Notes For Indieweb Presentation at KWLUG

At the KWLUG meeting on September 12 2016 I gave a short introduction about the IndieWeb. I do not have any slides which are worth publishing but I will summarize what I presented and provide some links.

I think that the 2 of the core principles of the IndieWeb are: * owning your own data * use visible data (N.B.: There are other principles too too.)

The key technologies to achieve this are:

  • microformats, where semantic information is encoded directly into the HTML
  • webmention (e.g. a new simpler pingback), which allows notifications to be sent to other IndieWeb users

There are a variety of ways to combined these 2 ideas which are described in the building blocks page.

Now, with all of this Indiweb sites could talk to each other but are effectively forming a new social network that has not external connections. However, there are 2 ideas to address this:

  • first, POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere)
    • this is preferred because your content still lives primarily on your own site
    • but it is pushed out, so you can still communicate with your friends and family using the systems that they prefer
    • you may also want to backfeed comments, replies, RSVPs, etc. from the silos that you POSSE to. This allow your site to present a more full view of the activity surrounding yours posts
  • second, PESOS (Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site)
    • the copy on your own site is not the canonical version with this method, which is not as good
    • still useful in making you less dependent upon the silo where you are publishing your content, as you always have another copy

Getting started

Get a name

  • traditional DNS (short and long if possible)
  • something distributed would be nice but not sufficient (e.g., NameCoin)

Choose a system to use

Follow some checklists to gauge your progress

Example scenarios for publishing posts

Here are the simple examples that I walked through in my presentation:

Posting an article about the KWLUG meeting

<article class="h-entry">
  <header>
    <h1 class="p-name">
      About KWLUG September 2016
    </h1>
    <p>
      By <a class="p-author h-card" href="http://andrewsullivancant.ca">Andrew Sullivan Cant</a>
      on <time class="dt-published" datetime="2016-09-12 23:30:00">2016-09-12</time>.
    </p>
  </header>
  <section class="p-summary">
    <p>
      Here are some notes about <a href="http://kwlug.org/node/1031">KWLUG September 2016</a>.
      Presenters include <href="/">me</href>, <a href="http://sobac.com/bjonkman/">Bob</href>, Kirk and more.
    </p>
  </section>
  <section class="e-content">
    <p>And here I can say all the things.</p>
  </section>
  <footer>
    <a class="p-url" href="http://andrewsullivancant.ca/2016/09/13/articles/about_kwlug_september_2016">
      permalink
    </a>
  </footer>
</article>

Steps to publish it

Making a comment on the meeting

<article class="h-entry">
  <a href="http://kwlug.org/node/1031" rel="in-reply-to" class="u-in-reply-to">
    KWLUG September 2016
  </a>
  <div>Hi I am a comment.</div>
</article>

Steps to publish it