Using BirdgyFed to connect OpenBenches.org to the IndieWeb and the fediverse

[strypey]

I came here after reading about your experience being bot-spanked by the birdsite, where you said:

Yes, I know. We should redecentralize and put our content on Mastodon, or the BlockChain, or some other convoluted platform which has no users.

The response I started writing here got long, so I posted it on my blog instead: https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2018/05/08/use-both-a-response-to-openbenches-comments-about-decentralizing-the-social-web/

The key pieces of info I wanted to share are:

• Mastodon is part of a larger network known informally as the fediverse, all inter-operating via OStatus.
• If you don't want to set up a separate microblog app on your own server, you can use IndieWeb protocols to enable your existing openbenches.org website to inter-operate as a first-class citizen of the social web, both with the rest of the IndieWeb, and eventually with the rest of the fediverse using BridgyFeb (note: BridgyFed is about a year old and still experimental).
• W3C recently made ActivityPub an official web standard for social networking, and all the fediverse apps either have implementation rolled out (eg Mastodon), or are working on it, and the same is true for a growing list of other apps, (including BridgyFeb).

Someone once convinced you to use the birdsite because they were already there. You could be that person/ project in the fediverse for your social network.

[edent]

Thanks. A few points.

I'm already on mastodon, usually as @edent :-)

OpenBenches has lots of semantic data on the website, including schema.org stuff - there's also an open data feed on there.

All the Twitter functionality is a) posting a duplicate to Twitter, b) Login.

If you can write a Pull Request to add Mastodon / Fediverse functionality - I'll gladly accept it.

[strypey]

On 2018-05-08 13:11, Terence Eden wrote:

If you can write a Pull Request to add Mastodon / Fediverse functionality - I'll gladly accept it.

Sadly I don't have the skills to do this, I'm just an opinionated user (who likes memorial benches ;) But I can ask around. What language(s), framework(s), libraries does your site use? Knowing this might narrow down a shortlist of people to shouldertap.

[edent]

It's all PHP. We use the CodeBird library for Twitter.

[edent]

As an update, we're on Mastodon at https://botsin.space/@openbenches

That just uses IFTTT to push new items from the RSS feed onto the Fediverse. There is oEmbed on each URl, so it should have a rich preview.

Posting our media to botsin.space seems to be discouraged - which is understandable as there is a lot of it.

I'd be open to someone working out how I can turn an RSS feed into an ActivityPub stream for others to consume.

[strypey]

@edent

we're on Mastodon

Awesome, followed :)

how I can turn an RSS feed into an ActivityPub stream

This might be useful: https://git.hostux.net/valere/rss-to-activitypub

[edent]

We're now autoposting to Mastodon. If there's an easy to use ActivityPub library for PHP, I'll take a look at making us a full-time part of the Fediverse.