note - IndieWeb
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From IndieWeb
note
is a
post
that is typically short unstructured* plain text, written & posted quickly, that has its own permalink page.
Creating, publishing, and owning your own notes is a key step towards reducing dependence on
*Though
unstructured
meaning without a heading/title or any other explicit structure, notes can include several lines of text or even lists using "*" or numerical markers due to common
whitespace support
Why
Most of the reasons
why
apply quite strongly to publishing your
notes
on your own website. In addition:
Simplest post building block.
All
posts
have a simple text component, whether name, caption, comment, or text equivalent. Build notes first, and then you have a building block you can build upon for every other post type. This is the smallest step you can take to owning the timestamped content you publish.
Do better than
, here are a few ways. Choose those that matter to you:
presentation
: your notes permalink pages can be cleaner and have more informative presentation (e.g. a
facepile
of all
favorites
retweets
, not just a few) than tweet permalinks
interactivity
: better auto-linking and auto-embedding than proprietary
Twitter Cards
, multiple embeds instead of just one. E.g. use the
CASSIS
auto_link
function which works better than Twitter's auto-linking/embedding.
: providing next/previous and other navigation links
direct linking
: direct hyperlinks rather than t.co wrappers around your links
speed
: load simpler HTML+CSS note pages rather than all of the JS that Twitter depends on.
editability
: you can edit your own notes, you cannot edit tweets.
flexibility
: post notes longer than 140 characters.
How to
How to publish
Here is a minimal note post:
Which might be rendered like:
2013-03-07: I ate a cheese sandwich.
How to POSSE
The most common
POSSE
destination for notes is
because implementing note posts on your own site is a great way to start to
own your data
, with posting notes only on your own site, and having it automatically POSSE to Twitter, and never ever posting directly to Twitter again.
See:
Twitter#POSSE_to_Twitter
for details on How to POSSE notes to Twitter, and replies too!
(need additional note POSSE destinations along with motivations for doing so).
IndieWeb Examples
Here are
documented examples
of IndieWebCamp participants' sites that support publishing notes and do so (i.e. before
POSSEing
to silos). In date order (earliest first) :
Tantek
Tantek Çelik
using
Falcon
on tantek.com
since 2010-01-01
Barnaby Walters
Barnaby Walters
using
Taproot
on Waterpigs.co.uk
since 2012-03-24
(note shows 2012-04-14 updated date, but
POSSE tweet
shows 2012-03-24 date). Notes previous to that one were imported/crossposted from diasp.org onto Waterpigs.co.uk (did not originate there).
Aaron Parecki
Aaron Parecki
using
p3k
on aaronparecki.com since
2012-08-19
Tom Morris
Tom Morris
using
Ferocity
on tommorris.org
since 2013-03-21
(note
POSSE tweet same day
). Earlier "notes" on tommorris.org are likely a result of imports from Twitter and Tumblr archives rather than posts originating on tommorris.org.
Ben Werdmuller
Ben Werdmüller
using
idno
on werd.io
since 2013-05-31
Shane Becker
on veganstraightedge.com
since 2013-10-23
(note
POSSE tweet same day
).
Chloe Weil
on Chloe Weil
since 2013-12-03
(note
POSSE tweet same day
). See also related blog post:
2013-12-04:
Hipster
: "I built Twitter."
Chloe Weil
Chloe Weil
on Chloe Weil
since 2013-12-03
(note
POSSE tweet same day
). See also related blog post:
2013-12-04:
Hipster
: "I built Twitter."
Jonny Barnes
Jonny Barnes
on
has been posting notes since
2013-12-03
Michael Bester
Michael Bester on michaelbester.com
since 2014-01-13
. See also related blog post:
2014-01-16:
Online Homesteading
Jeremy Keith
Jeremy Keith
on adactio.com
since 2014-05-27
(Note POSSE copy
may say 2014-05-26
presumably because of timezone differences, Jeremy's is in BST, while a PDT viewer sees datetime adjusted accordingly). See also related blog post:
2014-06-01
Notes from a small website
gRegor Morrill
gRegor Morrill
on gregorlove.com since
2014-06-25
POSSE
via brid.gy:
David Shanske
David Shanske
on david.shanske.com since
2014-03-17
. Had imported older material as notes prior to this.
atomicules
User:atomicules.co.uk
since
2015-05-18
(originally at http://atomicules.co.uk/2015/05/18/All-being-well-I-m-now-syndicating-notes-tweets--indieweb.html which 404s since at least 2018-02-17). I use Jekyll with a
notes
subdirectory to
_posts
. The note is simply stored as the
title
element in the yaml front matter. I use a rake task to generate and syndicate the note from the command line.
Jonathan LaCour
Jonathan LaCour
has been using
Known
on cleverdevil.io since
2015-08-06
Ryan Rix
Ryan Rix
(rrix) since
2016-04-15
publishes notes through
Arcology
and syndicates them to Twitter and Facebook using
Bridgy
Glenn Jones
Glenn Jones
on glennjones.net since 2016-06-16 per his notes page
(post permalink https://glennjones.net/notes/2016-06-06-1 is 404 as of at least 2018-02-17)
older notes that appear to have disappeared (if restored, bump this back up)
Martijn van der Ven
Martijn van der Ven
has made posts marked up as notes
since 2016-09-25
, when his blog was relaunched in an IndieWeb style. Most posts since then have been titleless notes, including some
multi-paragraph ones
Jamie Tanna
Jamie Tanna
has been using notes since
2019-05-06
Kimberly Hirsh
Kimberly Hirsh
has been posting notes using
Micro.blog
since 2019-12-28
. She previously published notes inconsistently via
WordPress
beginning in March 2017. Notes are automatically cross-posted from Micro.blog to
and
Tumblr
Ross McDonald
AxiomEval
using Silk Web Toolkit and a Clojure Micropub microservice on www.axiomeval.me since
2023-01-08
Past Examples
Past examples of indieweb note posting, either offline or otherwise no longer working:
Brennan Novak
on brennannovak.com since 2010-07-17 (https://brennannovak.com/notes/1 - 404 since at least 2018-02-17).
Sandeep Shetty
using
Converspace
on sandeep.io since 2012-11-05 (http://www.sandeep.io/1 - 404 since at least 2018-02-17).
Amber Case
using
p3k
on caseorganic.com since 2013-09-08 (http://caseorganic.com/2013/09/indiewebcampuk-3/ - 404 since at least 2021-04-25) (note
POSSE tweet same day
).
Frédéric de Villamil
using
publify
on t37.net since 2014-01-10 (http://t37.net/note/30913-quoting-t-about-having-multiple-indieweb-projects-instead-of-monoculture-no-real - redirects to
since at least 2021-04-25).
Kartik Prabhu
on kartikprabhu.com (https://kartikprabhu.com/notes/test-note-totally-te - server not found since at least 2021-04-25).
Shane Hudson
on shanehudson.net settled on 2014-09-09 (https://shanehudson.net/2014/09/09/0117 - 404 since at least 2021-04-25).
beforehand there were many test notes and notes were implemented on Wordpress but have since moved to Craft CMS and have now decided exactly how I want the notes to be. POSSE was also implemented on Wordpress, but is not yet ready on Craft.
Kara Mahan
on kylewm.com since 2013-11-28
Archived example
Common Aspects
There are certain UI elements which are common to most implementations. These include:
Profile photo (often with rounded corners)
Full Name (often emboldened)
Auto–linked URLs, usernames and #tags
Dates (sometimes relative, almost always the option to see real date)
Autolinking and embedding
Various sites/solutions auto-link and/or auto-embed URLs and other linkable things in notes.
recommendations:
auto-link URLs directly
even better: if the URL is to a known person, use their name as the link text and perhaps include a small icon of their face before their name.
auto-link @-names to Twitter profiles
even better: auto-link @-names to individual's indieweb sites and show their full name instead of Twitter handle. Obviously keep @-names in note content when POSSEing to Twitter.
auto-embed GIF/JPG/PNG URLs with
auto-embed MOV/OGV URLs with