Homebrew Website Club

There are lots of things to be excited about in joining the Indie Web, like supporting a more human-centered version of the web and connecting better with others across the web. Joining the Indie Web involves a few steps to set up the tools so you can interact with others, but also a bigger picture shift in how you use the web to fully embrace and make the most use of the tools and system.

When I first stumbled across the Indie Web last summer, I was intrigued but not sure exactly what joining entailed. I’ve taken my time easing in little by little, starting with installing the IndieWeb plugin on WordPress last year. Others probably adopt all the tools much faster than I have, and I haven’t followed the most efficient process, but I thought I’d share the steps I’ve taken as someone who can install WordPress and do some basic stuff on cPanel but not much more on the technical side :) (“Generation 2” on the IndieWeb)

My Step by Step Adoption of IndieWeb Elements

Here’s my experience so far with getting more aligned with Indie Web principles and infrastructure:

Installing and experimenting with the first pieces on My Website

1. To set up the basic infrastructure and enable my website to receive notifications from others’ websites (and let me respond to others’ websites), I started by installing the WordPress IndieWeb plugin and activating 3 of its plugins in summer 2019: Webmention, Semantic Linkbacks, and Post Kinds. Those allow me to post things other than articles (what I’ve traditionally used this blog for), and enable better connections between articles if another website links to mine. I didn’t start using the features right away, though, since I wasn’t sharing my articles anywhere for people to see.

2. Over spring 2020, I started experimenting with posting more kinds of posts on this blog (like quotes and quotes with commentary versus only articles), which has meant more short posts and more posts, period. It’s been a shift in mindset since I’ve had very firm ideas about what should go on this blog in the eight years I’ve been running it.

I had planned to go to the Indie Web Summit in Portland this summer to learn more about the Indie Web, but that was cancelled due to coronavirus, so I decided I’d been putting off taking more steps long enough.

Adopting Some IndieWeb Philosophy

3. In July, I decided I’d like to get this website in front of more eyes. While writing here is useful for me, I’d also like to share my thoughts with others and engage in some more conversations. I don’t track visitation, though I assume my traffic’s probably about the same as before I deleted tracking in summer 2019 (~11,000 unique pageviews a year), unless I did something to anger the Google overlords, who I honestly don’t give any thought to when writing here ;) About half of the visitors to Cascadia Inspired went to a single article (a good one if I do say so, if getting a bit long in the tooth), another couple chunks of visitors follow links to two other articles from that one, and then the rest of the visits are scattered throughout my archive.

To kick me off with the Indie Web principle of “publish on your own site and syndicate elsewhere” (POSSE), I posted on Twitter about rejoining for the intention of syndicating my blog content there. I got a friendly and helpful response from Chris Aldrich who’s involved in the Indie Web, inviting me to join in one of their upcoming online events to get some of my questions answered.

Learning from others in the Indie Web

4. I attended an IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club meetup to discuss IndieWeb philosophy in July, which was a group of about ten very welcoming and thoughtful people. They shared their approaches to using the IndieWeb, and how they decide how much to post or not. As I absorb this new system, it’s very helpful to hear and see how others use the same tools in the way that works best for them.

Setting Up More Indie Web Tools

5. To make sure my site is playing nice with the IndieWeb building blocks, I tested my site with the IndieWebifyMe tool. Based on that, I replaced the bio plugin I had with the IndieWeb H-Card and added my rel-me icons (social media sites) to my footer. I also poked around on the Indie Web wiki and the sites of other people who are participating in the Indie Web to see how other people are using the variety of tools available.

6. In August I attended a workshop focusing on making your WordPress website Indie Web friendly, hosted by the generous IndieWeb folks. You can watch the session and read the notes. At the workshop, I set up Bridgy to syndicate comments from Twitter back to the blog here, so even if people say something about an article I’ve shared there, their thoughts can be connected with the article. Honestly, that alone is worth the price of admission!

What’s Next for Indie Web-ifying Myself?

Big Picture Decisions and Design

I want to set up tracydurnell.com as my main internet “landing page” that links to my various projects and also serves as a more personal “digital garden” or journal. I think I’ll need to rewatch the micropub section of the workshop, and do a little digging into how exactly to feed multiple streams into one place.

I want to do some research or possibly discuss how Indie Web fits in with “pen name” projects. I am setting up an identity for my author pen name, and keeping it low-key anonymous for privacy (though anyone who made a little effort could back-trace it). Since I write romance, and lots of people are prejudiced against or have misconceptions about romance, I don’t want it to impact my day job professional life. For that name, I will have separate social media accounts and website. Could I also use Indie Web tools for a persona, or is that not in keeping with the community?

Remaining Technical Steps

I need to set up IndieAuth. I’ve been struggling to understand the value of using my own website to log in to other websites, an IndieWeb principle, but finally had an aha! moment when reading through the IndieWeb wiki. I have been trying to wean myself from Google services little by little, but I’ve used the same Gmail account to sign up for services over the past ten years, and it hasn’t seemed worth the effort to switch all those logins to another email address just because – especially since I’m currently using Gmail to serve my emails to my personal domains. But using my own website to log in, I think, opens up a new avenue for easing my dependence on Gmail. For me, this feels like a tool that will make the switch more feasible.

I have a couple things to troubleshoot on this site, which I’m hoping to find time to hop on IndieChat and get help from the community on:

• • what self-webmentions look like (when I link from one article to another on my own site) – I want to configure them to highlight the name of the article where it’s posted instead of putting the emphasis on a generic line of text, which I’m not sure is possible but worth asking ;)
  • why user icons are only sometimes getting pulled in from Twitter comments via Bridgy

I need to wikify myself, but am thinking I should do that from tracydurnell.com, so I’m waiting to do it once I have that set up.

Commit to the Indie Web

I haven’t committed to the philosophy of completely owning all the data I post online. I feel like this is something else I can take step by step, getting used to the change as I go. All my longform writing lives here, but my other content – like photos, notes, bookmarks, reads – doesn’t. I still occasionally post unique content on Twitter, and post Instagram stories sometimes (though I’ve started trying to post the photo roundups afterwards to this blog so they’re not lost as they have been in the past). Once I set up my new digital notes home at tracydurnell.com I’ll see what I feel good about shifting.

As someone who writes social media for work, I am deeply rooted in the practice of writing a unique intro when I share a post to Twitter, not directly syndicating it with whatever text I started the article with. For me that feels good enough (not saving that unique share to my site) since including the link means any likes and comments about the article come back to my blog thanks to Bridgy, but maybe someone will convince me otherwise ;)