Weblog

[robertwatts]

Is the weblog still in the works? I'd love to know what to expect and roughly when, if at all possible.

Holding off migration of my blog to write.as as would love to keep it all within the platform 🙏

Awesome thing you're building @newbold - thank you.

[newbold]

@robertwatts, it’s definitely in the works! I updated the the info center article with slightly more info around timing. As for the feature itself, here’s a rough rundown of what we should have by year-end:

1. Simple Markdown-based post authoring
2. Custom metadata / YAML front matter
3. Some kind of import process
4. Simple template engine
5. Simple theming process
6. Static (non-serialized) pages
7. RSS
8. Hosting on *.weblog.lol or bring your own domain

One thing that I’m still thinking through is media support (specifically everything around uploading/storing images, videos, etc.), so I’m not certain whether that will be buttoned up by the beta. Have to think about more fundamental things like media format support, storage limits, etc. since media stuff really begins flirting with incurring more costs, and I’m always aiming to be on the more budget-friendly side of things. So, there’s still a bit to work out there.

Another thing that I really need to add to the info center article is something about the feature philosophy. I’m not trying to compete with other established professional blogging services out there; rather, I’m just looking to give folks a straightforward way to make a basic blog. Time will tell what additional features are added or what direction things go in overall, but as of this point I’m going for something simple and steady vs. expansive and feature-rich.

Hope that makes sense. Would love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or other input!

[robertwatts]

This sounds perfect, thank you for the detail! If we can get most of that by year end then I for one would be really happy.

I agree re media, complexity and costs stack up too easily. I bet most people would be happy using externally hosted for launch (I certainly wouldn't mind). It's also relates to the simplicity done well ethos of the whole stack.

IMO I might regard an import process in the same way. The implementation could take many forms and spiral. Manual posting with a back date is a decent workaround, at least for launch.

One thing not on the list, and it might be implicitly obvious, is integration with social.lol. I don't have fixed ideas on how it might work and it wouldn't block me from using weblogs, it just seems like a good opportunity. Auto post to social.lol when publishing? A widget showing replies to that post on the blog? Highlighting popular posts from the community?

[robertwatts]

Btw if you need help testing I'll be happy to help

[GianPaoloFontani]

I'm curious too about Weblog. Adam, you know, I'm here to test if you want. 😊

[ronguest]

This is pretty much the feature set I’d want. I’d like the ability to automatically have my toots show up on the blog.

[bixfrankonis]

OOC, is the idea to stick with the domain/slug URLs, or will there be a way to have date-based URL structures? It's maybe just a cognitive pet peeve of mine, but I sort of think of the domain/slug structure as an SEO Bro thing, whereas a date in the URL really helps give me a sense of context for what I just clicked on or was thinking of clicking on. I guess, for me, blogs are about dated posting, so the URLs should surface that info.

[lxjv]

i think it could be a cool customization option!

( ahem https://blot.im/how/configure/link-format )

[newbold]

Covered in tonight’s update! https://advent.weblog.lol/day-5

[bixfrankonis]

Another slug question (I don't know why I made a separate "idea" post for that earlier one): are you going to trim slugs to X number of words, and if so do you know what that number would be? Like, were someone to make a post with a 20 word title, would the slug be 20 words long?

I guess this is another "bix has a weird-ass use case" question, less about actually catering to me than about figuring things out for my eventual migration. (I don't have 20-word titles; I'm just wondering if there's going to be an X.)

[newbold]

This sounds like the perfect thing to make configurable! So that’s the plan.

[bixfrankonis]

Template suggests tags are coming. Wondering if you're doing just tags, or also categories. I don't have an opinion, I'm just strategizing my eventual import project.

[newbold]

Yep, stay tuned. 😅

[newbold]

Tags just went live! https://advent.weblog.lol/day-9

I still need to think about categories. Part of me wants to say “tags are enough”, and another part of me wants to support them, but maybe as an extension of the tagging process itself (in other words, some tags could be defined as categories and provide category behaviors... not sure though. Need to work the kinks out of tags themselves first.

[bixfrankonis]

FWIW, my use case was this: I want to be able to note where my old blog posts originally appeared (e.g. medium.com, or this.mediocre.life), since I am restoring potentially two decades of stuff, and was thinking about the idea of using categories for that, so that I could still bring over the various subject-matter tags I had on posts, and also thereby enable people to browse just particular eras of my blogging.

[GianPaoloFontani]

I suggest a little thing, if it pleases you @newbold. On main.yml workflow you could put
on: push: paths: - 'weblog/**' - 'configuration/**'
for example. So workflow runs only when there is an edit on weblog folder and/or configuration folder.