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When I heard about indieweb I implemented h-entry stuff for my blog but half-way through doing webmentions I realized it sucked. Webmentions requires receiving
by superkuh 7y ago
When I heard about indieweb I implemented h-entry stuff for my blog but half-way through doing webmentions I realized it sucked.
Webmentions requires receiving x-www-form-urlencoded data. Why they chose this convoluted and complexity increasing way is beyond me. Embedding (or encoding) it in the URL string itself would've been infinitely easier for everyone with no downsides. But no, with x-www-form-urlencoded variables you need to actually be doing some dynamic scripting to handle it. If not actually some script listening for that location/endpoint then at least a series of complex nginx directives and modules to get x-www-form-urlencoded logged with all the rest of the request. This additional complexity makes running a static website that supports indieweb standards like a tail wagging the dog in terms of the webmentions receiver's relation to the static http site.
microformats2 h-entry markup is cool though. Just using class names for html elements to make some info parsing "standardized".
- CarelessExpert 7y agoEh, I'm having no trouble supporting webmentions with Jekyll (using webmention.io and a plugin). Yeah, it's a bit annoying having to integrate with a web service, but it's not that big of a deal. And bluntly: most people running blogs aren't using a static site generator, anyway, so it really doesn't matter that much.
- superkuh 7y agoThe kind of people that care about indieweb are exactly the kind of people running self hosted static websites with blogs. Few on blogspot or wordpress are going to care. Anyway, how did you manage to receive webmentions and set up an enpoint? Are you passing it off to some dynamic scripting language to handle?
- CarelessExpert 7y agoIf that's true then the whole exercise is pointless (which, I guess, is a valid claim). WordPress dominates the blogging world. Jekyll, Hugo, etc, are drops in the bucket by comparison. Winning that market over is absolutely required if Webmention is gonna gain any level of adoption.
- epeus 7y agoThere is of course a WordPress plugin for webmentions https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/webmention/ https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/webmention/
- CarelessExpert 7y agoSorry, I updated my post with a bit of implementation detail. http://webmention.io http://webmention.io, which is a standard web service running separately from the blog itself, receives webmentions for me (it's a hosted service, though you can also self-host). A Jekyll plugin pulls them down on site build, which I run periodically on a schedule.
- superkuh 7y agoAh, thanks. But that kind of proves my point re: webmentions. The whole indieweb thing is suppose to be independent. Webmention's implementation complexity pushes people back to third party centralized services, or, vastly increased attack surface and maintenance on their own setup.
- CarelessExpert 7y agoYeah. That's why I said I could host it myself if I wanted, in a container separate and isolated from my blog. I'm just too lazy to bother. This is gonna be the case no matter how the content is passed in the request (I.e. url vs form encoding). It's dynamic content. What is your proposed solution for supporting dynamic content on a static site that doesn't involve running some kind of service on the side?
- superkuh 7y agoIt's not so much not running a service as not running any more services that are receiving connections of any kind from the 'net. I trust nginx. I don't trust some webmentions specific script or program. I implemented my website's (see profile) comment system based on a tiny perl script that tails the logs from my webserver. It's completely separate and no internet user is connecting to it. Any URL, followed by the string "/@say/" like, "http://what.ever/something.html/@say/Neat http://what.ever/something.html/@say/Neat something" is added to the comment page.
- CarelessExpert 7y ago
- epeus 7y agoUsing a hosted service like webmention.herokuapp.com webmention.io or mention.tech is an option for a static site, or running your own instance of one of these (they're all open source).
- superkuh 7y agoLets pretend this is an option and I'll stop hosting my website from home for the first time in 20 years to use someone else service. How would you receive webmentions on one of these? It's two variables submitted as a POST as x-www-form-urlencoded data.