PeterSmith.org | Second Steps in IndieWeb

Second Steps in IndieWeb

After my first steps to IndieWeb, I got a really helpful message from Robbi Nespu. Alas, I've not (yet) got webmentions working in any real way, and the page he commented on had a broken URL (all my problems, not Robbi's).

He said:

Hello Peter Smith, How going? I also using Hugo, the getting webmention response working is easier if using a javascript called as PlaidWeb/webmention.js

Some tips from my experience

Setup the h-card because it important and needed for indieAuth (to use some external services such as https://webmention.io

You may use https://xray.p3k.io to inspect if the HTML are parse correctly, you can submit the URL or just paste the raw HTML (even with localhost / 127.0.0.1 addressed inside the source code, it working very well). It save my time during debugging.

I also use https://telegraph.p3k.io to preview (check) if all link inside h-entry support webmention. You also can manually send webmention by give a source and target from there.

Lastly, validate published web using https://indiewebify.me/ get your website until level 3.

Hope this helpful 😀

So, what's my progress so far? (beside's Robbi's smiley face emoji not displaying correctly in emacs)

Level 1: Become a citizen of the IndieWeb
1. Get your own domain name: Done. Many years ago.
2. Set up Web Sign In: That was easy. Or it was until I decided to not use <link rel="me" href= ..../>. And once I had that working I too the time to break it again.
Level 2: Publishing on the IndieWeb
1. Check your homepage h-card: I really should read the specs more closely. I bashed my head against a brick wall for a while with this. Even though I used bits of HTML from Aaron Parecki and from Chris Aldrich, it still took too much time.
2. Check your posts are marked up with h-entry: Not so hard, although I have had to tweak the layout of may pages somewhat. Categories, aren't elegant yet.
Level 3: Add the ability to send Webmentions to other IndieWeb sites

This is a work in progress. I can do it manually using, say, https://telegraph.p3k.io but I've yet to automate things. The bigger challenge is getting other people's Webmentions to appear on my site.

Update 2022-01-09

I have just figured out that the posting Robbi did was to a page whose URL was broken; The page should have been https://petersmith.org/blog/2021/10/07/first-steps-to-indieweb/ and not https://petersmith.org/blog/2021/10/10/20211010-first-steps-to-indieweb/ (notice the extra date in the slug of the posting).

That little problem has been fixed but it does mean his posting doesn't point anyway (for now) — but I'll fix that in my next update to the blog (using Hugo's ability to have aliases).

The bigger problem is that the code I am writing to display webmentions would be horribly complicated by dealing with aliases. I cannot see an straightforward way to do that. Sorry Robbi ☹