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đź”– Bookmarked: Step 4 - Sending Webmentions using Webmention.app and IFTTT

“We’ve previously enabled our site to receive Webmentions, but what can we do about sending Webmentions to other sites? Much like we use Webmention.io to handle receiving Webmentions, we’re going to use Webmention.app to handle the sending. And the best bit is, we don’t need to make any modifications to our site!”

I’ve added a new article to TextPattern which covers integrating with Remy’s new Webmention.app service to enable sending of Webmentions for sites which don’t have that capability natively.

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I’ve just posted the second how-to article to IndieWeb Textpattern – preparing your site for IndieAuth.

This one took a bit longer to write than I anticipated. IndieAuth is a slightly weird concept to describe and write about in easy to understand terms. I’m trying to keep the level I’m pitching IndieWeb Textpattern at to be pretty low, so I found myself going back and revising things several times. On the plus side, writing about these topics is reinforcing how they work in my mind. Practice and documenting things have always been my best teacher ?

While I was researching the article I discovered that IndieLogin doesn’t necessarily check for an authorization_endpoint link at URLs marked as rel="me" – something which was unexpected behaviour. I’d planned to use this site as my example authentication provider, but couldn’t and reverted to using Github. I’ve added this to my list of things to investigate.

If you’re interested, here’s the current content plan for the site, although I’ll be adding more articles as I re-familiarise myself with developing Textpattern plugins, and open up more integrations.

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đź’¬ Replied to:

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Thanks Chris!

Webmention.io is definitely my plan for adding webmentions initially, and will probably be the step 3 article (IndieAuth is step 2 and being drafted right now).

If, or rather, when I look into writing a plugin to send webmentions I might bring receiving into it as well… but the more I look into Webmention.io, the more I think I’ll just keep things simple by having it continue to handle all of the receiving.

Thanks for adding the wiki page – I’ll be sure to add links and other information as I finish writing it up!

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I noted the other day that Textpattern might be a good fit for some people trying to build their own websites, but that there wasn’t much in the way of resources to get them plugged into the IndieWeb.

Well, I went and started to do something about that. #IndieWeb TextPattern is a site where I will be exploring and documenting how to add various IndieWeb building-blocks to their Textpattern website. There’s not a whole lot of stuff there yet: just the mission statement, and how to add an h-card using form templates; but my intent is for the site to grow into a kind of guidebook for interested parties to be pointed to from the IndieWeb wiki and elsewhere. I was inspired by the short series of posts Gary put together about Blogger recently.

It’s been years since I last used Textpattern — possibly more than a decade(!) — so there will have to be a lot of experimenting and exploration before I figure out everything that will be needed. I want to get the “quick wins” out of the way at the start, then at some point I anticipate having to write new code as part of this project… hopefully just as Textpattern plugins, but there might be some features which need a “bridge” service to get working. I mention in the introductory post some of the areas where I think I’m going to have to write code, but for now, those are all later concerns ?

In the more immediate future, my planned content includes: getting a site ready for IndieAuth, adding microformats to post templates, receiving WebMentions, and possibly implementing post kinds in a manual capacity. If you have any suggestions at all for the site or topics, please do let me know!

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Once upon a time I was heavily involved with the Textpattern community, but I haven’t used or kept track of TXP for several years now. It randomly popped into my head over lunch that Textpattern originally had an ethos which aligned really well with IndieWeb ideals.

It had a plugin system for extending the core, could define custom metadata, override how to display particular articles, and it was also easy to modify themes to add things like microformats/special meta tages, etc. Looking back, it sounds ideal for some users?

I could only find a passing mention in the IndieWeb wiki. If I find the time, I might explore and document setting up an IndieWeb-integrated site using Textpattern.

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With all this iPhone hoo-ha happening of late, I’ve finally started thinking about this “mobile web” thing. It’s been hard not to, with all the noise about iPhone SDKs – or lack thereof. Personally, I’m all for the whole web app thing when it comes to phones. Maybe it’s just me, but it makes sense. Obviously there’s the local data storage issue, but I’m sure some bright spark will figure out a solution some day.

Anyway, where was I going with this? I forgot. Oh yes… Blogging from a phone. We have WordPress, MovableType, SimpleLog, Textpattern, and so on, but they’re all desktop web browser dependent. Most are graphic – and JavaScript – heavy. Most which I have tried out reward larger screen estate. These are all major limitations of the mobile web as it stands.

This week I will be getting my hands on my new phone. It’s not an iPhone, but an HTC P43501. We’ve been using them at work for a while now, and they rock pretty hard. Yes, yes, I know I’m a Mac user, and it’s a Windows Mobile device… big whoop. Anyway, I’d love it if there we a nice blogging tool like the afore-mentioned WordPress, etc, which featured a nice, mobile optimised writing interface in addition to the fully-featured desktop version. Something which fits a 240×3202 screen nicely.

I have a feeling though that if I want something like this, I’ll have to make it myself. Which is a shame, because it means it’ll probably never get done…

  1. Catchy, huh? Maybe they should have stuck with the “Herald” code-name instead. ↩
  2. Well, 320×240 once oriented for use with the keyboard. ↩
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There’s a bit of a long-standing bug in Textpattern, and its handling of time zones. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher to get your head around, so bear with me. It’s probably best described with a simple example, so here goes:

  • Our writer/site admin lives in the UK. It is British Summertime. His time zone is therefore GMT+1.
  • Textpattern is installed on a server in Australia. Its time zone is GMT+10.
  • The site admin sets the time zone in TXP to his own GMT+1 and writes a few articles.
  • British Summertime ends, so the writer’s time zone is now just GMT. Daylight Savings Time (or whatever) starts in Australia, making it GMT +11.
  • All the date-based permalinks in TXP go all to hell. Most appear a day out of line.
  • New stuff that gets written is inaccessible as TXP can’t decide if the publish time has passed or not.

It’s a strange one, and a bit of a pain in the ass. There’s been some discussion in this forum thread, but no consensus on how to fix it or even if it is a bug. The common workaround – which isn’t an ideal one for many people – is to just keep to one time zone and ignore anything like DST, BST or other “time modifiers”.