. Enjoy, and let me know if there are any questions!

In addition, the shortcode and data file within the repo can be used for standalone Hugo sites, so Hugo users should take a look as well. Credits go to Brian Wisti at Random Geekery for basically developing the entire concept!

Solved my problem with WordPress caching

For a long time, I have had problems with apparent caching of WordPress RSS feeds. In my recent work on WordPress support for rssCloud, I eventually was able to get a notification about a WordPress update from the RSS Cloud plugin, but the content of the feed did not update. I spent some time on this again this week, and decided to search for “wordpress caching issues bluehost” (since Bluehost is my hosting service). I found this post on ThemeSkills which described a feature within the Bluehost interface that controls caching on a site-by-site basis. After reading through the post, I was able to turn off caching on my test site for RSS Cloud. I then made a post on that site and saw the update within seconds on FeedLand and MyStatusTool, and saw the latest post display – at last!

Here are the steps:

  • Log into Bluehost account
  • Click on the My Sites link on the left navigation bar
  • Scroll to the site to review and click the Manage button
  • Click on the Performance tab
  • In the Cache Settings area of the page, slide the slider all the way to the left. If it is already there, move it to the right to the Blog area, then back all the way to the left
  • A pop-up will appear, click on the Disable Caching button

PS – Here is a Bluehost page on this topic as well

Had a great conversation today with Colin Walker on MyStatusTool development! Colin has added “reply” functionality in his tool – I need to catch up! This is all lots of fun – good to be working with someone….

Having a conversation using rssCloud

This weekend, Colin Walker and I were able to have a conversation using our respective microblogging tools (MyStatusTool and MST-PHP). It was a cool and fun experience. I felt like we were taking the first steps to explore how to use these tools.

I sent email to a number of friends when I announced MyStatusTool, and one of them replied that he did not know what problem this was trying to solve. I thought about it and today realized what is it – a bootstrap to develop something new. Dave Winer has been referring to bootstraps throughout his blogging career (this essay is an excellent summary, and it is over 20 years old). The concept of MyStatusTool is a specific type of bootstrap:

My Status Tool is an application that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies.

from https://github.com/andysylvester/myStatusToolDemo

So, really, this is a bootstrap of a new type of Twitter. Dave Winer had a post about this in 2010:

Anyway, to answer the question posed by this piece — you bootstrap the federated 140-character loosely coupled network the same way you bootstrap anything. Let’s start with something very very simple, like two tin cans separated with a string. Something that is useful, perhaps minimally so, and can be federated. Then we use it. Then we think. Then we improve it. Start with working code. Start tomorrow, not next month. 

from http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/10/howToBootstrapFederated140.html

I will have more to say about this in the coming days – let me know if you want to be a part of this bootstrap!