a guide to getting you on the IndieWeb (original) (raw)

Become a citizen of the IndieWeb Level 1

1. Get your own domain name

A personal domain name is an inexpensive, internationally universal identifier which gives you more control over your space than other IDs (e.g. email address or phone number.)

On the wiki: Personal Domains.

In order to be able to sign in using your domain name, connect it to your existing identities.

You probably already have many disconnected profiles on the web. Linking between them and your domain name with the rel=me microformat ensures that it’s easy to see that you on Google/Twitter/Github/Flickr/Facebook/email are all the same person as your domain name.

On the wiki: How to set up Web Sign In.

Want to be able to use rel-me data in your code? Check out the open source implementations.

Publishing on the IndieWeb Level 2

1. Mark up your content with microformats2

Humans can already understand the things you post on your site. By adding a few short class names to your HTML, other people’s software can understand it and use it for things like reply contexts, cross-site comments, event RSVPs, and more.

Check your homepage h-card:

Enter your URL:

Want to be able to use h-card data in your code? Check out the open-source implementations.

Check your posts (notes, articles, etc.) are marked up with h-entry:

Want to be able to use h-entry data in your code? Check out the open-source implementations.

2. Add the ability to send Webmentions to other IndieWeb sites

When you reply to something on another indieweb site, or mention someone with an indieweb site, sending a webmention lets them know they’ve been linked to.

Sending webmentions allows you to write replies to other content and participate in cross-site conversations. You can send webmentions by:

using the form below
using Telegraph, which lets you choose which links to send to
from the command line using Curl or webmention-tools
Make your publishing software send webmentions for you automatically using one of the open source libraries
Or, get down and dirty with the Webmention spec and implement it yourself

On the wiki: webmention

Federating IndieWeb Conversations Level 3

1. Add Reply Contexts to your site

Posting replies to other people’s posts is the next step after just being able to mention them with webmention.

Usually a reply is a note just like any other, but linking in a special way to the post it’s in reply to. When marked up with h-entry and rel=in-reply-to and/or class=u-in-reply-to, your reply can show up as a comment on the original post.

To test if your webmention sending is working, try replying to a post by someone who’s implemented comment receiving. There’s a list on the wiki.

If you wish you can also go the extra mile and display a copy of the post you’re replying to. This is called a reply context, and is an excellent way to practise parsing posts on other people’s sites.

2. Receive webmentions on your site

Now you can post replies which show up as comments on other people’s sites, the next step is to be able to receive comments yourself. There are several ways to do this.

If you’re using a project like Known, it may already support indieweb comments — you don’t have to do anything!
If you’re using a project like WordPress, there may already be a plugin enabling receiving of indieweb comments. See if the software you’re using is on the project list on the wiki
If you’re rolling your own project and want to implement webmention yourself, have a read through the spec and the wiki page for tips
If you want to get started quickly without implementing receiving of webmentions yourself, take a look at a hosted service like webmention.io

Once you’ve got webmention receiving set up, there are a few different ways of making sure it’s working correctly:

Link to one of your own posts and send yourself a mention. This works best if you know you can send webmentions successfully
Ask a friend (or a new friend in the online #indieweb chat to reply or mention one of your posts
If you’re POSSEing your content, setting up backfeed so that silo replies, likes, reshares, and event RSVPs show up on your own site. You can use a service like Bridgy, a server plugin, or roll your own