I used the Mimi Uploader app for Micro.blog for the first time and I was very pleased as I uploaded several photos from my iPhone to my Micro.blog account.

This app is a godsend because before it I was having to email photos from my phone to myself, to get them on my Windows laptop, then double check to see if they were properly oriented, then finally incorporate them into a post on the Micro.blog web interface and finally publish. See, if I’m going to use a photo in a lengthy post I’m not going to write the post on a phone screen keyboard. So, all that made posting a bit of a pain.

Now with Mimi Uploader iOS app all that has become much easier. Yay!

I’ve started an experiment with my Micro.blog hosted blog with site search. Previously, I had a site search form at the bottom of all pages. It would get used only occasionally. So now I’ve added a second site search form at the top center of all pages just under the navigation menu.

I want to see if there is any increase in site search usage, plus I’d like people to dig deeper into the blog. Site search is provided by DuckDuckGo

I’m not happy with the way the search form sits on the page. There should be some space between the nav menu and it. But I hit the limits of my HTML knowledge which ended in HTML 3.XX and nothing I’ve tried works. At least I didn’t break anything. I think.

I have hit my 1st Anniversary on Micro.blog. “On This Day” has started to show posts from 2018. I might have missed the actual start date but it was around the end of March 2018. Micro.blog has been one of the best discoveries I’ve made on the Web. Thank you to all the community of Micro.blog members plus @manton and @macgenie for making it so.

Moving back, full time to Micro.blog hosted blog from self hosted Wordpress, went far smoother than expected. For the most part the experience has been interesting.

It’s interesting to try and replicate some of the features of Wordpress on MB without having the crutch of a massive library of Wordpress plugins available, which means that for some things, like Related Posts and outside Comments one must find a third party provider and do some theme editing on MB.

Tools effect behavior and I’ve noticed some effects on me with the differences between WP and MB. Some of these are good, bad or neutral, but all are something I notice.

1. I post less on MB. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On WP I had bookmarklets and browser extensions that made sharing URL’s and snippets of interesting articles to Wordpress very easy. MB has none of that so there is more friction to sharing. I find myself using the Pinboard bookmarklet much more and saving as a bookmark to Pinboard instead of sharing. That’s kinda not good.
2. Markdown - I had harbored thoughts of making long posts on MB in HTML. But, having learned a bit of Markdown, I use Markdown. Not good or bad, just different.
3. Draft Posts - I really miss being able to save half finished posts as drafts to work on later. I’m using Simplenote as my work around. I compose most everything on Simplenote and then paste to MB.
4. No spell check in the Web UI on MB. It’s a real pain in the rump. It is also a part of posting less in point #1 above. (If they have it, please don’t tell me that the Mac and iOS apps have spell check. That was never irritating to me until I became totally dependent on MB. Now it grates. Deeply.)
5. Comments from the Indieweb - one of the things I truly loved on WP and miss deeply on MB was receiving Comments and mentions from both other Indieweb equipped blogs and Twitter and the Micro.blog timeline and having them all displayed on the proper post page (after moderation.) Hopefully MB will grow into that. Soon.
6. No more Scud Hunts - the bad thing about WP was - WP is such a mess. Things would constantly break, which would lead to my wasting a lot of time trying to find the source of the WP breakage in a Scud Hunt. On MB all that stuff is managed and support is excellent and that is no small thing. I spend a lot less time fixing things and worrying about things on MB.
7. I’m still getting used to Themes Without Sidebars (one column themes).
8. I added a third party comment host to MB. To my surprise, it’s been used much more than I ever thought it would by three groups: a. Micro.bloggers that want to comment but don’t want the comment to appear on the MB timeline, b. Indieweb people who realize they can no longer contact me from their own blogs, c. total strangers. I added commenting, because I was leaving Facebook and some very dear friends behind and I wanted to give them a chance to comment on the off chance that they might be reading my blog blatherings. I never expected this much use, so I’m doubly glad I added comments.
9. Syndication: On WP I was using JetPack to syndicate to Twitter and it worked. But I think MB does a better formatting job on syndication to Twitter.
10. Built-in Social network: Never underestimate the value of having a really good social network intertwined with your blog. This is where Micro.blog blows away the competition. A lot of old time bloggers, back in the 00’s quit blogging not because of Twitter and Facebook, but because they got tired of having no feedback other than spam. We blog, publicly, partly for interaction and when you don’t get that occasionally it’s hard to keep talking to yourself.
11. Micro.blog is great for posting photographs and is easier than WP. I say this not that I think I’ve found the cure for my sideways photo syndrome. For awhile there I wasn’t sure if it was me, Android or an Essential phone problem. I think I fixed this.
12. Even though I’m getting used to single column themes on MB, I have to say the stock theme selection on MB is, IMHO, quite good. Limited, but quite good.
13. The third party “Related Posts” service I used isn’t very good at figuring out which posts are “related” to the current posts. I renamed it to “Recommended Posts” in the interest of truthiness. But, when positioned directly beneath the content, they do get used. So a few people are exploring deeper into the blog because of this.
14. I still have not added a third party email contact form to my MB blog because I don’t have a compelling need for it other than my conviction that it should be a standard option. But I can see that people using a Micro.blog hosted blog for business or authors, freelancers, journalists etc. blogging on MB would really want a contact form. I did put a email address up, but its encrypted so that most spambots cannot read it. Not as good as having a form though.
15. Markdown does not appear to have nofollow or open in new tab or window type links.
16. I really like the Indiepaper, read later service bookmarklet and it’s integration with Micro.blog.
17. I also like using Indiebookclub which Micro.blog gives me access too.

Kewl. I was getting bored so I just switched my Micro.blog hosted theme from Marfa to Typewriter, which somehow seemed appropriate. Both my Related Posts and Intense Debate comments moved to the new theme. Yay. I added a DuckDuckGo site search to the Footer. That’s enough High Level Coding excitement for me today.

Eventually, I want to add a site search form somewhere in the header space but I need to figure out where and then try to find the template it should go in and where on that template it should go, so it needs some study.

Just a re-reminder for Micro.blog users: you can get the customizable code for the DuckDuckGo site search here. I thought I would repeat this in light of our new ability to customize our hosted blog templates on Micro.blog and where more people might want to add site search to their hosted blogs.

“Marfa” theme already has a site search box built in near the bottom. It got me thinking that if I ever wanted to change themes I’d definitely want to add DDG site search boxes to the theme: probably one search box near the top right above the content and another near the bottom. This saves a lot of scrolling on long posts.

I like the DDG search box because you can get rid of all branding and just have a plain box.

This is a followup of Micro.blog: Adding Hosted Related Posts and you should read that first for context, because I’m lazy and don’t want to have to type half of that again. :-)

Putting the Related Hosts so they would appear at the very bottom of the page just was not working. On my pages, I doubt anyone scrolls down past the comments form so nobody was seeing them. I swapped out the JS code for the “Inline” type display. This requires two separate JS code snippets: 1. A general call code snippet, which I placed in the footer, 2. A second snippet which I placed in the Post template as described in the link above, you place this where you want the Related Posts to appear, which is right below the content where a visitor has the chance to see them.

My observation so far is that if AddThis has a relevency algo it’s pretty weak. I think these are more random posts from this blog. Not real good, but not all bad if it gets people to explore other posts on the blog. So now I need to watch my stats and see what paths visitors, particularly those from search engines, take, and also monitor how related the posts becomes over time as AddThis learns about more blog posts.

I’m rebuilding my Following page (aka Blogroll). After dithering between trying to do it on Micro.blog as either a static page or as a category, I opted for creating a Following category because I think it will be easier to maintain.

1. Created Following category.
2. Added one short post per followed URL.
3. Click Posts and Edit each Following post to check Following category. On the Web the category options only appear after 270 characters so getting short posts into a category requires this extra step.

Navigation: I wanted to put Following on my Navigation Menu, so I created a Page named “Following” and pasted the URL to the Following Category in the page content. On Micro.blog, if you only paste a URL into the Page content it creates a redirect.

So now it looks like there is a Page named “Following” in my navigation but it really sends you to the “Following” Category. See it here.

I’m adding only 2 - 3 blogs a day so I don’t spam up the MB Timeline too much so this will take awhile.

Anyone familiar with Wordpress knows about the Related Posts feature as part of JetPack. This places 3 links to other posts you have written with similar content just below each post on WP and it does a pretty good job of it. I think Blogger has a similar function.

It took many months, but what I noticed, over time on WP is that visitors, often helicoptering in from search engines, would actually use the Related Posts to explore deeper and read more posts on my blog, which is what I wanted.

I knew I would be giving that up when I moved to Micro.blog which does not have a Related Posts option. (For good reason, to do Related Posts right and make them relevant takes quite a bit of programming and overhead and it’s not vital to the MB service in the way editing templates or categories are.) But I started wondering if there was a third party hosted service that would do it and discovered two that are not just Wordpress plugins, but usable on most websites.

• AddThis - they have a number of tools and a Related Posts JS is one.
  
• Shareaholic

Disclaimer: At this moment, I don’t know if either of these “free” services insert ads or whatever

The Experiment: Add This

I have signed up for Add This and installed the JS code on my Micro.blog hosted blog. Three types of code were available for an HTML site:

1. Slider - I hate sliders so I skipped that.
2. Inline - This puts the Related Posts in among your content, not my favorite but I might try it if it will put the related posts immediately below the content and above the Comments. Must experiment.
3. Footer - The related posts show up in the bottom of the page no matter what. Don’t let the name fool you the code goes in the Post template not the Footer on MB.

Installation

You install the unique JS code just like I installed the Comment Code in the template.

How it Works

Once you install the custom code on your template you need to manually bring up individual blog posts. As near as I can tell this calls in AddThis which scrapes the page and adds that page to it’s list of your pages. Per AddThis: it takes about 24 - 48 hours for related posts to show up.

Does it Work?

As I write this, I’m less than 24 hours into it so it’s too early to know anything.

Some observations:

1. When I installed this my blog title was kinda long. Add This wants to put the full title before the post title so all related posts look like they have the same Title. You have to mouse over to see the rest of the post title. I have shortened the blog title but I may have to manually call fro a re-scrape.
2. I’m not sure about relevance. The long blog title might be messing things up. Right now it looks like it’s just suggesting random posts, but that might still be better than nothing. I’m not sure how relevant this will be even under optimal conditions. We will see.
3. I focused on having it scrape long form blog posts.
4. The Footer style code always appears at the bottom of the page. This is not all bad since it does not interfere with the rest of the page content if it loads a little slow.
5. It will slow page loads slightly. Not a problem with the Footer style code.
6. It is easy to install.
7. You can get rid of the AddThis branding. Fortunately the branding is small.
8. I like that the code does not tack on Sharing buttons or other stuff I don’t want.
9. It does adapt to mobile.

On page example, here.

Will it Increase Page Views?

That is going to take a few weeks of testing. I don’t think it will hurt. Since it appears in the footer it is quite far down on the page. I will let you know as I experiment.

If anyone else decides to experiment with either of these services please let me know! Thanks.

• Webmentions received from non-MB member blogs and Twitter and published on MB hosted blogs (comments, facepiles etc.)
• * Ability to reply via webmention.
• Replies from Micro.blog timeline should appear on MB hosted blogs.
• Comment form with antispam protection on MB hosted blogs.
  
• Trackbacks and pings received should appear on MB hosted blogs. (Needs antispam.)
• Ability to send Trackbacks and Pings.

Narrative: as @Manton mentioned in the latest Core Intuition the part of Micro.blog that sustains the service (pays the bills) is the blog hosting half. So, to me, that service needs to be compelling as a free-standing blog host to attract and retain paying customers. By now most blog services have the same old list of standard features those do need to be looked at and included on MB, but IMHO, the thing that no other blog system has is turn-key, out of the box true Indieweb discussion support. Micro.blog is much further along than anybody else in this regard but what it’s missing is in that bullet list above and that list is in rough order of importance. Having those would differentiate the MB service from Blogger, Wordpress.com and all the rest. Own the niche. Indieweb type discussion is the only really new thing out there in the blogosphere, and it’s doable.

Why? I think when potential customers see how much interaction there is on MB hosted blogs they will find that a compelling reason. The comments and mentions appearing right on the hosted blog’s post pages would be visible proof of activity - and people respond to activity. (These things should have an off/on switch so the blog owner can enable/disable as they choose.) I also think this is viral - interest will spread by word of mouth.

I do suspect that most of these are in the pipeline but feedback is good and making MB hosted blogs more like stand alone blogs is good too because people will be less likely to look to WP, Blot or other scripts for their blogs.

Adding Hosted Comments to a PAGE on Micro.blog

Sometimes we create PAGES on a blog that contain content that we would like visitors to be able to comment about. I’ve been trying to figure out how to add hosted comments just to a page on MB, full stop. I had examined all the templates and found no good place to insert the commenting JS code. And even if I had found a place the added problem would be: I only want comments on certain pages not all pages. What to do?

Adding comments from Disqus, IntenseDebate or others to a page on Micro.blog is different than adding it to posts and far easier. **You don’t have to mess with templates!”

Goto: Account > Edit Design > Pages > select a page to edit.

The content box (the form you post content in when making a page) accepts Markdown, HTML and JavaScript. So it finally perked up to my brain-pan that I could probably just add the custom JS code below the normal content of a page right in the content form.

It’s that simple. You have to repeat this for each page you want comments on. It will not appear on all pages automatically.

You can see an example on my World War II Movies List page.

I’ve only done this with IntenseDebate code but it should work with others.

Enjoy.

This is my crude guide to adding third party commenting to Micro.blog. Right now Micro.blog only has commenting in the social timeline. If you want non-Micro.blog members to comment on your post pages you will need a third party service I know @Manton intends to add commenting on the post pages to MB at some point in the future so I consider this to be an interim solution.

Pick a comment service and sign up.

Pick a comment host and sign up. Look it over so you understand the administrative aspects. The service will give you either a custom JavaScript code or HTML code that they expect you to copy/paste into your theme. You will need this later.

Edit MB Theme

1. Read Help File on Custom Themes
2. Watch Manton’s Screencast I watched this several times until I was pretty sure I knew what to do.
3. Go to Edit custom themes in your admin panel.
4. You want to fetch the template files for the theme you are using, so find the repository name for your theme. I’m using Marfa theme so I typed in “theme-marfa” and if memory serves all the Marfa templates were fetched.
5. You only need to edit one template \ layouts/post/single.html
   

You are going to paste the JS code from your custom comment provider right where my super crude arrow is pointing below.

Save and you should be done. I’ve only done this with IntenseDebate using their “Generic” code so I can’t tell you how the other services will work on MB. YMMV.

I messed up. Reading the instructions more carefully on IntenseDebate I thought there was a way to import old Wordpress comments via XML file but there is not.

If you want to Import your old comments from Wordpress you need to install Intense Debate on your old Wordpress site first. It will then import all your existing comments. At least that is the way I read it.

This makes sense because it insures the comments get matched up to each permalink.

So if you are going to migrate from Wordpress to something like Micro.blog and want to use IntenseDebate you should install IntenseDebate first on your old Wordpress blog first, let it import the comments, then install IintenseDebate on Micro.blog after you have successfully moved your posts and domain to Micro.blog.

While it would have been nice to preserve my old comments, it’s my bad and I can live with it. The primary reason I wanted a comment system was for the occasional non-MB visitor to be able to leave a comment. It does not happen often but when it has happened it was important.

I’ve been pondering on how to make a blogroll/following page on Micro.blog and sort of weighing different approaches. Here are a couple:

1. Static Following Page: Here is a big one. The problem I have with these is they become difficult to maintain. Everytime I make one of these I end up not updating it. However, as you can see from the example, it can be massive and you can easily subcategorize such a list. It’s also very durable - there is no moving script parts or database to fail.
2. You could make a “Following” category in Micro.blog. This is a variant of linkblogging except you are using a category for that purpose. Use one post per link followed and whatever description you want. Then link to that category in your main menu and you end up with a dynamic list of blogs or newsletters you are following. I’m thinking this might be easier to maintain on Micro.blog than a static page. However, a downside is you cannot sub-categorize and right now MB has no dedicated site search for each blog so finding something later might be difficult.
3. Another approach that would work for a shorter list on Micro.blog would be to use tiny type and put your list on the bottom of your index page or in the MB footer. Kicks Condor does this well in his right sidebar (scroll down a bit.) Notice how he actually makes it fun to explore while giving you a little context for each link.

None of these difficulties are exclusive to Micro.blog, blogrolls have always been work to maintain, but they are very useful in helping visitors discover new blogs.

This was also posted to /en/linking.

Some email contact resources for Micro.blog.

We don’t have CGI or Php for contact forms on Micro.blog, so if you have a hosted MB blog and you want a contact form it has to be remotely hosted.

Free Contact Form Providers

I’ve looked at a quite a few. Some I tried and didn’t work, others looked dodgy. Very few people ever used my contact form on Wordpress so I think most of us can get away with a free form. I have not used these or tried them yet, nor are they in any order.

Just remember that if you are getting it for free the provider is getting something out of it also.

• Squaresend
• Allforms Update 6 Feb 2019: I signed up, but once logged in, I got a notice that form creation was disabled for free accounts. Skip this one.

Email Address Encoders

Some people might want to place their email address in a mailto link but encrypt it so it is harder for email harvester robots to read.

• Mailto Encoder
• Email Address Encoder

Bonus Link: Other Remotely Hosted Do-Hickies

ScriptSocket

ScriptSocket stuff will have banner ads on them per their FAQ.

SubToMe has a universal subscribe button (code at the link) that you can put on any Micro.blog footer, Page or anywhere that takes HTML. SubToMe has a great list of real feed readers that the subscriber can choose from without all the social network sites garbaging up the list.

Readers include: Inoreader, Feedly, Wordpress Reader, and a bunch more. The button is free.

We are launching several major new features for blog hosting on Micro.blog today. Any one of these features alone is a big change, and together I hope they will serve as a great foundation for years to come. The goal was to make blog hosting faster and more flexible for new features.

These are huge additions to the features and an amazing roll-out.  This all paves the way for a more stand alone blog experience on MB.  It’s all very good.

It’s very thoughtful the way Manton set it up so that MB users can share their custom themes with others.  I really appreciate that attention to detail he has built in.

I think categories is going to be a sleeper hit, people might not talk much about them but everybody will quietly wonder how they got along without them.

The following are four remotely hosted comment solutions that have caught my eye.

1. Commento.io - privacy focus, no ads, lots of features, Akismet anti-spam, starting at $3 per mo.
2. Intense Debate - Owned by Automattic,  Akismet, Lists Trackbacks and Pings in addition to comments.  Silent about ads.  No mention of pricing prior to signup.  That always gives me pause.
3. Commentbox.io -  looks more basic. Talks about comment filters and blocking for antispam.  No import from WP native comments.  Free for under 100 comments per mo.  Costs if you go over.
4. Disqus -  we’ve all encountered it. Has lots of import features.  Don’t expect privacy. I don’t know how good their anti spam is. Might be able to get it free without ads for personal blog without ads.

The subject came up via John Philpin and Gray Areas.   And using a webring to denote sub-communities within Micro.blog.  For example:

1. Analog things.  A big catchall for stuff below.
2. Fountain pen collectors.
3. Paper journal keepers.
4. Typewriter collectors
5. Paper note keepers.
6. etc.

A webring plays to the strength of MB users actually having a blog.

Currently, Micro.blog hosted blog users can put a webring code in their footer area.  The size is a bit cramped but it is usable.  I expect this to get better in the near future when Micro.blog rolls out improved template/theme editing capabilities.

The easiest, off the shelf, webring hosting solution is Webringo.com.* It works and has some nice features.

1. People joining a Webringo ring have their choice of 3 stock ring codes: A. HTML (either vertical and horizontal), B. an I Frame, C. a JavaScript ring code (like Webring used to have).
2. Webringo automatically produces an Index page of sites within the ring. If you link to this it gives people an alternative way to explore the ring.
3. A webring is opt-in, that is membership is voluntary.  A @JohnPhilpin noted it can denote a club or tribe.
4. I would strongly recommend that the ring owner provide some example, optional, “minimalist” HTML ring codes that members can customize to work with their membership if they want.
5. The advantage to using Webringo is it makes managing the ring much easier and joining the ring less labor intensive.

I’m just throwing the idea out there, for whoever is interested to think about.

I will make this offer: If people start forming webrings for sub-communities within Micro.blog  I will create some sort of index of the webrings so people can find different rings.

Reference: Webrings.

*  I’m not married to Webringo, it’s just that when I investigated the other two ring hosts, Webring and Ringsurf, I was getting error messages when I tried to sign up and they were still giving errors when I came back a couple of weeks later.  Whereas, Webringo is still fully functional.

This was also posted to /en/linking.

This is a continuation of a series.  You may want to start with the first post:  Populism and Today’s Social Tech vs. Blogging

What is Micro.blog?

Micro.blog (MB) has two elements the 1. hosted blog and 2. the social network. They exist sort of separately but they are also intertwined. You have to have a blog, either hosted on MB or elsewhere, to be a member of the MB social network.

“Micro.blog is an easy way to host and share your posts, photos, and even a podcast in a way that maximizes what’s great about social networks and minimizes what’s troubling about them.”

Now watch a 2 minute video: Welcome to Micro.blog

Micro.blog can certainly be many things to many people–possibly too many. In large part, what it is depends on what tools you’re bringing into it and how you’d like to use it.

It can be:

• a web host
• a Twitter replacement
• a Twitter client that allows you to own your own data
• a Instagram replacement
• a microcasting platform
• a full blogging platform
• a new, well-curated community with a strong code of conduct
• a customized feed reader for a new community
• a syndication platform for one’s personal blog
• a low barrier entryway to having your own IndieWeb-capable blog on your own domain.
• a first class IndieWeb citizen with support for multiple types of posts, IndieAuth, Webmention, Micropub, and Microsub.

Chris pretty well sums up all the things you can do on Micro.blog.

As the name Micro.blog implies the primary thing you can do on it is write short form posts like Twitter and Facebook.  But you can also post long form posts just like you would on a conventional blog, just keep typing and when you hit 280 characters in a post a Title Field appears and you are long form posting - effortlessly.  There is no friction or barriers between you and just writing.

Posting is easy, like posting on Twitter and the blog just auto-generates itself.  You can post, “I like pizza.“  You can post a picture of your cat plus a poem about your cat. You can post a 600 word essay about the Chicago Cubs. Whatever you want, however short or long you want. It’s one of the features I like the most.  Posting photos is very easy on MB.  There are quite a few dedicated photoblogs there.

And you can move.  If you decide to move you can export all your posts and import them on a different blogging platform.  This is exactly why MB strongly encourages you to use your own domain it makes moving easier.

Migrating from Twitter or Facebook to Micro.blog

What is the difference between Twitter and Micro.blog?

I was going to write a big long comparison between Micro.blog and Twitter then Facebook, but I don’t think I’m really up to the job.  Which is why this post has been sitting in my Drafts bin for several weeks.

Here is the best thing to do:  Micro.blog offers a free trial.  Sign up and really try it for the trial period.  You can set MB to cross post to Twitter so all your posts appear on both MB and Twitter at the same time.  Give it a try.

At the end of the trial, you have a choice:

1. pay $5 per month to continue the hosted blog on MB, or,
2. discontinue the hosted blog, it will no longer work but the social network will still work. See below.

Paying the $5 for easy posting is the easiest way to go.  The five bucks pays for the service, keeps it free of ads and tracking and helps keep the riff-raff out. (That’s my opinion.)

But either way, if you are looking for a replacement social network I urge you to give Micro.blog a try on the free trial.

There is a lot of discussion about adding categories and/or tags for posts on hosted blogs on Micro.blog and I just thought I would post this note on some search engine traffic stats I have observed here on Wordpress and how they might be useful to Micro.blog.

Archives:

The same sort of thing applies to categories.

Benefits:

Micro.blog