Micro.blog - IndieWeb - EU-Vietnam Business Network (EVBN)

From IndieWeb

Micro.blog is a website and social service started by Manton Reece, which natively supports IndieWeb building-blocks like microformats2, Webmention, IndieAuth, and Micropub. Originally started as a microblogging service, it now offers the ability to post notes, articles, podcasts, and photos.

Overview

The Hugo-based (previously Jekyll-based) service supports posting of notes (up to 280 characters). Photos can be posted to the service (using Micropub) or pulled in via RSS.

The project was launched in beta on 2017-04-23 following a Kickstarter campaign beginning in January 2017 in which 3,080 backers pledged $86,696. The project was originally called Snippets.today.

One can bring their own project and personal-domain to the service and post to it via RSS or purchase a hosted microblog for $5/month with a free 10-day trial.

How micro.blog is different from App.net and other attempts:

📃 2018-02-01 Brent Simmons: Why Micro.blog is Not Another App.net

Micro.blog is not an alternative silo: instead, it’s what you build when you believe that the web itself is the great social network.
📃 2018-07-02 Manton ReeceThe web is the social network

Micro.blog is one of the first platforms to focus on domain names that decouple the timeline from post storage. Anyone can post a Micro.blog-hosted site at their own domain name today and move it all somewhere else tomorrow. It’s a simple, IndieWeb-friendly architecture that we think is essential to the next phase of the web.

Why

Micro.blog is a great way to get started on the IndieWeb and reach a thoughtful community in several ways:

Want to try out the IndieWeb without a domain? If you don’t have a domain name but want to try out some of the features of the IndieWeb, you can create a Micro.blog account, follow folks there, and reply to posts both on Micro.blog and elsewhere on the IndieWeb. If you decide to get a domain name, Micro.blog will help you transition to using it with their site (see 2), or even export your posts to a new site of your own which you can connect to your Micro.blog account (see 3).
Have a domain name but no site yet? For those without a primary website, they can register a domain and connect it to Micro.blog as a hosting service for a minimal per month fee. Micro.blog will then allow them to post notes, articles, photos, and other types of posts easily. If they choose, there’s excellent import/export to allow them to relatively easily swap platforms.
Have a site already? For those who already have a primary website on another service or platform, they can easily syndicate their content (via RSS or JSON) into the Micro.blog service and use the service’s reader to interact with other users while still owning their own content and receiving replies/comments via webmention. If their site also supports micropub, they can utilize the service to compose their content and micropub it to their own site after which it will appear on Micro.blog via feed.

Indieweb Examples

Getting Help

Bugs can be reported on Github. Micro.blog has a help forum with additional details and assistance. There is also a help account on the service itself that can respond to queries.

Features

Posts

Micro.blog currently supports several types of posts:

Personal domain

One can map over their personal-domain using CNAME as described here. This will allow you to own the URLs relating to the service; doing so will make it possible for you to move to another CMS in the future if you wish.

Themes

A variety of mf2 compatible themes are included with paid subscriptions that use the hosted service. At launch none would pass the Indiewebify.me tests as they didn’t include h-card or h-entry, but they’re improving support over time. They do have h-feed and h-entry as of 2017-05-02.

Creating or copying custom themes:

Microformats in Themes

See also IndieWebCamp Austin session from 2020
Default theme is missing an h-card on the main page and author h-card on all posts
Primrose is missing an h-card on the homepage, missing author h-card on posts.
Kiko is missing h-card on home page and author h-card on any post
Cactus missing p-name on h-entry in the main h-feed, missing author h-card on all posts
Arabica-posts are missing author h-card but the main home page is missing an h-feed and all of the articles are missing h-entries, there is no h-card on the main page.
Hyde is missing the h-entry for all the post on the main h-feed of homepage. All ofther mf2 seem to be correct. Missing the author h-card on published post.
Typewrite, missing h-card on home page, missing p-name in h-entry on the h-feed, missing p-name on h-entry with a title, missing author h-card on all posts
Marfa
- Homepage missing h-entry and h-feed
- FIXED – Single post template’s p-author h-card isn’t on the right element and is outside the h-entry.
Minus
Hello

Avatars

Avatars on the service use Gravatar as described in the help pages. Users can also upload a custom photo, which will be stored on Micro.blog and used instead of Gravatar.

Website Verification for non-hosted blogs

Details for verifying one’s non-hosted site can be found at http://help.micro.blog/2017/web-site-verification/

Syndication

from Micro.blog

Micro.blog supports POSSE to Twitter with a paid account and also supports other services for free via IFTTT.

into Micro.blog

The service allows one to configure multiple RSS or JSON feeds to syndicate content into the service. To cross-post or syndicate from your blog to Micro.blog using POSSE:

add your feed file URL to your Micro.blog profile

How to set up Micro.blog to check your feed file automatically after creating a POSSE’d post in WordPress:

add https://micro.blog/ping on a separate line in the Update Services section of the Writing Settings page

Feed reader

By having an account and following other users on the platform, the main page becomes a chronological feed of posts from those accounts. (see also Is Micro.blog an example of an integrated reader? below.

If you’d like to put a feed of sites you’re following on micro.blog into another feed reader, there is an available JSON feed that uses the following URL format https://micro.blog/feeds/username.json where one can replace `username` with their micro.blog account username to read in other locations.

IndieWeb Features

IndieWeb building blocks supported by Micro.blog in addition to permalinks, Webmention, and Micropub:

Rel-me

The hosted version of Micro.blog supports rel-me fields for one’s primary website as well as for Twitter and GitHub. Putting your hosted Micro.blog URL into your Twitter and GitHub account “Web Site” fields on their respective account settings pages and putting your usernames into the Micro.blog fields at http://micro.blog/account/apps and saving will allow one to easily and quickly log into the Indieweb wiki.

As of early July 2017 Micro.blog supports rel-me with Instagram as well as support for micropub client OwnYourGram.

IndieAuth

Since July 2018, Micro.blog is its own IndieAuth provider. This means people logging in to the IndieWeb wiki, or using apps like OwnYourGram can sign in just using their micro.blog account without relying on rel=me links to Twitter or other services. See also: https://manton.micro.blog/2018/07/02/indieauth-for-microblog.html

Feature Requests

Goal: Be able to use micro.blog as my authentication for signing into the wiki (and thus be a RelMeAuth authentication provider for use by IndieLogin and any other RelMeAuth consuming implementation)
- rel-me support on all profiles (not just hosted) with a “Website” field value.
  - e.g. my account (edited at https://micro.blog/account) has Website: [ http://tantek.com/ ] configured, but the link to tantek.com on my profile https://micro.blog/t does not have rel=me (it should)
- RelMeAuth
- May need some custom code in IndieLogin

Apps

Micropub

Because Micro.blog supports Micropub a variety of clients, including Quill can be used to post to it.

iOS

The Micro.blog app is open source and available in the App Store.

There are also official open source micro.blog iOS apps specifically for:

photos: Sunlit
short podcasts/microcasts: Wavelength

3rd party iOS apps:

Gluon is a customizable cross platform app built for Micro.blog.

MarsEdit

Paid users of the service can use MarsEdit to post to the service.

MacOS Desktop Client

There is an official open source micro.blog MacOS Desktop client, “Micro.blog for Mac”:

3rd party:

Matthew Roach has built a MacOS desktop client on the electron framework using the Micro.blog API. A request has been made for it to support micropub. Currently you can follow your timeline, see you mentions and favorites and reply to posts.

Android

Dialog A full-featured Android app to post to Micro.blog, browse the timeline, etc.
MicroPost A simple Android app to post to Micro.blog
Gluon A beautiful, lightweight and customisable cross platform app built for Micro.blog by Vincent Ritter

Use with other Projects

One can register a username on the site for free and syndicate content into it via RSS, Atom, or JSON feed.

Various projects can easily support posting into the ecosystem. Some being seen in the early days of the service (with posts/details/code about custom set ups) include:

WordPress

WordPress is one of the more common platforms in use with Micro.blog. Its founder Manton Reece previously self-hosted with WordPress using a slightly modified version of the Twenty Twelve theme before moving his site completely to micro.blog.

Code / Plugins

Syndication Links – has the ability to do per-post syndication to Micro.blog and pull back syndication links
WP Micro Posts – Adds a “Micro” post type for Indie Microblogging with WordPress.
glueckpress Micro.blog – WordPress plugin to generate a custom RSS feed. Adds a checkbox to the Publish meta box to add a post to the custom feed. Built with https://micro.blog/ in mind.
WordPress Blank Titles – simple function to replace blank post titles with the date/time posted (Micro.blog leaves post titles blank which can be annoying in wp-admin)
WordPress/wxr-file is a file-format the WordPress exporter produces. micro.blog can import / export from this format
2017-11-24

Blog archive format

Themes

Simple Microblog Theme for use with Micro.blog (no support for microformats2)
Microblog Air Theme forked from O2 theme (no support for microformats2)

Articles

Known

Known can be used almost out of the box to self-host a microblog and easily syndicate content from status updates directly into Micro.blog via RSS (typically with a URL of the form http://knownexample.com/content/statusupdates/?_t=rss). Other post types can by syndicated as well.

GitHub Pages

Details for setting up GitHub Pages can be found here.

Hugo

While micro.blog is built on Hugo and supports Webmentions to and from sites with micro.blog accounts, Steve Layton wrote about adding (universal) Webmention support into Micro.blog with Hugo.

Add your project/CMS with details here…

Resources

Articles

Non-project specific posts about how people have set up Micro.blog sites or Micro.blog related posts:

Criticism

While the service includes a lot of value and is easy to configure and use, it has the following disadvantages:

It only supports notes, (since late 2017) photos & articles, and (since 2018) podcasts.
It isn’t (yet?) open source to allow users to add their own functionality if they wish.
Self-hosting isn’t available, though one can map their own personal-domain to Micro.blog hosting, or connect Micro.blog to a self-hosted external site using a different platform.
Outbound webmentions are fully supported but only incoming webmentions from sites which have registered on the service using their sending base URL.
Posts can be exported in WordPress format, replies exported in JSON Feed, but there is currently not a single archive for exporting all data.
Timeline, mentions, and favorites pages require Javascript. Without Javascript, the top navigation loads, but no Micro.blog posts. See js;dr
Presentation of posts from feeds depends on the title – if the post title is not a date “YYYY-MM-DD”, Micro.blog only shows a link to the post. A pure date is often a bad title on the source site.
Server load occasionally causes a backlog of webmentions that extend longer than 24 hours
Posting on one’s website and syndicating via a feed can often take several minutes to several hours depending on server loads.

FAQ

Is there a self-hosted version of Micro.blog?

Q: Is there a self-hosted version of Micro.blog? [1]

A: Not currently. You can map your domain to Micro.blog or run your blog on your own domain and syndicate to Micro.blog via RSS. The Micro.blog platform is not currently open source, although maybe eventually will be. [2]

Is Micro.blog an example of an integrated reader

Q: Is Micro.blog an example of an integrated reader? (Also: Can you follow external feeds on Micro.blog?) – Asked in #indiechat, so not logged.

A: Micro.blog’s reader only displays content from other Micro.blog users. To read a feed via Micro.blog, the publisher of that feed must create a user account on Micro.blog and syndicate their content there.

Potentially confusing wording on the Micro.blog about page on 2017-06-21 (archive.org copy):

Integrated timeline from blogs
Browse posts from friends, powered by RSS and indie microblogs.
However, the discover page appears to only allow users to find other users on the site.