Get on the IndieWeb in Minutes
Indie Web Basics
Tuesday 1H & 5H
Convener: Kevin M.
Notes-taker(s): Darius D
Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered: indieweb, webmention, micropub
Kevin started by presenting the basic concepts of Indieweb. This all exists at http://indiewebcamp.com , so we will provide limited notes here for context and links to useful resources with more complete information.
Back to first principles of the Web:
http://indiewebcamp.com/Principles
- My identity on the web is my website.
- I communicate by publishing things there
- Each of my posts pushes out from there to various places, depending on needs, purpose, post type, etc.
- Interactions on those various places also are pulled back into your own website, so that you can see, for example, "Kevin Marks liked this on Facebook".
There is also an Anti-definition: avoiding the Silos
Several companies and organizations have built something “open” that really just turns out to be alternatives to the commercial silos, but end up with many of the same problems. Most fail.
See Also: http://indiewebcamp.com/sitedeaths [Check link]
But The Silos are Actually Interesting and Useful
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Flickr, etc. have real uses that people like. Your friends are there, interesting people are there, they are useful, usable, and have attractive apps that make them easy and pleasant to use. So we connect to these services and cross-post or “syndicate” things from our own website to these services as needed. For example, you post an interesting link to your website and the link and title get posted to Twitter. We call this POSSE.
POSSE Overview
This is the idea that you can “Post (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere” Example:
I post to MySite, and the Title and Link are posted to Twitter, and the Title, link and an Excerpt are posted to Facebook.
PESOS
“Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site”
Because some online services provide tools that are compelling. The Instagram App, for example. If you like that service, the right thing to do is just make everything you post there syndicate back to your own website. We Call this PESOS.
The Glue that makes it all work
To make this all work, there are some protocols and tools that make it easy. Webmention
Webmention is a protocol that allows someone at one site to mention a
http://indiewebcamp.com/Webmention
Brid.gy
Brid.gy is a service that connects up the silos to webmention. It provides the round-trip of likes and mentions on Facebook and Twitter (for example) back to your own site.
http://indiewebcamp.com/Bridgy
IndieAuth
OAuth-based authentication using your domain as your identifier. IndieAuth goes to your domain and finds the rel=“me” links, and gives you a choice of any of those which provide OAuth.
What’s important here is that you are logging in using your domain as an identifier and some linked OAuth provider as authentication. if you come back to login again, you don’t have to remember which OAuth provider you used. Any of the ones that you have linked up properly will work.
More info:
http://indiewebcamp.com/IndieAuth
MicroPub
A lot of the posting mechanism is powered under the hood by Micropub, which is a defined way of posting structured data to a site.
http://indiewebcamp.com/Micropub
(This page is formatted oddly, with an index at the beginning, so scroll down for a huge amount of detailed info.)
How get Started
This is a walk-through that takes you through all the steps, providing tests of each functionality and links to useful resources for getting everything working.
Where to find out more
IRC - #indiewebcamp on freenode
Events:
http://indiewebcamp.com/events — includes:
- Homebrew Website Club
- Indie Web Camp
